Is anyone else having a misreable time trying to sell their house?

[Roseflower]

Our house has been on the market since June and trying to sell it - it's so depressing. Our one offer fell through and since then it just been no more offers.

Buyers (this month we have only had FTB) seem to be getting more and more unrealistic in what they expect for their money around here.

I hate everything about selling a house- the horrible estate agents, the constant calls from rival estate agents touting, the time waster people, rushing around like mad tidying up after dd for hours, giving up our plans to get ready for viewings, people saying nasty things about our family home... but worse in the uncertainity of it all.

Be good to know other people feel as down as me for some support. Or even better people who did feel like me but now things have turned out well!

DH and I were looking at house prices round here yesterday (not that we can afford to buy anything right now). Some of the estate agents (one in particular) are incredibly unrealistic in what they're valuing houses at, and many of the sellers obviously overpaid in the last 10 years and are unwilling to accept things have changed.

On our estate there are houses on for £100k over anything they could possibly get (which is c. 1/3 of what they're asking for). There are other properties that have been on for ages and have been reduced but are still over-priced. Unsurprisingly nothing much is selling.

Most areas (extremes on both sides excluded) around the country will see average falls of at least 35-40% in line with IMF forecasts.

The falls will only stop once we are fully through with the retirement of the baby boomers' generation.

If you need to get out of the bricks and mortar and there is someone foolish enough to make you an offer - take the money and run as fast as you can with it.

What loons this topic elicits. Angry loons at that.

Nobody is making us buy/sell houses. I think threetimes pink is a landlord who are raking it in with all the fear created.

If you live in areas with huge public sector workforce - Swansea, Leeds, Preston, Newcastle then you will see huge drop in prices.

Those of us in family houses near good schools in london or the south east have seen prices continue to rise due to the shortage of property and there are no indications that it will fall.

Fiddlededee, I think to a certain extent you are right, however, I also think that there is more to it than that.

This whole mess has been caused by reckless lending by banks. So, a couple in London 5 years ago on £50k each could have afforded a family home in one of the nicer areas of town for £500k plus whatever deposit they had (maybe £25k, maybe less).

Because of the changes to the banking regulations as a result of all the bad debt, that same couple today can only borrow £300k and would need a £60k deposit. To achieve the same price, you will have to find a couple with £100k in the bank and earning £83k each.

Now there are 2 outcomes to this scenario. Either, homeowners pull up the ladder and anyone who was on it already is just fine, and everybody else can just rent for the rest of their lives or move to Newcastle .

Or, that house drops down to under £400k so the same couple doing the same job can afford it. I suspect it will be somewhere in the middle.

It is not supply and demand for houses that is the issue, it's supply and demand for finance. No matter how much you demand a house, or how many are for sale, it doesn't mean shit if you don't have any money.

And there ain't that many bankers around.

Now you may call me a loon, or an angry loon at that - but that's how it is.

Yes, at the height of the property boom, it was not people that were trying to outbid each other, it was the banks themselves by offering people more and more ludicrous income multiples.

Even central London must have its limits on affordability.

You are forgetting foreign buyers in London though that seriously impacts demand in many areas.

Alot of us mid 30s to mid 40s have been in the London property market a long time 10-20 years, and have substantial equity to buy family homes - its not just bankers. Most people are not starting from zero. If you are you just can't afford it without very high incomes and deposits. I do not think this will change.

Central London has held its prices pretty well - the price of my property has gone up in the last three years, not down (I have just sold it).

So there is a huge amount of regional variation. And it's not insane to buy a house now unless you're in it to make money. I never have been, always been about somewhere to live. If you think about property like that (and don't have to move every few years) then it's still better than renting

"A lot of us mid 30s to mid 40s have been in the London property market a long time 10-20 years, and have substantial equity to buy family homes - its not just bankers. Most people are not starting from zero. If you are you just can't afford it without very high incomes and deposits."

