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!

It is such a nightmare and I feel all your pain.
We bought our forever house at the peak then had a very scary 9 months of possibly fifty viewers as the market went down and down.
We got a sudden and unexpected offer near the asking price .I swear I have never really recovered from it all

If we were to sell this house now we would get about 2/3 what we paid , if we could sell at all

spare a thought for friend s who bought a fabulous luxury waterfront flat off plan for £425 k which fell in value before it was even built and now can not sell for £180k

I'm the other side of it at the moment. I sold my house and moved in with DP almost a year ago but couldn't find work where he lives. Now I have a job back home and am trying to buy a house in my old area.

My problem is the laughable pricing. One house I went to look at is a 3-bed semi but you have to walk through one bedroom to get to the second so not really practical and they want £420,000. Another called itself a three bed house but bedroom 3 was 6'9" wide and had a toilet in it! And the bathroom was downstairs. Over £400,000 as well. Some people need to get real!

So despite having a big deposit and a mortgage offer, I'm having to rent for six months until something sensible comes up. And I'm looking in east Wiltshire villages Wiltsmum so if yours is a 3 bed, maybe we can help each other out.

Hi Roseflower,

Just thought I'd give you a view from the other side of the fence.

DH and I are would be FTB and your house sounds ideal for us. We've actually seen a similar sound place we love (3 bed 50s semi, 23mins from london, great schools)on the market for 195k reduced from 210k.

However, we only have a 10% deposit (this statement makes me laugh so much, 10% was considered a v respectable deposit all the time we were scrimping and saving for it). If we can find a bank to lend to us at all, the interest will be something like 6% then track at least 4% above the base rate - so we'd be clobbered as soon as the interest rate picked up.

Add to that the event of zoopla - we know that 2 identical houses in the street sold for 165k and 175k since the slump began. This makes me worry that the property is hugely over valued. (have you put your post code in here?)

Oh yes - and we are both public sector workers. So although we began our careers and started a family relying on our average paid but secure jobs - DC was warned us we'll be facing pay freezes and watching our backs for the next 5 years.

So - it's hardly surprising that the number of FTBs is so low. We are desperate to move into a family home, but terrified of taking a risk and losing everything.

Good luck with selling your house, it sounds lovely - I only wish we were in a position to make you an offer.

thanks nottired will consider - though the rejections haven't mentioned kitchen i agree its a rubbish layout

Residential property is overvalued at the moment so it is likely that you will have to sell for a lower price than you'd like. For our area, the actual prices that vendors are receiving are nowhere near the asking prices on rightmove. The upside is that the property you want to buy in most cases will be cheaper as well, and therefore you will pay less stamp duty.

we're looking to buy a 4 bed detached in the surburbs and most properties we've seen are completely overvalued some as much as £100,000 when checked with similar sold properties on netprice, which on an asking price of £750,000 is approx 15%. Reasonably priced houses in good locations sell within days whilst the overpriced ones hang around for months. If your house has the following faults i) isn't in a great location ii) needs more than cosmetic work iii) has small rooms/gardens/no parking vendors need to take these into consideration when pricing. The ones we've seen with the above problems price theirs at top dollar its laughable obviously they don't listen to the feedback or check netprices. The other things which get on my nerves are houses with fixed price or price on application signs do these people think they're doing us a favour by selling us their house for loads of our money, get real!

I'm finding this thread is very reassuring for us sellers. It seems to be a kind of que sera sera. If you have priced it fairly and are in a good location with useful attributes like good light, quiet and free parking, it's a case of wait it out. Otherwise it's a case of making sure you optimise your flat and choose a fair price, then wait it out. Sooner or later, it will all happen! That's how I'm feeling, now that my belief that it would be snapped up straight away has faded a little. Maybe there is such a thing as PFS (precious first seller)?

120

120 - maybe you're right. sigh, though i'm 3rd time seller and dh must be up to double figures now!

NotAnotherNewNappy - am v interested in the houses you mention that are selling for under £200k with good schools near London (another would be ftb here). Can I ask which area it is?

can I just add that the houses with a big compromise that I've viewed, where vendors has after months/years of non sale reduced their price substantially to take into account of the "defect" have usually sold the property within weeks. So the adage that any property will sell at the right price is well substantiated

Suntangirl, I'm taking heart from gingerwig. There will be someone out there who loves it; after all - you did!

I was wondering whether I could cope with the honesty, but will post alink to my flat too - our agents have only had 4 weeks so far, but need to decide whether to keep them on their own or go multi-agency so will have a chance to change things if necessary. It's here.

ooh, I love 1930s mansion blocks. Is there any way you can get the photos to make it look bigger, though?

