to be pissed of with selling our house

[worldgonemad72]

desperately trying sell our house at the mo, we've knocked 15 grand of the asking price.
We were supposed to have a viewing today, the house is immaculate and they haven't turned up
This is the 2nd time our estate agents have made an appointment for someone to come and view and they haven't shown up.
Fuckers

Unfortunately I think you need to stop thinking about what you paid for it and the level of your mortgage. The crucial point is what the market is doing now. I'm amazed by some of the stories about estate agents making bookings just to make themselves look busy - no wonder they have a bad name.

I agree with the idea of an open viewing day.

Alternatively could you do a short video - see this link

news.scotsman.com/news/Law-and-Legal-Affairs-Lights.6776424.jp?articlepage=1

We had 4 viewings in one day. Only one bothered to turn up.

It is nothing to do with the price of the house. If it were, these people wouldn't be making appointments in the first place.
It's everything to do with the rude, CBA attitude of some people. I have seen it as a childminder when parents book appointments to see us and then don't bother to turn up. How long does it take to make a quick call cancelling the appointment?

We've sold our house now, by the way. One of the prospective buyers that did turn up liked it enough to turn up for a second appointment and then make an offer.

Tanith you can't say it's got nothing to do with the price of the house, now can you?

People often look, to see how overpriced it is and how much they can knock it down by.

No seller (or very few anyway) should expect to get more than 95% of asking in this climate.

And if you've got a duff kitchen, old bathroom and generally bad decor, old carpets etc.. it will be less than that.

IME, most houses on the market right now, are asking to much - there must be some truth in that otherwise things would be moving a little more quickly.

Sellers often seem to make the mistake of comparing their asking price to asking prices of similar houses. Pricing yourself 5% lower than a similar house that is 20% overpriced means you're still overpriced.

We didn't turn up for one viewing because the estate agent only managed to phone us after the arranged viewing time! They'd rang once but left no message so I'd assumed it wasn't urgent and waited until I'd finished work to phone back

Sorry, but it has got to be the price. I live in an area where is very desirable and people do ask silly money for houses that never sell. Those that are reasonably priced sell within a couple of weeks. Two almost identical houses on an adjacent road were up for sale at almost £100k difference. The cheaper house has sold. The hideously expensive (but she did have a professional interior designer do it up with feature walls in every room) house has not sold. Wonder why?

We would never have bought our current house at its original asking price. Totally over priced and well out of our league. We only looked at it because EA thought there could be a deal to be done and there was.

"Unfortunately I think you need to stop thinking about what you paid for it and the level of your mortgage."

So with a flat valued currently at 100k, and an outstanding mortgage of 88k on it... how exactly do you suggest i pay off the bank if the buyer is only offering 80k???

Sorry, but the harsh reality is that if buyers do not offer enough for sellers to discharge their mortgage, then the property will not change hands.

I was renting it out, i don't want to be a landlord, but i may have to go back to it if i can't get an offer around 90k (to give me 88k after EA fees).

"Sorry, but the harsh reality is that if buyers do not offer enough for sellers to discharge their mortgage, then the property will not change hands"

But this is going to be more of a problem for the seller than the buyer, there are always other properties for the buyer.

So with a flat valued currently at 100k, and an outstanding mortgage of 88k on it... how exactly do you suggest i pay off the bank if the buyer is only offering 80k???

With respect, that's not the buyers' problem. If you can't sell at a rate to pay the mortgage, then you stay put, or you rent it out and rent yourself.

Sorry, but the harsh reality is that if buyers do not offer enough for sellers to discharge their mortgage, then the property will not change hands.

There will be other properties for the buyer to buy. Somebody will have a smaller mortgage and will accept a lower offer.

I feel for you OP. We had ours on the market for 3 years and everyone said lower the price. We had it on for less than we paid for it too, and less than the value. Still didnt sell so we rented it out.

I feel for you OP.
However, if it is a price issue (drop it and see if you get an offer; you don't of course have to sell) then you will have to stay put, or rent it out or somehow come up with the difference between what you get and what you owe.

There are many others like you right now

It's not just the price.

When we sold ours last year we started viewing as soon as we were on the market.

