Overpriced houses

[PaulineFowlersGrowler]

I live in the worst place to sell a house in the UK (apparently), with the average house taking a year to sell. BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL OVERPRICED. We accepted an offer on our lovely well maintained and most importantly reasonably priced house after 10 days on the market. Now we are in the unpleasant position of trying to find something that isn't overpriced. All the realistically priced houses are being snapped up instantly. Went to see a realshithole restoration project and the greedy git told us it had been valued at £170,000, yet he has it listed at £225,000, and the EA told us he has turned down an offer of £208,000. No wonder it's been on the market for years. another house we saw is overpriced and needs at least £15,000 worth of structural repairs (FIL is a builder who specialises in structural repairs, so he knows his stuff). Also been up for years, also rejecting offers. There aren't many houses big enough for our family on the market, and I'm starting to worry our FTB will get fed up of waiting for us to find a place and take her money elsewhere. Anybody had any luck getting a realistic price for an overpriced house?

[Moving15]

Yes, we negotiated ours down by 70k. It all depends on whether or not the vendor is motivated to sell. You just have to keep trying. Good luck!

[JT05]

A few weeks ago we were after an overpriced house with some obvious structural issues that we were going to address with a surveyor, but had a good idea of the reasons.
We offered a reasonable price, considering it had been on the market since last September and the structural/ decorative order. The vendor flatly turned us down despite being cash purchasers, and wouldn't negotiate.

Since then we have found a great house, beautifully done up , for around the offer price and in the same village.

The other house is still on the market and deteriorating as no one is living there, but they have reduced the price a little and it's still overpriced!

[EssentialHummus]

Pauline, could you sell yours and rent nearby 'ti the right place comes up? How is the local rental market? You're then in a great position (no chain) to buy when something comes on the market.

You do get seller who just will.not.negotiate. They're not in a hurry, or they're convinced the house is worth £x because the fairies told them. You can't shift them, really. My flat (zone 2, London) had been on the market a full year before I bought because it was over-priced and the vendors wouldn't shift. I was delighted with my measly £6,000 discount .

[StepAwayFromTheThesaurus]

I think too many vendors price their house only on what they want to get so that they can buy the kind of house they want, regardless what the going rate actually is.

There's one on my street. They've reduced it to £320k (it was on for more) in a street where no house had ever sold for more than £275k. It's not that it's miles better than all the other houses on the street (in fact, it has swirly carpets and a very poorly designed extension). I can only assume that the vendors need more than they could possibly sell it for in order to do whatever they're planning. They aren't serious sellers, clearly.

Obviously people don't have to sell. But there are a lot of people wasting other people's time (and their own) pretending that their house is actually for sale when really they want the moon on a stick.

[lighteningirl]

We've just accepted an offer of £270,000 and mortgage valuation has come back at £240,000 if more mortgage companies do this prices will have to come down we've had to pull out of our purchase

[Coldtoeswarmheart]

We bought this place when the market was still falling. We sold quickly at a sensible price, eventually we found our current house which was priced low and they took an offer (vendor moving into retirement flat, company met his shortfall). Our new neighbours were aghast when they looked up our purchase price on Zoopla.

[iamtotallyserious]

Lightneningirl - is the valuation of mortgage company the same as the amount of mortgage they are advancing (as opposed to the full value of the house)? If so this is common I believe

[Sallyhasleftthebuilding]

I think you need to be inside with the he agents - tell them your position and what you want - then leaflet drop on houses you might be interested in - someone may be thinking of selling but not quite there yet - or see houses on the market for years and think they'll not bother -

Put ads up in the local supermarket or FB pages - I think you need to be proactive in this area

[TremoloGreen]

Oh god, I could have written your post last year. No-one ever moves here and the greed when they do is UNBELIEVEABLE. Whatever you do, don;t sell yours at a reasonable price and move out into rented. We've lost so much money doing that (prices went up loads in the year) and I nearly had a breakdown with the stress of it all and living in a tiny, squalid rental.