If I was looking to buy a flat, I'd be very keen on one that had just had major repairs done.

I'm sure your flat will sell soon 123 - it's very nice and in a great location. £290k does seem quite high when you consider the kind of deposit a ftb would need in order to get a reasonable mortgage deal on it at the moment. But then again it's ideal for City types, and I hear on the radio this morning that their bonuses are back to pre-2007 levels).

Those are some crazy camera angles though - my immediate reaction was that the estate agents are going to great lengths to hide the fact that the rooms are tiny, but I'm rubbish with dimensions so don't know whether that's true.

sorry - 120

Thanks vesela, it's weird as two of the rooms are quite big (for London) and all the ceilings are really high, but the agents seem to have concentrated on the floors (maybe it's a space trick?). They didn't do funky camera work, just snapped it as it is.

Maybe if I use a different agent they'll use a wide angle lens. Am trying to avoid foxtons if I can! The light comes across properly, which I am happy about as it is a very light flat. I'm just worried if we do new photos now, with the scaffolding outside, people will get the wrong idea on the web and not come and look. The floorplan is wrong too as we have a turetty bit where the kitchen and bathroom are which makes the layout more interesting and a little bigger. Gah.

hey 120 = i think its lovely but it is a tiny bit cluttered. if you have more photos take all the stuff off the work tops in the kitchen and the towels/toileteries from the bathroom unless they match.

the bathroom photo looks like it was taken from the ceiling? floor is nice though :-)

kids bedroom and sitting room look beautiful and lovely and light

Can I join in? We're in a slightly odd situation - DP's been working away from home for the last year, so we decided to relocate back down south from Scotland. We put the flat on the market a month ago, and have only had two viewers, one of whom was a nosy old lady from down the road who was basically wanting a poke around.

Anyhoo, a week ago, DP was offered a job up here, so now we're going to stay for the time being, but are still likely to move at some point (he's a contractor, so his jobs are always short-term). We were going to take the flat off the market over the winter, but the EA now want £200 to take it off the market (huh?), so we're now thinking about leaving it on and just not pushing at all and getting the various wee things done that the survey has thrown up in the meantime to maximise its potential.

Dare I post a link?

120, I love mansion blocks too, but I agree with the others about the camera angles. Most EAs can do amazing things with a wide angle lens to make the rooms look spacious. It's lovely and light though, and a great location (I used to live near there). And off-street parking in London is a ginormous tick, I would imagine. Is it my imagination, or is your child's bedroom bigger than yours? I wonder whether swapping them (even if only for the pics) would make the double bedroom seem bigger, or would that not work?

thanks Sungirl; I coudn't agree more. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn't it! Maybe I'll retake just those pics and send them through to him. Yes, I think he did take it from the ceiling. All the viewers have commented on the floor as it really is laid straight. Great optical illusion when you have a hangover, I've found .

I couldn't see your flat as the link wasn't working - is it because you have now changed agents?

Hi, 120,

Just had a look and I think your kitchen looks okay tbh. What I don't get is where you store things. Do you have space for clothes etc?

Also what I think is the main bedroom - it looks like the person by the window would have to climb over the other person to get out? Can you do something about that?

When we sold our house we chose the estate agent who used a professional photographer. He was fantastic. Took his time, got me to move things out of shot, and made the place look fantastic. I would suggest to Sungirl and 120 that you maybe look into this - your photos just aren't very good (specifically talking photos, not properties). A good photographer would make a huge difference.

lol spirit, I do! We could turn it around, but I quite like lying in bed reading and looking out of the window.

We have loads of hidden storage in the flat behind and above doors as the ceilings are so high. The photo doesn't show the wardrobe and shelves in that room as they are by the door as you go in, in an alcove and against the fourth wall. The kiddy clothes are all in the multicoloured trofast trays in their room. The toys are cunningly hidden in the toy box which looks like a second sofa in our sitting room (the other sofa broke and there is no point in replacing it until we know what we'll need in our new house).

It is so interesting what other people think about when they see the photos - giving me a completely new eye on the flat - thanks!

120, I can imagine it's lovely lying in bed by the window, but it makes your room look so small! I'd turn it around, esp. if you can get some kind of shelf each side.

Someone said earlier that you have to stop looking at it as your home and imagine what someone else is likely to want, and most people prefer a more conventional arrangement. And if they look and think they can't get a double bed across the width of the master room then they may not buy your flat on those grounds alone. To be honest, I'm not sure I'd view your flat because of the photo of your master bedroom! (sorry )