to be concerned that our house has been on the market for 2 weeks and not had a single viewing

[whoneedssleepanyway]

don't really have any experience of this as this is the first house I have owned, but it is slightly concerning me that we have had no interest in this at all so far....

I thought September was a fairly busy month and would have thought you would get more viewings at the start of listing your property and these would slow down as it had been on longer...

am worrying now that either our agent is crap or we have listed it for too much money...

Depends where you are. My folks' house has been on the market for 6 months - 2 viewings, my friend's has been on the market for 2 months, 3 viewings, a similar house went on the market last week and has been sold already. All the same agent!

It does seem a bit unusual. Is it listed on the internet property sites like RightMove and FindaProperty? Does it have good pictures of the inside? It might be on a little high if nobody is even coming to see it. Ours has been on the market a few weeks and we had a lot of viewings the first week.

Location will make a difference, that's a good point. My friend's house was on the market for about 8 months and she only had about 4 viewings in that time. In some areas the market is very slow.

It can take ages to sell a house at the moment, don't start panicking yet.

But do keep on top of the estate agents, ask them how many people thay have given your details to, check your property is in the paper and on one of the good propety websites, and ideally in the window of their office.

My friend recently put her house on the market and was told to expect to wait between 1 and 2 years to sell. She has had a few viewings, but nothing has come of them.

Sorry - that's not a very positive story!

The houses round here that have sold fast (and have presumably had lots of viewings) have all been very competitively priced. The houses that have sold eventually have been priced a little higher. Those houses that don't sell at all are (IMO) overpriced. I don't live in a particularly desirable postcode.

Given this, I think the most important factor is the price.

It's early days yet. Worth checking a few basics, is your board up, ask the estate agent what advertising they have organised , have a look at the ads for yourself and check that they are visible enough. IMO September particularly with the property market dipping is not that busy. Have a look at what else is on the market in your area for a similar price to see how your property compares.
When we sold our house, the agent insisted that he could get what we thought was an overly optimistic price as he had buyers looking for our sort of property and we agreed to put the house on at this price for a few weeks to gauge the interest. After not a sniff for 3 weeks we dropped the price by 25K and suddenly had lost of interest and got asking price fairly quickly.

A friend of mine has had her house on the market. Obviously overpriced, but certainly comparable to the area. Has been reduced in price. Is gorgeous inside. Close to good schools and amenities on one of the most desirable roads in our area....

It has been on the market for over 12 months. They have had little interest and even an 'open house' viewing hasn't made any difference.

Sorry that's not a very positive story either!

You could reduce the price?

pardon ?

You have 2 potential problems here

1. if you have gone along with the estate agents highest asking price, it will be hideously overpriced and no-one will give it a second glance

2. you have completely unrealistic expectations of how long it can take to sell a house

My house was on the market for 9 months before we got an offer. We got 3 different agents to value the property, so were confident we were asking the right price.
Our problem was that ours is a typical 'first time buyers' home, and first time buyers are very few and far between!

have you compared your property to similar ones in the area? Is it a similar price?
Are there any other properties that have sold locally recently? If so, the agent that sold them might be the best one to go with.
As others have said, ask your agent how many people they have called to tell them about your home. they shouldn't just be waiting for people to call in for a viewing, they should be being proactive.
They might well be an excellent agent, but the property market is particularly dire a the moment so selling your home is more difficult than it has been in the past.

Ours was on for a month with no viewings and I went into the agent to ask what feedback they were getting on it from their clients who had decided not to view it from the details.

Turned out they hadn't shown anybody any details, because they claimed we did not have the legally required energy report bit done yet. It had been done and it had been sent to them on the day we signed on the market with them.

It was there cock-up, but they tried very hard to blame it on us/energy report company.

They hadn't even put the picture in the window. There were photo's on the internet, but no written description.

I was really annoyed. I worked in an estate agents office for six years and I'd have been given a formal warning for leaving a house un-marketed for a month.

When the details were ready we had a viewing within the week and the man said he had seen the sign up and gone into the office to arrange a viewing and been told that they thought we had taken it back off the market because they didn't have any details to give out.

I was not happy. So I asked them to do a door-to-door mail drop and a mail out and they put our house in the paper for four weeks in a row because of all the mistakes.

First viewer turned out to be a nutcase hard work, but he bought the house.

If your agent is not keeping in touch with you (mine didn't) then I would recommend that you call them at least every other day to ask what is going on.

If your house is on Rightmove they can tell you how many people have viewed it on the internet and how that compares to others in the area and they should be able to tell you how many people they have given or sent the details to and what those people said about it and why they decided not to come and view.

I've sold twice - once when the market was pretty good, and I still only got half a dozen viewings in the the 6 months until I got an offer. Second time, market was starting a downturn and had even fewer viewers, but two were very interested and within 4 months, accepted a decent offer.

There are just SO many factors related to buying and selling, it's not possible to say whether YANBU or YABU. One thing I realised was that both houses I sold were somewhat "atypical" (e.g. both had been altered a bit so they weren't quite like others in the neighbourhood,) and that seemed to go against them. For example, if it's in a family type neigbourhood, folks want a garden back and front, not a patio. If other houses are 2 or 3 bedroom in the area, they won't be that interested in one with an extension to 4 or 5 bedrooms there.

Oh, and whatever you do, you've got to pester and pester the estate agents to really market the place for you. You DO have to get people through the door because all 3 of the places I've bought weren't at all what I thought I was looking for until I got inside!

Some can be very lazy. The first lot I used just did zilch and expected me to show viewers around half the time. The second lot were alot sharper, which was important as I'd moved from the area before I had an offer and didn't have time to faff around.

Thanks all...

