trying to sell house - why isn't anyone buying ?

[binker]

Am becoming increasingly despondent about ever moving ! Our house has been on the market for about 8-9 weeks,which I know isn't really very long, but I was assured by the agents that it would go fairly quickly as it is,though I say it myself,a very desirable property with bags of features and charm, very well presented (I 've watched the programmes !) and on one of the nicest roads in our area,which I am also assured is up and coming...so where are the viewers and when they come why are they being so hesitant in making offers ? Am I too impatient ? We've seen several houses that we'd love to put an offer on, but we can't proceed as we haven't a buyer - grrr ! We're in West London by the way - any mumsnetters got any ideas ?

That is so difficult zebra - I think it depends if you think you will be out of pocket in the long run - if you think you will be then, yes, I would probably keep the deposit - also depends how much you value neighbourly relations and race relations - only you know the answer to that.

We're just thinking of putting our house on the market. 3 years ago we bought it for £280K; estate agent has now valued it at £335K, we're in London Borough of Bromley. We don't think that's much of an increase, especially as we've made some improvements while we've been here. Obviously the south-east has hit a bad patch recently but is it that bad?

jude- doesn't sound much (having lived in 2 houses in Bromley over the last 5 years- one of which has since been sold on again)

Get a few valuations done. When we sold our second house there was quite a wide variation. Our Move gave us the lowest price, Andrew Reeves the highest (i'd recommend Andrew Reeves if Russel is still there - he's pretty good- also sold our first house when he was at Kingleighs- and that was a hard house to sell!) We took an offer on our second house and we stil got more than the suggested asking price from Our Move.

I know friends who have bought and sold in Beckenham over the last 2 years and they made a big increase.

nightmare zebra. Really tricky. How much out of pocket are you? Could you use his deposit to pay solicitors fees etc that you owe now then give him back the remainder? I can't see that he could complain about that at all.

We moved five doors down the street and fell out badly with our purchaser! She pulled out a day before exchange on stupid reasons (we'd already agreed for her to have builders in for estimates, the big survey, damp people to come in- basically she'd had ages to pull out- then she said the concrete outside the back door needed relacing - durr your could see the state of the concrete all the time- she agreed to buy again once she'd had an extra grand off) Anyway it wasn't too bad we didn't really cross paths very often. She did eventually move- after pulling out of offer she'd accepted- dozy cow!

zebra, how about getting your solicitor to send him something? You need to be careful IMO about promising him the money back and, after all, business is business. But if you wished to be generous, you could get your solictor to send something which said that you didn't want to profit from his 'misfortune' and provided you could sell the house within a certain time limit, for a price equal to or in excess of what had been agreed, you would return his 5k minus expenses incurred. Get your solicitor to itemise cost to date too and include the cost of sending the letter.

This sounds more than fair IMO and, to be honest, if I'd been involved in bedning the rules then had my mortgage pulled, I'd dance a jig to get such a kind offer through.

zebra - sorry to hear your news. Can your prospective buyer get another mortgage / financing to proceed, or is he now out of the picture? To be honest, I'm surprised you were able to exchange with a non-valid mortgage offer on his side - that is what the solicitor checks out - unless (as it sounds) new info came to light which meant the offer was taken back. At least you didn't exchange on a purchase. I would be tempted to retain as much as the deposit as necessary to recover your costs.

We exchanged on selling and buying last week and are moving on Thursday - if that happened to us we would be in deep trouble. Ok, now I'm worried.

Don't be too worried, Azure. This is so unusual. I believe what happened is that someone at the Halifax was helping people get mortgages they weren't qualified for. He got found out, and every transaction he was involved in was checked over again. Presumably our buyer couldn't provide the essential proof necessary. We are fairly certain of at least 2 fibs he would have told the Halifax, and they are probably additional to whatever he got found out on.

We are seeing soliciter on Friday, will cost £160 or so, but first thing we have to understand is whether we can "safely" (from legal point of view) stay in the house after the current completion date. And whether we automatically get the deposit, or we have to sue for it, etc.

zebra I would try and be hard nosed about it. You cant let your (well intentioned sentiment) get in the way.

