To think these house buyers are time wasters?

Having bought and sold a few properties now (my own homes and as a landlord), I'd say a really good estate agent is worth their weight in gold. You want someone you can actually visit - not an online one - and who will market your property effectively to get you the best price. You don't just want an online advert and a sign. You want really good photographs, a list of people they would contact who might be interested in your type of property and someone who can sell it during viewings. It is sales after all and you need a good salesman/woman. I would also get a good couple of valuations as well so that you are clear on the actual value of your house - you don't want to over or under sell it. The other thing a really good estate agent should do is vet your prospective buyers e.g. check identities, mortgage in principle in place, that they have evidence of deposit etc. This avoids any 'time wasters' or issues later on. Finally, I'd say that the type of prospective buyer is really important e.g. are they in a chain, do they drop out of sales, are they a first time buyer. Lots of sales fall through and you want a really reliable buyer as solicitors costs can mount up with all the prep work involved with a failed sale. Good luck!

I viewed recently with yopa, the estate agent could not wait to get out of there, he rushed the viewing and it took about ten mins before he was asking if we are done;
I am the only person to offer and have gone in 25k below asking on a property that needs all renovating as the owner is in a care home so this will pay for the fees and they didn’t seem to be in any rush!

agent even agreed it’s over priced🤷‍♀️

being the viewer I wouldn’t use yopa, it took 4 days to reply to an email regarding an offer and they have hardly any properties up for sale in our local area.
they seemed rushed and then rang me to ask if they can sell my house, despite knowing the seller has rejected my offer

We had a similar situation when selling our house last year. The buyers booked a viewing within hours of us listing (turned out they’d had their eye on our house for a while). Loved it and made an offer within days but £50k under asking claiming the third largest bedroom wasn’t really a double (it had a double bed in it, was comfortably used as a double and was bigger than the fourth double that they had no issues with).

We declined and then began the drawn out process of them making counter offers raising other things they’re didn’t like about it until we accepted the asking price.

On the day they moved in the husband commented that the house was £100k more than they could afford, so it became clear they were desperate to own it and this had been their attempt to afford it.

Not a nice process of selling to them. They were a pain in the arse and threatened to pull out constantly throughout the process. They also starting giving tasks to our solicitor because theirs was cheap and useless, which we put a stop to. They could only afford a level 2 survey too which involved the guy tapping a few walls and then (and we caught him) scrolling on his phone whilst sitting on our bed.

It’s a gamble but if the market is slow you might have to take it.

If you're willing to accept £75K less than you're asking it's overpriced.

Depending of course on its value.

I think you and your partner need to do some hard thinking.

Many agents won't allow buyers to view if they don't already have a mortgage in principal set up, or a broker about to do that, and a solicitor at the ready and even an offer on their own house (if they have one.)

We sold for 550K. First time we ever sold a house and probably the last time. Selling a house is brutal at times, we even had people asking if we throw in certain pieces of furniture in with the price…it was crazy.

This is one thing that annoys me about this country, how 'buyers' can so easily screw you over. If it gives you any hope OP after bad experiences I recently had a lovely buyer who paid the asking price, no tricks, conditions etc. It was almost unbelievable, I put it down to all the bad experiences we had had.

If they are willing to pull out on someone else and mess them around they wouldn't hesitate on doing it to you either, I'd stick to my guns on price if it's fair for what your selling, if they want it they will make it work

We had an awful experience with Yopa, we were having no viewings to the point it seemed suspicious and so got friends to "book in" as a test and they just never got back to them. We complained and got ignored, had to escalate for weeks and finally got a "We've been really busy" and an offer for a few hundred refunded. After 5 months they couldn't manage to collect a key or let us know where to drop it to do viewings.

Found a buyer within 6 days of moving to a well reviewed local agent but the market had definitely cooled while we were waiting for Yopa. Biggest mistake of the whole process for us.

Depends how much you want/need to sell the house. Its only worth what someone else offers to pay.

I couldn't help noticing that a number of times you referred to knowing what the house is worth. If it has been on the market for a month,without any offers save for these individuals, I fear what you know to be the value and what the market decides to be the value may not align. One real issue at the moment is the high costs of labour and materials for the work that you mentioned needs to done. Sellers increasingly make insufficient allowance for the cost of the works which is sadly rising almost by the month. That said, I do quite understand your point that it would need to achieve a certain figure to make a move viable. In the event you don't achieve what could prove to be an aspirational figure, hopefully any onward purchase would also be priced to reflect the current market and be to your advantage especially if you're trading up.

Go with a brick and mortar EA, none of this online crap. Even a cheap real EA is better than this. These people sound dodgy and as others have said are gonna find stuff wrong with the place to mess you about. Unless you wanna let them pay for the survey and refuse to lower the price....then they lose their survey money which serves them right for being twats. LOL

Have you had any other houses down your road up for sale or sold recently? Luckily for us, no one down our road had sold for ages so buyers had no other houses/prices to compare to.

we also had it listed as a guide price, 550-575k. We knew we would never sell it for more than 550 but it gave buyers the impression they were getting it cheaper when they offered us the lower end. On our new house, we offered the lower guide price and DH thought he had saved 25K and was very proud of himself until I explained to him that we did the exact same thing with our old house.

Yes if it’s been on a month, and at this time of year, then it would seem so

It's not don't touch with a barge pole, just don't spend time on it. They are hoping for a steal on price. At least ,whatever other motivation may be. Just a polite no thanks we're looking for the guide price and let them drift away.

Leave it on the market till a serious buyer comes along. One month in is early days.
These other people just want to see if you're up for tipping them a big bonus, gonna make it worth their while.
I wouldn't speak to them again till you' ve failed to sell it after a couple of years 😋

Personally I would use a local EA as they can vet potential buyers. At the start we had people who hadn’t even put their property on the market coming to have a look. After a few time wasters, we refused to see anyone who hadn’t already had a buyer for their property or if they were a first time buyer, they had to have a mortgage in principle. It’s amazing how may people just want to have a nose around your house with no intentions of selling. All the interest from our old house came from rightmove. Our house was originally listed for 600K (we used a very big chain greedy EA wouldn’t recommend them) we even told the EA it wouldn’t sell for that amount. We had no interest whatsoever for their two weeks. We then lowered it to 550K (which we thought it was worth) and also made it easier to find due to the value search on rightmove and then we started getting offers.

The problem you are going to have is they want to pay much less than what the house was valued at, you know this due to all the low offers they’ve sent your way. The likelihood of them getting close to exchange and starting to downgrade their offer again is high, I wouldn’t want to take the risk.

I think no viewings aside from this one in a month would indicate the price (did you value or the online ea) is too high.

You won’t like that. But the evidence indicates that is the case.

Who valued your property? Any viewings aside from this one?