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...

This worked for my friend. She rang up the agent and pretended to be a buyer, and basically described her own house as what she was looking for. (The agent's sales tactics for your house will then be very apparent ) Her agent told her there was nothing like that available, which was obviously the end of their relationship! You could get a friend to do it for you if you're not comfortable.

Agents are over-valuing to get the business, it is a much-talked-about problem now.
I would bet my bottom dollar that your instincts are right about what would be a suitable price.

You should drop the price and sooner is better than later, BUT if you are also planning on getting new photos etc, then wait till you've done that to drop the price, so that when it comes into lots more people's inboxes as a result of the price drop, the listing will make the best possible impression.

Hi OP,

We are in a similar situation although further down the line than you. We did have 4 viewings in the first week, one of which was very hopeful and kept calling our EA with updates, almost ready to make an offer, note of interest put on via solicitor etc. Now he has vanished and we don't know why!

Since then we have had no viewings. So that's 6 weeks with no viewers. We are cross because we feel EA thought they had it in the bag and stopped doing much for us.

We have decided it is overpriced...unusual character property so not much to compare it to but everyone says no viewers = priced too high.

We have dropped from offers over £280k to fixed price of £265k. House is valued at £290k.

I would advise you to wait two more weeks and then drop the price.

Don't drop by £5k or something like that as £5k over someone's budget wouldn't stop them from coming. Would have to be £10k plus imo.

Good luck...it's hell but there are lots of us in the same boat.

Also meant to say that the Property/DIY section is quite good for people selling houses too. I have been on there several times.

Good luck.

Where abouts in the country do you live? Are you just over a stamp duty threshold? If so, have you considered a deal like paying the stamp duty for a buyer in order to guarantee a quick sale?

Having photos taken on a sunny day makes a big difference.

Have you checked nethouseprices.com for sold prices? I found that sold prices and the asking price were not the same.

We sold in June and it took us 10 days and had about 5 viewers but we were in the M25 and it was priced just below the stamp duty threshold as we wanted to move quickly. We bought outside the M25 and our house had been on the market for 3 months and was overpriced so we managed to negotiate a price that was 10% less than the asking price.

The market is completely stagnant. It could be that your EA has made errors in the vein of those described by TakeThisOneHere, or whatshappened,
but generally, people are only really buying if they have to, not like in the boom years because they wanted to.

Batten down for the long haul, OP, or be prepared for significant price drops.
If its on Rightmove (in England & Wales) generally EAs can't do a great deal more to generate additional interest, people just look on Rightmove. We've all been there, when you're looking, its the first thing you do every morning. Its not like EAs have a huge database of potential buyers exclusively registered to them who have no awareness of what's on the market until they get alerted to your house via the EA.

Pragmatically, you really have to assume that anyone who is looking for a property of that specification in your area in that price bracket is now aware of your house. It could be that there are very few people who fit that description, or those who do have decided from the particulars that its not for them. The only other possibility is that they've not got around to viewing yours yet, 2 weeks is reasonable for this to still apply. After a month though, if they've seen it and are interested, they'd have viewed it.

Until you reduce the price (and I'm not necessarily saying you ought to do that immediately) all you can do is wait for the pool of buyers to refresh.

Good luck :)

Be patient. Have you got a board up? Does your house have kerb appeal - neat front space/garden, no outside clutter, shiny front door, clean windows etc. See if the EAs think an open house day could work for you - it can get the competitive juices flowing amongst buyers.

Also, work out what the cost per sq foot is of properties like yours that have sold, then apply the same formula to yours. Zoopla will tell you sold prices in your area and should still show you the floor plans of the properties.

One other thing OP. We had a £10,000 difference between the highest and lowest valuation and the figure in the middle was our ideal selling price.

While I was angry at our agent for their mistakes I called in a fourth agent to value it and he recommended putting the house on at the lowest valuation price to sell for about £10,000 less again.

We couldn't afford to move at that price, so we ignored him and held out and we sold for £1000 less than the original asking price, so £14,000 more than he would have been trying to get for us. I think we could even have held out for the asking price, but the buyer was hard work and the extra £1000 wasn't worth all the arguing negotiating it would have taken to get it.

So although you may get agents over-valuing to get the business (and mine did try to drop the price almost immediately we had signed their contract) we got an agent who seriously undervalued our achievable price.

If you are confident in your price (and I was, I'd done my research) you might not have to drop as much as you think.

Here is a gloomy read about the housing market in today's Guardian
www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/oct/03/property-house-prices-fall

Especially the comments after the article, I would look at reducing your price asap for a sale, it sounds like prices are likely to fall much further.

Thanks again for all your comments.

