Selling houses question: "Open Days" and "Offers over £x..."

[PeachesMcLean]

One of the estate agents who valued our house last week suggests a open day. Should we bother? I've heard of them but thought it was for houses at a higher end of the market than ours. And whilst it would be nice to do only one lot of cleaning, there seems to be more pressure to really "stage" the house and go overboard.

And they want to do "offers over £x" (we're not in Scotland) We're on the stamp duty threshold so I think they're hoping it will encourage people to go over the limit.

Any thoughts? All three estate agents were confident we'd sell quickly given the lack of houses like this in this area for first time buyers. But the estate agent who suggests all this has a much higher selling fee than the others. What to do, what to do...???

Iv'e heard you can achieve a higher price by doing these. No knowledge whether this is actually true though. I would consider doing it though.

Thanks cece.

Anyone else done this?

Offers over is a nightmare for buyers. One of the reasons we missed out on getting a house while they were still affordable. There was always someone there offering more money!

I guess if you are the seller though then you would want as much as you could get for your property/home.

I was a sales negotiator for 10 years and it was rare we carried out an open day. I find it strange that they would suggest an open day when they haven't even measured the response your house would get. IMO if you had a lot of requests for viewings then a structured open day would be suggested. I found purchasers tend to prefer to be given individual attention as opposed to looking around a house whilst bumping into the potential opposition. With regard to the sale price, 'offers over' means nothing really. A price is a guide whatever it says. A purchaser can offer whatever they wish and an estate agent is legally bound to write to you and tell you what that offer is. Personally I would put a suggested guide price on the property and see what happens. If you have a lot of offers coming in then you could either go with the highest cash offer or request written final offers when all parties put in writing their final offer and you accept whichever (if any) you wish. With regard to the estate agent, I would go with the one you feel the most confident with, regardless of the cost, at the end of the day it all comes down to who they've got looking and who comes through the door.

I think it is quite good as you may get two buyers there who are both very interested and they may realise there is competition and therefore offer more. In fact I'd get my mates round to talk a load of BS and gush about the house so that your 'real' buyers get scared and put an offer in too.

Realising there is competition isn't always a good thing. IME it can put people off, to know that there are other people interested can change people's minds, not all want to start bidding on a house that has loads of interest, and therefore the potential for a bidding war which can put a lot of people off.

The estate agent was after that kind of competition. I'd also read recently about the negative impact open days had on buyers - ie being pressured to increase their bids - and even though I'm selling, the lentil weaver in me wants to do it justly. How a first time buyer affords these kinds of prices is beyond me.

The main thing is though, that if open days are still fairly uncommon, why on earth should I aim for one here. It's towards the top end of its bracket, but it's not THAT nice, for heaven's sake. If I went to an open day, I'd expect something fairly stunning.

I think you should go with what you think. I know that the estate agent is the one with the experience and they may come up trumps, however they may not and then you'll wish you'd done what your heart said all along. You have to have trust in your estate agent and if you don't trust them then don't go with them. If you do feel confident with them but want them to use a different tactic then say so. At the end of the day you're the one paying their fees, they are the ones working for you and therefore they take instructions from you. They can advise you otherwise, but at the end of the day you make the final decision. If your ideas don't work then you just admit that perhaps a different tactic is required.

"offers over" at least makes it clear what your bottom line is. Never been to an open day although have seen ads, agree it tends to be ££ properties including high spec and those in need of tlc .

Thanks babyblue, especially comments about going with instinct. Having met the mortgage adviser at the branch (PRAT) it rather put me off the company as a whole which is why I started having doubts about what I initially thought were "creative" selling techniques.

The mortgage man was priceless I have to say. We only called into make an appointment for later this week and he said he had 20 minutes, so "take a seat". Which sounds fine, BUT,he spent 5 minutes answering our questions about mortgages then 15 minutes commenting on schools in the area, where we should move to (20 miles away in his opinion) what the parking was like, drive times to the city centre, what he thought of primary schools... kept saying he had "inside info" and completely disregarded what we said we were looking for. If he doesn't listen to us on where we'd like to live, how could he sell us a mortgage which met our needs? Prat.

One of the houses over the way from me has just sold after an open day and 'offers over' price. It is certainly NOT at the higher end of the market - 1960s end of terrace. Probably is a doer-upper though, the 'overs over' price was maybe £40-60K less than I would imagine it would normally be on the market for.

Peaches, there's no room for lentil weavers in the housing market. Even £1000 discount is £1000 less you have to spend on a new home. Good luck.

I agree with secondhandrose with regard to getting as much as you possibly can which i'm sure the estate agents will do. Don't gett get me wrong i'm not against open days or offers over. Its just that 'offers over' are just words, it doesn't really mean you wouldn't take less than the price. If a house was on the market for longer than anticipated then perhaps you would start to consider the option of taking a lower offer but by placing "offers over" you may have alienated those purchasers who can offer around or on the asking price. I don't really believe open days are tactical, and if a property receives so much interest that there are 10's of people wanting to view then open days are an easy way of getting people around without having to make individual appointments which are time consuming, but the market should be tested prior to arranging open days. I've attended open days on properties where 2 or 3 parties turned up when there was the promise of more, thereby wasting an entire day waiting for them. I'm sure peaches will choose the right agent for her. They will know after the commencement of marketing which way she should continue to market the property and if there's the interest which i'm sure there will be, they'll be able to extract the right offers from the interested purchasers. Good luck peaches, you should let us know how you get on.

Start by looking at what else is available in your area for the same price as your home. That way you'll know what your competition is.