[RaphaellaTheSpanishWaterDog]

Unrealistic sellers.....tell me about it! There's a house in our road that was reduced to 850k. Five years ago The RM details don't even have any internal pics, but if the outside is anything to go by (think 1950s decrepitude with Steptoe's yard for a front drive/garden) it's going to be pretty bad......

The ceiling price for our road is about 750k, but that was a new build.

I think Zoopla has a lot to answer for too. When we bought this house nearly 18 months ago it had been on the market 2 years and we got it for about 80k under the original asking price. The Zoopla 'valuation' while we were in the process of buying had it at about 240k above what we eventually paid!

[Coldtoeswarmheart]

Zoopla was interesting when we were last buying, as we could see that some of the overpriced houses we couldn't touch had been bought at peak, and the owners looked to be putting the houses back on at the same level, even though they'd fallen a good £30k really.

Much of our househunting consisted of us finding somehere we liked, making an offer, vendor pulling house off market. So, so difficult.

[namechangedtoday15]

Zoopla is completely wrong though - miles out.

[PaulineFowlersGrowler]

Hummus renting isn't really an option for us, my DS has ASD and I want to keep the disruption to his life to a minimum, plus I doubt I could find somewhere big enough to accommodate my massive brood.

sally I think you are right about being pro-active, although in completely cynical about finding a sane seller now.

That's an awful situation to find yourself in lighteningirl

[DaftLemon]

It's all down to the seller. We saw 4 houses last January we liked. All v overpriced. Put in offers on them all.(Not at the same time) all refused. One we spent weeks negotiating but they weren't happy with our final offer. 15 months later all 4 are for sale at the same price. Not that we're looking any more.
I don't think any of them can be motivated to sell. They obviously are not that fussed. It's mire about the money/investment for them than wsnting/needing a sale.

[LillianGish]

Find someone who actually wants to move. It sounds like an obvious thing to say, but some people are not in a hurry or have just put their house on the market speculatively to see if they can get a huge sum. We've just bought a new place the first place we made an offer on was hugely over-priced (to the extent that we found it on the market with another agent at 75,000 less!!!!) made the owner an offer - he didn't even want to negotiate, apparently he was wasn't in a hurry! In the end we bought something entirely comparable for 100,000 less round the corner - it had just come on the market and the seller was happy to negotiate because she wanted to move. Good luck.

[Ajb88]

@moving15 how did you manage to get £70k off a house?
We are FTB and have fallen in love with a house priced at £210k.
Houses of the same size have sold fir £150k so being cheeky I offered that. It was quickly declined. We could probably offer £160k but that is pushing it. HELP!!

[Herschellmum]

Ajb88 - it very unlikely they will come down that amount! I think the other poster who got a discount was dealing with massively different figures, for example, there is a massive difference between getting a cost up for 690000 for 620000, the % isn't a massive different, but you're looking for a massive % discount which is unlikely to happen, for example, ours was priced up at 215,000, we did feel that was a bit high and reduced immediately, we sold for 172000, there is no chance I would have gone as low as 160000 as there just wouldn't have been anything else to buy.

I wouldn't be looking at houses that expensive, cheeky offers as usually less than 20% under the listed price.

[TurquoiseDress]

We are FTBs in London

Prices are crazy yes, but also quite a few sellers don't seem to actually want to sell unless it is for x price (that the EA has told them their property is worth!)

I know it's often a case of sellers needing x price so they can 'move up' to the next place.

What we've found is that the EA admits that the seller will probably put the property up for let if they don't sell for the price they want.

I think this reflects the fact that we are mainly looking at flats (are either vacant or have tenants in-situ) but we can't afford anything bigger.

We need to find sellers who NEED to sell!

Pregnancy, divorce or probate!

[Needmoresleep]

Agents are equally guilty. They get instructions by over-valuing. One good agent I know does a good business by valuing realistically and suggesting to vendors that they come back to him should they fail to sell with another agent at an inflated price. They often do.

Part of the problem is low interest rates. If you have a property, and don't need the money, it does not make sense to sell as you get virtually nothing for your savings. And rents are OK at the moment. If interest rates rise, a lot more will come on the market.