True. I read an article which suggested that a "property divide" is likely to grow up - those who bought before, say, 2006 versus those who did not. Those who bought before have built up equity and so can move on and up the property ladder. Those who did not have not (indeed may even be in negative equity).

The thing is though, even if there are people who have equity and can buy a family home, they need to sell their previous property to someone (often a first time buyer) in order to access that equity. Who is going to be that buyer? Most 20 somethings cannot afford to buy.

ouch, that is the problem really isn't it.

Will BTL landlords swoop them up? Unlikely, and it was only the devalued pound that made London so attracted to foreign buyers.

It's true that many people in their 30s have been on the property ladder 10 to 20 years - but 10 to 20 years ago, housing was relatively affordable. Now the average age of a FTB is 37!

And also, how are these 20 somethings going to come along and buy your 2 bedroom flat when they already have £50k worth of student debt.

When you sell up and downsize, what you are going to use your equity for? Your children's education, their deposit on a house or your pension?

"always been about somewhere to live"

Yeah, yeah, would you be saying that if you were now in negative equity?

You are just one of the flooky ones who got in at the right time.

I fully accept that I was lucky katspaw, sorry if I didn't make that clear. But people who bought a few years before me also went through a period of negative equity which turned around over the course of the 90s and I see no reason why this won't happen this time around too. If the house I'm buying now is worth less than I paid for it in a few years time then I will just have to suck it up - it's like gambling to be honest.

A lot of the property boom was funded by people treating property as a way of making a really quick buck IMO.

Just had an interesting chat with an estate agent.

We have been looking to buy for 18 months. Nothing really fits the bill, we are largely cash buyers with small mortgage approved. Chain free.

We viewed a house a few weeks ago at £365k. We thought about offering £305 but decided that was too cheeky. We made an offer of £325k which was rejected. We wouldn't increase our offer and walked away.

However, I have just been speaking to a different agent who I have quite a good relationship with. She valued the same house but was not instructed.

She valued it at £300k.

I know she's telling the truth as she did actually ring me about it several weeks ago for a potential viewing ('we might have a house in your village coming on at £300k') but couldn't proceed as they went with the other agent.

So many agents are doing this, simply because they are desperate for the business, only for no offers to be forthcoming and sellers to talk about the unreasonable demands of buyers.

Now I'm a little nervous that they might come back and accept our offer after all!

Grrr.

Interesting fruitstick, but not surprising.

When we sold our flat last autumn, the top valuation was 35% higher than the bottom valuation. there is a huge range.

(But that doesn't necessarily mean the low valuation was right and the high one was wrong. More likely to be somewhere in the middle.)

We're in the same position as you - largely cash, chain free, been looking since last summer. There just isn't much around to buy, and what there is seems vastly overpriced given the state of the economy etc. (this is in London). It's basically a mini bubble due to shortage. At some point the lack of FTBs will really kick in and the whole thing will slump.

your offer doesn't have to stand though Fruitstick - you haven't committed yourself to offering that much come hell or high water just because you said it once.

I had a very interesting talk to the estate agent for the vendors of a house we are interested in yesterday. They are downsizers, the house has been on the market since July and there have been no offers. There has been another couple in addition to us interested, but we both need to sell our own houses. It looks as if the other couple are giving up and taking their house off the market. We have just dropped ours again, in the hope that if we can get a buyer, the house we want might drop. The estate agent thinks it MIGHT work but he told me that the vendor has been talking about putting the price of his house UP!!! Also, he has been trying to sell another house, which he thinks was initially overvalued and told the vendor that. She received an offer slightly over what he thought it was worth, so he advised her to take it. She refused and asked for the asking price to be INCREASED!!!

So, if anyone can make any sense of all this, you are more tuned in than I am. I'm simply baffled. Unfortunately, I feel that a few more weeks of this will push us into taking our house off the market too.