We had two agents value it for similar amount but I did think it was a little high but only £20k higher than I had been thinking and they pursuaded us that it was the right thing to do....

It is on Right move, Find a property all those...and it is in a very good location very central and near to the high street.

We have even had a third agent put their details through our door since the sign went up saying please call them urgently as they would have interested people....

My worry is that having put it on at the higher price some people won't be getting it through on the right move searches...

There is a similar house on the next road which is priced £20k less (hmm that should tell me something) but it is smaller (doesn't have eat in kitchen which ours does) and has much much smaller garden and is at the bottom end of the road which isn't as good.

This whole process is stressing me out already and we have only just started.

Thanks for all your comments, my worry is if we drop the price now is that going to send out a message that we are desparate or do we drop it now early in the process and see what happens...

We've just bought a house after looking for 18 months. From the perspective of a buyer I would say that there are a lot of houses out there that are overpriced. There seem to be many sellers who list for a high price initially, just to see if people bite, then if they're motivated to sell they reduce by up to 20% and that usually gets things moving.

Have you done some research about what your home is really worth or did you just go with an estate agent's estimate? You can go on zoopla or mouseprice and get an idea for what comparable homes in your area have sold for recently.

2 weeks is too soon to drop the price imo.

If you are brave you can try going on moneysaving expert and putting a link up to your right move listing and see what they say. They have bods on there who are good at looking at things like sold prices for comparables and will give an honest opinion on why they think you've had no views. I have seen some posters get excellent advice, but there are some rude idiots on there too.

I would think no viewers means price or presentation online not good. Houses in our area are selling but 'same' house can be on for 25k different for no obvious reason.

Perhaps get your agent to market the house as "offers in the region of..." rather than a big outright drop in price.

That will let people know you are open to offers and it might make them a bit more inclined to come and view.

And ask the agents to send their negotiators out to come and look at the house themselves, so they can properly describe what they are selling.

Don't necessarily believe the agent who says they have people who will come and look. People look at the website and the paper and use all the agents, they won't ignore a house they like because it's on with one agent and not the other.

DP and I are looking at houses at the moment and I would say that as many photos as possible makes a huge difference.
As for price when searching....difficult one....I know to look at houses that are slightly more than our budget because we can always put in an offer lower than the asking price. We might get refused but you don't know til you ask. However, other buyers might not think of that so it's up to your agent to push the details.
In our area there is a glut of first-time buyer type properties so the market is slow. Some of this is because the vendors want the best price possible to have the extra equity to move onto their next, bigger property. When we come to sell, we realise we can use this to maybe price our house slightly lower in order to sell quicker.

I'd hassle the agent a bit and get to know your local market better. If you still haven't had a bite in a few weeks, then maybe consider other strategies.

If you wanted to post a link you would get some good feedback here I'm sure - there will almost certainly be folk based in your area who could give you some opinions.

xposted. Non local viewers online won't necessarily know the other house is not at the nice end of the road or has a smaller garden if it is presented well online....

I would consider seeing out your current contract and then remarketing with a new agent with a lower price.

Hi OP, sorry haven't had time to read the whole thread. We put our house on the Market mid to End august this year, we didn't have any viewings for the first 3 weeks, we also had the same concerns as you! why was no one coming or even calling the estate agents, I kept thinking , our house is a lovely 2 bed mid terrace suitable for a first time buyer. We had the added pressure of having a new house in the late part of construction that we had reserved and pressure from the construction company to sell. After 3 weeks we did get viewings but they amounted to nothing.

The rule is generally you should sell/ have a lot of interest in your property within one month of going on the Market. Main reasons for a non sale are...

Over priced
Estate agents not targeting the correct people/reacting to feedback.

What you can do (like us) is to have a open house, generally you should drop the price significantly ( we dropped ours to more than we could afford 20 k) basically you advertise this in the paper/right move for 1 week before ,hoping you will get lots of people thru the door. With the high volume of people in and out it tends to get people more interested and then they start bidding against each other to drive the price back up.

Our house is now sold (fingers crossed). we did have to take a bit of a hit with the price but at the end of the day a house is only worth what people are willing to pay.

Good luck x

When we sold our house the valuation the estate agent gave was imo too much. Look at houses in your area - not just the one in your road and get details. Try and be neutral and ask yourself honestly whether yours looks not as nice, is too much price wise or the photos aren't great.

IME it is a mistake to put in on too high and then drop the price lower. I think you are less likely to get a good offer than if you are more realistic with the price at the beginning.

Two weeks is nothing. Our last house had NO viewers for six months. We then redecorated (neutral, magnolia), dropped the price three times and sold eighteen months later. Profit became less important than actually moving.

When viewing houses on Rightmove, we were put off by clutter, unwelcoming photos (i.e bare windows, or bare plaster on walls), and overpricing.

HTH.

The others are right, the photo's are important OP.

We eventually bought a house we had seen on the internet and hated. The front looked great but the internal photo's were vile.

They made the layout look very odd and everything was bright red. The angles they had taken the photo's from made some of the rooms look like corridors and the back garden photo made it look like a car park.

We only came to view it because we were keen to live on just one particular street and we'd seen everything else that was for sale on it. I said in the car on the way that we were only coming to rule it out as we had an identical but better presented one to see the next day.

We knew before we were through the front door that this house was the right one, but the details did nothing to encourage us to view. We were their first viewers and they had been on for over six months.

After we offered we were glad the photo's were so awful because we were hoping it would put off anyone else from wanting to view But we made sure that our photo's were absolutely perfect.

And the identical but better presented house turned out to be horrible and weird and the photo's were the best thing about it. The reality was a magnolia nightmare with a badly installed driveway and a lot of unseen work that needed doing. But whoever took the photo's in that one was a presentation genius.