Not one of the agents wanted us to view because we hadn't already sold.

Which makes no sense to me. Okay everyone wants buyers who are in a position to move quickly and they don't want to take a house off the market for someone who still needs to sell.

But they are actively telling people not to view so they are keeping a very large portion of the market sitting at home wanting to sell houses but the person who might buy yours may well be sitting there waiting for someone to buy his first.

I asked my agent "what happens if seller A would want to buy seller B's house. Seller B would want to buy seller C's house and seller C would want to buy seller A's house. But none of them know it yet because you are telling them not to look at other houses until they've sold their own? You could have three sales that aren't happening because you are telling people not to even look yet."

He said it wouldn't happen, and it probably wouldn't in such a neat triangle but you get my point. They are keeping potential buyers from viewing while they wait for the perfect FTB or cash buyer and sometimes they need to accept those people aren't coming along and have to get a bit creative in their thinking.

As it happened, we found a house we wanted to buy but the agent told them not to accept our offer because we hadn't sold. They accepted another offer but the sale fell through. They contacted us to ask us if we were still interested, we had a sale agreed on our house, but we'd found another house by then. The house was on the market until last month, another sold board went up and came down when the sale fell through, and now the house is rented out. So the agents advice did them no favours (although they perhaps saved us from a big mistake. The house had been empty for two years by the time the tennents moved in).

Complain to your agents about the no-shows and see if they can do something to make it up to you (some accompanied viewings, an open house, a mail drop etc). I've worked for an estate agent in the past and they were one of the better ones but the best advice I can give you is to keep on good terms with them but you need to be in very regular contact with them and the best way to make sure that happens is for you to phone or visit them.

I don't know if I should say this, but it's not all doom and gloom. We sold our house 2 weeks ago, it had been on the market for 5 1/2 weeks and we had 21 viewings (the place has never been so clean!) We sold for the asking price, the only down side is it went so quickly we are now going to be homeless. Hey ho, damned if you do...

We had some stunning viewings, one bloke who kept saying "that's your garden" and pointing over the fence to next door. He must have said it 20 times. Several couples who weren't even on the market let alone sold, which I didn't mind that much as you never know do you? And the usual weekenders who seem to have house viewing in the hobbies section of their cv.

Good luck to everyone on the market, I'm sure the buyers are just around the corner.

Op - you seem to view it as the buyer's responsibility to pay off your hefty mortgage. No wonder you're not getting any offers. The buyer has no interest in paying your debts off - they are interested in buying a competitively priced property.

If you can't afford to lower the property to the market price, then the only chance of it selling is there being somewhat out there stupid enough to pay over the odds. I find it hard to wish you luck in finding a mug to rip off - which is what you are doing.

And yes, YABU.

Wow. All this anger.
You just don't need it. Get the agents to do the viewings. Give them a key, lock valuables away, do a couple of open days. You go out and do something normal.

I have been on the other side - changed weekend plans twice to view two (ludicrously priced) houses only to have both cancel on us twice, after being confirmed just the previous day, up to an hour before the viewing. One we did see - good job too, nice view of the local A road. The other we never bothered with again - still on the market six months later.

I sold in January after 6 months on the market. Initial EA valued at £185,000, others said 180 so I reduced it to that after a few weeks. I went through at least 6 agents in as many months, including one who sent a family of 5 to view (2 bed flat!)

Now this is where I disagree with those who say It Must Be The Price, because out of about 30 viewings I had no offers at all. What has happened to all the people who would do as I've always done and make an offer, no matter how low?

I needed to move quickly so I accepted an offer for £168,000 but eventually the EA worked the buyer up to £172,000. My new place was a little bit more than that, but EA fees, solicitors fees, stamp duty etc meant I still had to borrow a heck of a lot from family.

To whoever said to only do viewings at a convenient time and that serious buyers would be willing to do viewings in the evening and on weekends - what a load of tosh!!!

My DH works long hours, and I have 2 young DS. I was not going to waste our precious weekend family time viewing properties that might not be suitable, and I wasn't going to pay for a sitter to look after my DC so that I could look at the houses in the evening.

I viewed during the day ONLY. If I liked the house, THEN I went on the weekend with my DH.