IMO it is the downsizers and very elderly people who bought their houses 40 years ago who seem to be the problem here more than people who bought in 2007 and might now be facing negative equity. The former groups need a reality check.

3 bed semis are dropping their marketing prices by £20-30,000. 3/4 bed detached houses have not decreased their marketing price nor are they selling. We have a long, main road of 1950s detached houses and there are about 7 or 8 for sale at the moment. A house has not sold on that street since July 2009. The latest one came on this week at an even higher price and the photos show 1950s decor which may mean the plumming and electrics all need doing as well as the whole place refurbishing. Estate agents need to start treating these people as time-wasters.

Well, Pernickety, I think you are right, but ours is a 4-5 bed detached house and we have dropped it by £70k since we put it on the market at the end of August. It is not out of line with other houses on the market (and there are very, very few detached family houses near us on the market). We are happy to drop further but if we can't buy, we can't sell - simples. And if people like us take their houses off the market, where are those upsizers in small detached / semis going to go? This is why I think talk of a price crash in all areas may not be correct. Stagnation, yes, possibly a slight drop, but not a crash.

But if people are selling their semis and small bed detacheds for less, they won't be able to afford the higher prices anyway. The bottom end can't be the only ones to give, and at some point, some of the larger houses are going to need to sell and they will reset the average selling price for that street - I just fear it is going to take a few years for them to give in.

And it does depend where you are. I'm in East Anglia and in a large town that doesn't have as great amount of job mobility as when I lived in the SE. Most of the large houses do seem to be owned by pensioners or families who plan to live there for a long time.

it's interesting where we are at the moment - the big houses that have been on the market at too high a price for several years are still there, but increasingly houses are coming on the market priced to sell and getting snapped up.
The difference in asking price for similar houses between the no-rush-trying-it-on vendors and the pricing-to-sell ones is extraordinary - quite similar-looking houses at 450k and 650 or 700.

My parents have finally decided to think about moving out of their house. House not so big bit monstrously big garden! They have been there since 1975 and the price has increased by 200% in that time. But they have been advised not to sell at the moment as they won't get enough for it.

I am guessing that 'enough' means enough to buy a smaller but still nice house and still have enough left over 'in case'. They are terrified of going into a home and not having the wherewithall to pay for a good one. When you are on a pension I suppose that there is no opportunity to increase your income and you get cagey about finances. Their home is their only major financial asset and once it's gone they will feel vulnerable.

Sorry! 2000% not 200

2000% Really?????? Wow!

I understand why they are concerned about care costs. I'm betting that the younger ones on here have no idea how much it costs to go to a decent care home (i.e. one that doesn't smell of cabbage and urine!). I know only because we have two elderly relatives who have gone into care recently - I was staggered at the cost.

But, who has advised them not to sell now? I'm not sure that is good advice for someone who may not have the time to wait for prices to start rising again. They may be pushed into selling at an even lower cost if they have to sell in the next few years.

Their financial advisor. They see her every year or so and she reckons it's not a good idea.

Personally I want them to do it asap as they will be moving near me. They are 79 and I would like them to be closer so looking out for them doesn't involve a 40 mile round trip every day!

It is so area dependent at the moment. The right house in the right location will hold its value. Prices on our road are up 10-15% on last year. Lots of people locally in rental hoping for prices to fall but they keep increasing - good local transport and the outstanding state primary schools don't change. Local buyers can't afford to trade up, most houses are being bought by those moving from even more expensive areas.

There are lots of unrealistic sellers. There are so few properties on the market that estate agents are giving wild valuations to get the property on their books hoping that they can then make the seller see sense after a while or else that that one special idiot buyer (usually they hope from London) will come along and buy it.

Rental prices are very high so lots of us that can make chains work are going for that option. Renting is a very expensive option in the south east. All these people telling us to rent and wait to see house prices fall don't realise that the cost of renting could be double that of our mortgages (if you have alot of equity).