My brother bought a flat form a kindly old lady once , but , so that he wasnt soft when negotiating with her, he used to call her"Bitch woman X" to HIMSELF so that he wasnt all soppy.

You see that's men for you.

Well, I'm not being a complete hard-nose. I just would prefer to deal with this situation as people, and minimise the filling of soliciters' pockets.

Buyer doesn't speak English well, but spoke to his Sister-In-Law who lives 7 doors away. Told her that we do not intend to take the whole £10,700 we could claim, but we do want to cover any costs we incur, so we will claim the £5k deposit and we will hold onto that until the house sells again and we know exactly what all those costs are. Plus I want something in writing from Buyer's soliciters to state that he won't be buying after all, so that we don't have to move out unnecessarily next week when completion was supposed to take place. This is in buyer's interest, anyway, as we can't then claim unnecessary moving costs.

In turn, Buyer wants us to put a "For Sale" sign back in windows. I compromised and put a "This House May Be For Sale" sign in window. Given that an identical house next door is for sale (so steady supply of interested buyers), and we have had 2 unsolicited buyers show up even before I put the sign in the window, I think we can get £8-£9k more for the house if we re-sell. Truth is, I'm quite keen that current Buyer doesn't complete, now!

I'll let you guys know if the "Nice" strategy paid off!

Well we haven't sold our house and we've now taken it off the market, intending to try again in the Spring - we couldn't face spending the winter in this state ! Feel a bit sad too as the sign came down (mind you, I felt a bit sad when it went up!) - we'd hoped to have been in Dorset by now. I guess it just wasn't time for us to go!

we're still trying to sell... been on market 5 months.... dont know why its not shifting either... its horrible isnt it, when you wanna be gone and cant get there. Like you say, spring is a good time, hope it works for you then.

I know the feeling, Binker! We were supposed to move 120 miles 9 days ago, and instead we're back in the same grotty town, after a short visit to the city last week where we are trying to move to, boohoo.

Update: we settled with our buyer (one who lost the mortgage between exchange & completion) for £950 because we reckoned we could resell for more than the old sale price, anyway. We offered a good settlement, fearing that he would "assign" the contract to someone else -- ie., someone else could have taken over as the buyer. Virtually identical house next door just sold for much more than we were going to accept, so we feel/hope it's in our interest to just find another buyer.

Slight bummer is we have not put DS into playgroups because we missed the cut off dates to apply for funding this term -- because we were supposed to move away! I fear that DS will miss out on preschool education. Plus I am desperate to get DS (always had terrific natural agility) into gymnastics, but the only local gym class suitable for him is on the only day that childminder can mind DS; this was yet another reason for us to move away.

Well we are stuck in rental hell because the prices for the house size we need is way over what we can afford so be thankful you even have your own property!

Renting has eaten away our deposit to nothing and with ds twins under two there is no way we will ever save it again.

Not to insult but some home owners are greedy for money. One house we viewed before giving up she kept mentioning the price she paid for the carpets and how, if we didn't pay her what she was asking, they would be going with her as they weren't included in the house price.

Fair enough you want to get a fantastic deal but a house should be a home, not an investment.

Still, at least we can move if we want. Harhar - fat chance!

One of our viewers fussed about our grotty hall carpet; I wish I had had my wits about me and said something like, "Yes, fair enough, it needs replacing. Shall we take £130" [realistic replacement cost, and barely anything considering the cost of the entire house!] "off the sale price if you do decide to buy?"

Zebra, replace the hall carpet yourself. It's one of the first things a viewer sees so it pays to make a good impression. £130 isn't that much if it shifts your house quicker.

Even though our house if now off the market I'm still fretting about things in house being kept looking nice - paintwork etc.(we intend to try selling again in the new year) Our new (well,put down in the Summer of '02)lino in the kitchen is now getting mystery patches on it, - it's a light coloured lino - which won't shift with scrubbing as they seem to come from underneath, if that makes any sense - does anyone know about flooring ? it was layed by a reputable company and is decent quality stuff. Maybe the adhesive is staining it from underneath ? People probably wouldn't notice it unless they really looked but it bothers me !
Good luck to all of you still on the market, by the way !

