Change house price

[RobEmily]

We put our house on the market on Wednesday last week at £850k, an amount suggested by three estate agents. We had 5 viewings at the weekend, no offers, someone said they felt it was worth £780-£785k.

We have found a house we love, we need £840k to make it work comfortably but could possibly go as low as £810k if the people selling the other house took an offer / we took out a longer mortgage term (30 as opposed to 25 years). Really we want £825k.

We are worried we’ll lose the house we love. The estate agent is pressuring us to market at £800k-£850k I said that will just make people offer below £800k or at £800k, which we can’t accept. He seems to think they would be able to push an offer up from there but it will get us more actual buyers through the door. He also said it’s better to drop now than in a few weeks when listing has gone stale as people would be more likely to low ball then.

Wondering what people think - should we lower now, hold firm or lower just a little?

Frankly, this seems to now be about your choices of where you wish to spend your money - and that is a choice that only you can make.

Your desire to educate your children privately, and take expensive holidays (on the money that you earn) is a lifestyle choice - I'm happy that you have such choices to make......

...... but those choices do not influence the housing market, as other people are also making their own choices based on their own circumstances.

If you really want the new house, but cannot get enough for your current house to do so, given what people feel it is worth to them, then you have to do something about it.

I know what it is like to potentially miss out on a 'dream house', and when I was in that position I looked into getting a bridging loan to do it - no problem given that I had no mortgage at that time - but in the end it was better for us to take an offer on our house to avoid losing the new one.... choices are great when you have them.

Personally, I'd take the hit on the house price to get the new home, and then work out how to minimise the shortfall in values. In my case, I simply went back to work for a couple of contracts as that was an option I had (and retirement isn't all it's cracked up to be if you are young and healthy enough to get back into work).The bottom line is that only you can decide on the numbers - find an agent that you can feel is honest, and you can work with, and the (potential) buyers will tell you where the market sits.

Typical mumsnet. Wish I hadn’t opened my mouth about our wider considerations… let’s just go with this is what we can afford and focus on my question rather than my choices that nobody really knows the full details of, and on which I did not ask for comment.

What I asked is would you drop your asking price in under a week to hopefully get the house you want?

If you really want the onward house take the biggest offer so far and a longer mortgage term . You wilhave big equity and can afford it.
If you not bothered about the onward purchase then wait. What would you regret...not buying the nexr house? The "loss" is just monopoly money

We haven't had a proper offer yet, someone said the max they might offer is £785k, which wouldn't work for us. I guess my concern is we lower the asking price, and still lose the dream house and then have marketed our house at a low rate that even if we withdraw it from the market if we want to re sell in a few years that lower rate will be out there on zoopla as a previous amount we marketed at and didn't sell for.

We lowered our house by 50k, as we needed a quick sale as we were relocating , DS was starting achool and a house had come on we loved .

Within 2 days we had 3 offers 2 on asking price one a little bit over . Noone offered under as they knew it was under valued . We couldn't really afford to take the hit but it was 100% worth it and I'm glad we did it.

It’s worth what someone will pay not what you want. Agents are not valuers, they can only advise on where to position price wise.

Remember many agents are rewarded on winning the listing, rather than agreeing a sale.

Your agent is right to say drop now rather than wait, however, my concern would be why they aren’t advising you to get below the perceived price of £780k to maximise viewings and competing offers?

I think if you take it off the market in the future you can have the previous listing removed from zoopla and right move. I don’t know how it’s done but I was looking the other week for a property that has been taken off the market (just nosiness really), it was definitely on Rightmove and zoopla previously but now nowhere to be found

From google Yes, you can have your old listing removed from Zoopla. Historic listings, which are archived versions of previous property advertisements, can be removed upon request. To do this, you need to contact Zoopla's Customer Support Team through the chat feature on their website. The complete 'Buy' and/or 'Rent' historical information, including all photos and descriptions, can be removed as a whole.

Then please remove your house from the market and stop wasting your agents time.
Signed sincerely,
An estate agent, sick and tired of people who do this and waste hours and hours of our time, for no recompense

Seriously, please find a buyer and work out your onward budget before viewing anything.

because that is one comment from one person because that’s their budget…

Because estate agents have sub a great reputation and are honest at all times and only ever act in their client’s interest😂

Is there anything you can quickly do/is it dressed to sell? I honestly think stripping out clutter, personal bits, taking everything off the worktops and stuffing them away somewhere, putting neutral, ironed bed covers on every bed and removing any excess furniture that doesn't fit can make miles of difference. Also touching up any paint etc. It can just take 1 weekend to dramatically change the look of a house (you might already be on top of this but you never know). I'd personally leave it if it got 5 viewings straight away, they can make a low offer if they want (if viewings dry up, then lower). I'd be annoyed at the estate agents if they said 850 and within the week they now think 800 - they should be honest. Keep closely in touch with the other house as well, my parents estate agents were happily putting forward offers from people not actually proceedable, so I think saying "we will make an offer, our house is on the market, please keep in touch" will make them unlikely to accept someone else without at least contacting you.
If you miss out on this house, just hold steady and wait till you have an offer in the bag. Last sale we sold our house and rented for 6 mths - it put us in such a safer position because the money was in the bank, we were under no pressure on either side.

