Quick house sale options?

[DrUptonsGardenGnome]

FIL has died and MIL is keen to move into a retirement complex close to us. To do this she needs to sell their house. It’s already been on the market for a couple of years, in which time it’s had one offer which then fell through.

The flats in this complex don’t come up all that often but there are a few for sale at the moment. So time is of the essence. In terms of options, this is what I have:

Continue with the open market but reduce the price (FIL was very stubborn about the price but I think MIL is more flexible. It’s just a question of how low she’d have to go.).

Sell to a house buying company (probably for 80-85% of the market value but it would be quick).

Purchase the retirement flat with a Retirement Interest Only mortgage and pay it off as soon as the house sells.

I need to speak to the EA and MIL about option 1 but does anyone have any experience of the other two options? Also if there are others I’ve missed I’d be keen to learn about alternatives.

Beware of those National buying companies. An ex neighbour sold to one at a vastly reduced price. On the day of exchange they dropped their offer by another 8K! She backed out and a lovely young couple of FTB got a bargain.
How about an auction sale?

Auction?

Yes @24Dogcuddler I’ve been reading some real horror stories online. It’d definitely be my last resort.

Have you looked into the local market and had thoughts on why it’s been on sale for so long? One offer in two years is really unusual. Could it be the price? Maybe it needs to be reduced to sell. If not then it should go to auction.

It’s a nice family house that’s only about 10 years old. The problem is that their town has been flooded with literally hundreds of new builds. So there is a huge over-supply in the market. That plus FIL’s refusal to reduce the price. Hopefully MIL will consider dropping it but there’s still the supply problem.

OP, a house is only worth what someone will pay for it. We had to drop the price of my DM’s house by over £100,000 just to get rid of it, and we had had it valued by three different estate agents.

That simple economic truth was something FIL would not accept! Hopefully a price drop will do the trick - the house has already been through several EAs due to its failure to sell at FIL’s preferred price point.

The only issue is price. Reduce it to sensible bargain level and it'll be snapped up.

Also do look into renting the retirement apartment rather than buying. They often become unsellable and the beneficiaries of the will have to keep paying the service charges which can be insanely high.