I think it is the price that is putting people off. To not have had one foot through the door. Our house is a good location, great school round the corner, generous living space and garden for a house this size and fairly well presented (I decluttered big time, the photos look great) it could have a little more curb appeal so am painting the front door this week but put new hanging basket and window box up.

I know people say it is too early to drop the price but I think if it is on for the wrong price it will only be worse to leave it for months and then drop as then people will be like, that house has been on for ages there must be something wrong with it....

And don't fall for the 3rd agent asking you to contact them urgently as they have buyers waiting. If "their" buyers are desperate for a house like yours then they'll be looking at all the agents, not just them and they'll come across your house anyway.

Agree OP that even if price is dropped in future, if people know its been on the market for ages they are more likely to ignore it. You know your area better than other posters, so if you think is too high then it probably is. So drop the price.

www.propertysnake.co.uk/site/location/1/1/days_on_desc

www.propertysnake.co.uk/site/location/1/1/change_desc

Those are National Figures
Put in the ones for your area / type of house and find out what the market is REALLY doing ....

Hi OP, how's it going? Keep on the back of your EA as well, I called/walked into their office almost every other day and asked them what they where doing and who they where calling - soon as you stop the next NEW house on the Market becomes their priorty. I bet they where completely sick of me.

Not sure if someone has suggested this but you could go multi agency, although this will cost more, but you will have triple the number of EA calling round/ giving suggestions as to how to sell your house.

October isn't a good month. Dark early evening which puts people off viewing and few want to go through the hassle of buying or moving house just before Christmas. Things pick up again in the New Year.

Yes I agree with cogito, maybe take the house off the Market until the new year if you can't drop the price significantly now. If you leave it on up to and during Christmas with no luck, your property could become stale and put buyers off.

Things that I did to help the house, and which I got good feedback on...

1. fresh flowers
2. carpet deodorant
3. clear way all clutter
4. clean windows
5. tidy garden- paint fences, plant bright flowers, cut grass.
6. hide/ disguise bins.
7. clean your oven (they do look inside)
8. tidy cupboards (again they do look inside)
9. remove childrens toys and pets (if you have any)
10. children should not be in when viewings take place.
11. clean fresh bedding.
12. empty indoor bins.

basically you have to live in a show home, hard work but necessary. Basically walk into each room and think 'does this look the best it could?' remember you want people to be seduced by your home if It's messy/ cluttered that's the lifestyle your selling...people don't want that.

I'm sure your house is beautiful, and you have already though of the above. x

I agree that your house may be overpriced.
We tried to sell a house last year, it was originally valued at £125k and marketed at that price. No viewings in eight weeks. We weren't really aware of that as we were living overseas.
When I managed to get hold of them, they said it was a bad time to sell. We reduced the price by £5k, still no visitors.
I had it valued by another firm, they came back and said £105k, so a full £20k difference.
The top and bottom of it is, we rejected an offer of £80k and re let it. I've just been on that property snake site and seen it's worth around £85 now. So, a good fall in just over a year.

Well, we dropped the price by £20k a week ago after a lot of thought.

Since then we have had 4 viewings, another one lined up and 2 of the 4 are coming back for second viewings this week.

As well as dropping the price (which I am sure was the right thing to do) the agent redid one of the photos in the details which now looks much better and put us up on the front of their website as the lead property for a few days. This coupled with the price drop meant our viewings on right move when up from 800 clicks in a 10 day period to over 2000 clicks just a few days later.

Am feeling loads more positive about this.

Have made sure the house is super tidy for all the viewings and even went as far as the vanilla pod in the oven trick to make the house smell nice. DH said I was being ridiculous but I am chucking everything I have at this! Will let you know what happens.

Thanks.

I strongly agree about studying the market and looking for other local houses that are comparable to yours. It might help to use a friend's name and address when registering for details or it will look fishy. This will also let you see which are the hard-working and competent agents.

Keep paper copies of similar houses on file, and look again to see if they have sold or the price has changed. Visit a few and see how you think they compare (obviously you will be biased). Ask a blunt and trusted acquaintance to say where your home is less appealing than others. You don't want tact and sympathy for this. Fresh decorating in neutral colours, tidy garden, junk got rid of, all help.

If you are not getting viewings, it will be price or agent. If you are getting viewings but no offers, it will be condition or neighbourhood.

OOI I recently sold (STC) a house, we had 20 viewings on the first day, and six offers on the following Monday (it was a very nice house) so I know it was valued too cheap; but I had insisted on OIRO and we finally accepted an offer nearly 20% above agents valuation.

oh well done! Fingers crossed for you.

OMG we have had an offer.....

Whoo-hoo! A good one?

accepted...!

Congratulations! That is so cool!