Yes, actually we do do our best to.act in our clients best interest. If you feel.that yours isn't doing so, then change your agent. But for gods sake stop wasting their time.

I have been honest with my agent. They are well aware that if I don’t sell my property for at least £810k that I won’t be moving. They are well aware we only put it on the market because we found something. They are well aware if we lose that we will only give it another few weeks of looking before withdrawing.

They originally valued the house at £875-£895k. The other agents valued it at £850k so I asked them to start at that. Before it went on the market they tried to talk me down even further and within three days asked me to drop to £800k-£850k. So who was honest at the start here?

The estate agent of the house we want to buy has told me more inconsistencies than I can count.

Every single estate agent I’ve ever met lives up to their reputation. Regardless, clearly I am going to do what is right for me and my family. It’s my life we are talking about at the end of the day, not just their commission.

We’ve spent the last 6 months tidying the house up and I always clear away toys etc for viewings so think we’ve got it covered.

Although the estate agent sent someone round who had never been here to do the viewings which really annoyed me. She wouldn’t have known about so many features that my husband had pointed out to our first viewing.

We had considered renting but I’m not sure we could afford to as it would cost far more than our mortgage payments, so we’d end up like £20k down in which case we might as we’ll have taken that much less for the house… and I guess we are not that desperate to move, it might be that we end up happily staying where we are.

The market is poor atm but anyone who thinks a true "buyers market" exists in the uk is not really understanding it.

Prices have dropped where i live, absolutely no doubt. It doesnt mean a buyer is going to come in and get a bargain. Lots of houses have come on the market where i live priced too high to sell. But people are simply choosing to not sell at all rather than agree a price thats lower than they paid a decade ago.

There are very few forced sellers the way there were in the 90s. Requirements for bigger deposits and more mortgage stress testing mean people don't often end up desperate to sell.

We had our house on the market for months, got offers at 7.5% below asking and 5%, but have opted not to sell. The properties up the chain are all hanging off a very large developer owned house at the top who won't reduce (everyone else would to make it work) so we are all just not moving.

You get buyers who insist you are being unreasonable not to sell to them at the price they want/expect.... but its my house. I own it outright, and i don't have to sell it to you cheap if I don't want to. I understand it's arguably "worth" less.... but it isn't going to make me sell it at a loss.

They originally valued the house at £875-£895k. The other agents valued it at £850k so I asked them to start at that. Before it went on the market they tried to talk me down

We had the exact same op. Estate agents are thick as fuck, they love to reduce a property but they dont realise that lots of properties being reduce creates the impression of a falling market which reduces buyer confidence and lowers demand. Fools. They need to get better at honestly valuing property at the outset.

Seriously, please find a buyer and work out your onward budget before working out anything.

We did this a couple of years back. Nothing we liked came on for months, we gave up. It was a complete waste of time. We are not going to the trouble of listing our house until something we want to buy comes on. Our budget isn't really linked to the house we are selling, we could comfortably borrow a lot more.

OP, For the £785k offer, can you go back and offer them £810k?
We have done so but they can’t afford it.

You ought to be cross with your estate agent about this. They should not be bringing someone to view your property who can't even nearly afford it, those are just chancer/bargain hunters. Our estate agent did this with the 7.5% offer person. She couldn't afford any closer and the estate agent tried to tell us her offer would be the best we would get. We got offered £25k more a week later. We stopped listening to them.

Thanks - exactly, I agree! I think it really depends on want vs needing to move. We’d like to move but we have a lovely home if it doesn’t work out and who would throw £40k away on stamp duty for the sake of it?

Some really good advice, thanks everyone. Wondering if people think it is better for you or the estate agent to show people around?

it is most definitely better for the estate agent to do the viewings.

I house-hunted for over a year before buying my house recently, and viewed a LOT of houses. I vastly preferred the agent-led viewings. It was awkward when the seller was there. One seller did a viewing without the agent and it wasn't good.

For a second viewing, it's good if the seller is there to answer questions, but not necessary for a first viewing.

round me things are struggling, it’s the first time I’ve ever seen the market round here struggle since probably the 2008 crash.
things normally go up and sell within a few weeks.
what’s happening now is stuff going up, sitting for a few weeks and then reducing. Quite often being “offers over”, which catches a wider group on rightmove. still lots just sitting there and more so with the 700k stuff. Unless it’s got real potential.