We're still on the market (sigh....). Just dropped from £118k to £115.5k. Meanwhile, 2 very similar houses a stone's throw away (literally) have just come on the market for £120k & £133k.

Just rang around for quotes on conveyancing, where we might buy. Just for the soliciter's work, not including searches, Land Registry or bank transfer fees, I got quotes from £1100 (+VAT), down to £325 (including VAT). Boy, it does seem to pay to shop around.

Still recovering from our trip into this last year. Our old house was in a predominantly students area and althought it was nice inside (pusing up asking price) took ages (about 8 wks) to sell because the landlords who were buying most of the property in the area preferred to but grotholes and spend next to nothing on them before renting them out.

Zebra, have you thought about taking it off the market and tarting it up a bit? Unless you too are in a student zone.

Well... we are getting the hall carpet cleaned on Wednesday!

We actually turned down an offer of £115k (took a chance & lost...). It's just this waiting game... and seeing 2 nearby houses come on the market, which are not as nice, or only a little bit nicer than ours, for higher asking prices, is a bit galling!

TBH I'm amazed your agent didn't tell you to acceot 115K in rather forceful terms. We found that some agents gave us a much higher recommended asking price (20k higher in 2 cases) but warned that wouldn't get it. maybe that's what's happened with your neighbours. Could you sneak a peek inside their houses?

Anyway, all the best, we're both very grateful we've moved to an area with relatively low house prices and managed to buy the suburbam semi without increasing our minimal mortgage. That said, we have to still have to shell out for school fees, 'cos local schools are rubbish and we refuse to pay 60k more for the same hose 2 miles down the road in a desirable catchment area. DH keeps looking at other (better) unis with vacancies only to have me say "yes darling, but we can't afford to live there"

do you live by me zebra? your prices sound just like they are for our houses here. We put our house up for sale 10 days ago and had an offer made after 3 days -weird because the estate agent said the market was sold and we had the whole world and their mothers nosing round! The offer we accepted was 2,950 less than asking price but they seemed so keen and no chain too.

I think the location of ours sells it, but I still did my house doctor bit. Packing stuff away, having a massive clean (something I hate!), buying new cushions for sofa, flowers everywhere, and bought loads of cheap crap from asda to make it look and smell nice! I also painted some of our most brightly decorated rooms in more muted colours.

Hope things look up for you zebra. Have you thought about taking it off the market for over christmas period and then putting it back up afterwards as a 'new instruction'? This usually gets alot more interested people through the door because they think its going to be snapped up quick.

Sorry if I am stating the obvious!

the agent said the market was slow not sold!

We got £115k offer when our house hadn't even appeared in the paper, yet, had only been on the market 3 days. I don't really regret taking the risk of turning it down; why didn't they even try to up their offer, slightly? Just don't like this waiting game. Plus the neighbours (other half of our semi-block) just sold their house in September for £119.5k... theirs is only a touch nicer than ours and had a right bidding battle going for it, so we were hoping for £116-£117k. The agent wanted us to list for £110k... We did list for £110k when we sold it privately -- but we had several neighbours tell us bluntly that they thought we were offering a steal. The local houses newly on offer for £120k/£133k are 3 beds like ours, a semi with garage and off-road parking (and pokey lounge and garden), and the other is an end terrace, pokey garden, on a busy junction!

Our contract with the Estate Agent is for another 8 weeks, and we can't issue notice to terminate it until the 8 weeks are up -- I think!? Plus we badly want to move by end Feb. to get DS onto lists for primary school at the other end by mid-March, so going off market until January would feel like a big risk.

it's a bugger isnt it being tied into these estate agents terms Know what you mean about the schooling issue I have been having the same worries as you about our dd. Especially moving county and region, just makes things that bit more complicated!

Did the neighbors have the same estate agent? Maybe they were busy selling the neighbors house instead of yours. I had that problem with our estate agents and went to multiple listings. Although it was actually the original estate agents who sold the place, it put a fire under their b**ts.