As it turned out my DH only had to look at 1 house because after dozens of house viewings I found a fabulous house (which had been under offer for 18 months because of chains falling through) and which we have now bought. (I say fabulous in quite a lose sense of the word, we have gutted it and builders are redoing it right now!!!! ). But then as renters we were the ideal purchasers and were able to move quickly as both the seller and we were chain free.

Really chitchat? We had 70 viewings on our last house. Not one during the weekday, all evenings and weekends.

House before that only one out of about 20 viewings during the week and that only because it was a second viewing, the potential purchasers parents were coming up for the day and I was off anyway.

Have never viewed a house on a weekday and don't think any of my friends have either.

OP it is really frustrating that viewers take the piss and don't turn up.

I said that ChitChat, and I stand by it. You have actually proved my point, because you weren't a serious buyer up until the point that you brought your DH.

If you liked the look of a property enough on paper, and the only time they had viewings was at the weekend or in the evening, would you really be prepared to miss out on your potential dream house because you had to give up about half an hour in the evening or on a weekend?

Maybe you wouldn't for a house that you had a mild interest in, but for one that ticked all the boxes and you loved the look of, it would be you that missed out equally as much as the seller if you didn't.

Glad it worked out for you though, although I well remember the stress of renovating! Especially when living in the property with young children!

But I was a serious buyer - if they weren't willing to show me the house during the week I would not view it at all. Quite simple really.

Yes I would be prepared to miss out on a house - quite frankly no house is a dream house, and I can be a stubborn so and so!!! This is my 'for now' house. I had to compromise on what I wanted, but that was the same for all the houses I saw. I just had to decide what aspect of our wish list I was willing to compromise on.

And honestly, why should there be a difficulty with weekday viewings? If you're at work, then your EA can take the viewer through. If you're at home then you would have to leave the house exactly the same as if it were the weekend. How is it any more inconvenient???!!!

Bubblecoral - but to view in the evening I would have to pay for a sitter as my DSs were asleep, my DH usually only gets home after about 9pm. 1/2 hour on a weekend, once, not a problem, but very few people buy the first house they see. I viewed quite a few houses that I thought were potential purchases, but once inside I just couldn't see myself in them. So if I could only do weekend viewings I would have had at least an hour every weekend for 2 months.

I made that point too ChitChat. EA's that have a problem with doing viewings or who try to get the vendors to do them are shit EA's to be quite honest. There are a few of them around.

There should be no reason why they can't take viewers round while people are at work, although I can see that there would be some vendors that leave breakfast things and clothes lying around in the rush of their regular morings, so might not want that. But I think sorting those things out each day is part of what you should be doing if you are trying to sell a house. As I also said, if you want to sell a house quickly, it should be your temporary life mission to make that happen, with all the inconvenience that comes along with it.

Well, I can give the other side of this. Two years ago we thought dd might go to school in a surrey village off the A3. We made appointments to look at five properties in that village and would have been cash buyers. When we turned up at a very well known top end estate agent we were told all viewings had fallen through because it was two weeks before Christmas and sellers didn't want to show at that time. No call beforehand to advise us of the situation. We were looking at houses worth quite a lot of money - zero service. Not a firm we would go back to either to buy or sell and they have a branch where we live then and now - certainly wouldn't contemplate using them ever again. In the event DD got a school place withing a mile and a half of where we live so not an issue in the end. BTW this was in a recession and had we been shown a fab house it would have clinched it very easily because we loved the school and thought it was worth moving house for.

I find this post quite offensive

breadandbutterfly Thu 02-Jun-11 22:08:59
Op - you seem to view it as the buyer's responsibility to pay off your hefty mortgage. No wonder you're not getting any offers. The buyer has no interest in paying your debts off - they are interested in buying a competitively priced property.

If you can't afford to lower the property to the market price, then the only chance of it selling is there being somewhat out there stupid enough to pay over the odds. I find it hard to wish you luck in finding a mug to rip off - which is what you are doing.

Ive not said anywhere that i need x amount to pay off debts. I said that id already lowered the asking price by 15 thousand pounds.

Im not out to rip anybody off, i was having a moan about someone that had made an appointment and didn't show up.