To think that you don't view a £200k house if you can only afford to pay £120k?

[StarsInTheNightSky]

We emigrated a while ago, and prior to that we owned three homes in the UK (we are lucky, I realise that), two of which were rented out. We sold the home we lived in, and then sold one of the other homes when the tenancy came to an end. The other home was on a longer tenancy so we waited for that to end and then put that house on the market. The tenant had young children and a disability, so we agreed not to market the house until after they'd moved out so that it didn't make life difficult for them, they were a lovely family so we didn't mind at all. (Sorry, trying not to drop feed.)

It's on the market now at 20% below the realistic bottom end market value to try to get a quick sale, its in a very popular area where houses don't often come up for sale and its in immaculate recently redecorated condition (all neutral colours), we had a full structural survey done too at our expense to show viewers. We are paying a cleaner and a gardener to keep it immaculate. We've had lots of viewings, nearly all of which have turned into offers, which would be great, except every single one is at least £50k (normally £80k) below the asking price, and on a £200k house that seems a bit unreasonable. The estate agent can't understand it either, and I've checked with them to make sure they aren't saying anything to give people the wrong impression.

Am I just out of touch, is this what people do now? When our estate agents have gone back to them they've all refused to up their offers saying they can't afford anything more. So why look around in the first place? Am I being unreasonable?

totally agree with MayPolist

Mine was valued by 4 and between £200,000 and £205,000

Put it on at £200,000 had 2 luke warm viewings in 2 weeks - dropped it to Offers Over £190,000

sold it 2 weeks later for £187,500

it's only worth what people will pay - fingers crossed I move in 6 weeks !!!

you have to listen to the market and not to the people who are blowing smoke up your bum in hope of commission are telling you

What did you rent the house out for to your previous tenant?

Reason I ask is that rental value can give you an idea of what people might consider a reasonable monthly mortgage repayment for the house and, from that, you can work out the various ratios of deposit to loan, see what seems reasonable and then figure out what the kind of person who might live in your property would be able to pay. You can then use this figure to inform your asking price.

For example, take £200K. To get a decent interest rate, you would need to be looking at putting more than 20 percent down, so that would be a deposit of over £20K at least. Who in that area can actually do this? How old would they need to be? What would be their circumstances? Would such a person actually want to live in your house?

Then you are looking at a £180K mortgage. At 3 percent, that would be a monthly mortgage payment of £853. Again, what kind of person in the area can afford that? What would be their circumstances?

If you have rented out the house for a lot less than £853 a month, then that might very well be your problem.

I think you've gone in too low - buyers are going to assume there's something wrong with it.

I'd agree with the other posters - relist with a more realistic price.

£40K. You would need a deposit of £40K for 20 percent.

bangs head against wall.

So a loan of £160K, which would be roughly somewhere around what? £720 a month?

YouTube Freakonomics talk on estate agents' incentives and you will see why they don't push for higher prices even when on commission. Great idea from previous poster to get a mate to go round.

OK update (sorry if there are typos, middle of the night here, time difference pah!) Friend phoned yesterday and estate agent seemed to be saying everything correctly, until she pushed and pushed for info and they said that we've emigrated and the house is empty so we might consider reasonable offers. Grrrr. In fairness they did say that only offers above 200k would be considered, so today we're putting the price up to 270k, with the same estate agent, and were giving them one more week to sell it if not we're changing agents.

The rent was £1250 per month, which is reasonable for the house and area, and we hadn't put it up for a long time.

So fingers crossed we are just making people suspicious or missing the mark. Thanks again for the advice and insights, I will update when I hear something.

Another update: we have two viewings booked for this afternoon and three for tomorrow! That's after upping the price to 270k. Will update again after the viewings. Thanks again all.

It does seem rather odd for this to happen repeatedly.

In view of what you've said about DH's family, is it even remotely possibly they might be sending in "friends" to waste your time and mess you about?

Or have I been watching too much crap TV?

I told you you were invisible to your target. Now for the love of god do not accept anything below 240k. If they are viewing at 270k, they definitely have 240k in 5 heir pockets.

Pumpkin I don't think it's outside the realms of possibility, nothing would surprise me with them anymore, although generally the stuff they did was a whole lot more sinister. Some of the stuff was like living in a horror film, I'm so relieved we left the UK, but I'm still quite paranoid, even with a gun (which is kept in a locked cabinet and which I know how to use safely I should add) and two enormous hyper protective guard dogs.

Really delighted for you by the way. Hope you get an extra 50k out of this.

Thanks Cherry, you were absolutely right, I'm keeping everything crossed!

Sounds a nightmare. Not surprised you want to get shot of this place asap and concentrate on a new chapter in your life.

Hope today's viewings go well.

Thanks Pumpkin, onwards and upwards hey?

I'm not sure relisting will help much either, buyers are pretty savvy and there are tons of websites that track houses.

Buyers that do their research will be able to see that you have relisted and increased and will think you are a greedy chancer, even though you are not.

We did the searches on every house we liked and it was a piece of piss to see which houses had been relisted, how long they had been on the market before being relisted, how much they had been increased/decreased etc.

I hope you get the sale you're after but remember that nothing is hidden or disguised to a determined house hunter.

I'm glad its worked out for you OP. I hope your chemo goes well too

Agree Sanquhar but think it is easily explained away as crossed wires with agent given they are not local. The change is so significant (200-270) that I wouldn't necessarily question that explanation. It might give me the impression that 200 is the lowest the seller is willing to accept but given OP would have been happy with that anyway, I don't see what the problem is with that. Better than getting offers of 120-150!!

Good luck OP.

I know it's not exactly relevant to the thread now but the stamp duty thresholds shouldn't be anything like as much of a problem as they used to be. The lower rate is 2% compared to 1% previously, but that is only on the amount between £125k and £250k. So the tax at £250k is exactly the same as before. Between £250k and £675k you pay 5%, but again, only on the bit above £250k. So if someone buys a house for £275k they pay £1250 more stamp duty than at £250k whereas previously they would have paid £5750 more.