Is anyone else trying to sell a house and feels like poking themselves in the eye with a sharp stick?

[Pinkjenny]

House has been on the market since July. We have changed estate agents, which obviously made no difference as it's not a new instruction. Am sick of it all, sick of the pointless viewers, sick of the useless feedback, sick of always being pipped at the post, sick of the market, sick of my house.

I don't get it, because round here (SE) we have the opposite problem - not enough decent property on the market. Anything that's worth having and that's realistically priced is gone literally within a couple of days.

OP, are you absolutely sure your house is realistically priced based on the asking prices of similar houses locally?

Now I'm feeling really shit. Have just seen that house we really liked is sold subject to contract. We couldnt put in offer till we had sold.
There is nothing wrong with our house - we want more space in garden.
Need a bit of a kick really. we have a lovely house. Just quite upset that what we wanted is not available any more.
I know it is just a house. Just a house. should not be an emotional issue.
So why is it????

posh, we've lost 3 houses we really loved over the last 9 months due to buyers messing us about... we have now found another one we like even more than any of the previous 3... there really is ALWAYS another house out there... (though i'll be crying into my cornflakes if this one falls through too, so i do sympathise)

Thank you mrs ravel. I keep telling myself that something better will come along .and I'm sure it will. But yes, crying into cornflakes sounds about right.

Ok, I am feeling vaguely encouraged. We have previously been through the shit of shits with house selling / estate agents (I won't bore you with the details). We are finally licking our wounds while living in rented and are now looking to actually buy a house again.

This thread is making me think... we are chain free, we are straghtforward, honest people, we are intelligent enough to read house details and investigate properly before putting in an offer, etc.

So we would be quite attractive as buyers, wouldn't we? Anyone want to sell us your house?

If a house isn't selling then the price is too high. If you put your average house on the market for £1 it would sell in a heartbeat. If you put it on for £1million then it would never sell. Somewhere between those extremes lies a price that will achieve a prompt sale.

If you want to sell then lower your price. It's irrelevant how much you paid for it, that's not the buyer's problem.

Sorry if that sounds harsh, it's not. It's fair.

I agree with you dba. My parents have been trying to sell their house for nearly a year. I could count on one hand the number of viewers they have had. I can see the problems with it (polysterne (sorry sp) tiles on the ceiling, anyone?). It has a large garden, but the house itself is dated and needs work, lots of it. Trouble is my parents don't see this at all. They were down here a fortnight ago and I let them see what it looks like on the internet. The think the photos are "marvellous". They are not, they are sh*t. My parents are narcisstic and there is no way through telling them that either it needs sorted or the price needs to be reduced drastically.

Fimbo, that's really interesting to hear it from your side. We're looking at a house very much like what you describe (including the polystyrene tiles). But you'd need to take about 1/3 off the price for it to be at anything near the right price.

I see what you are saying DoesBA and Fimbo but I think theres a bit more to it than just price.

My house has just gone onto the market substantially less than 3 agents suggested as we want a quickish sale.

We have had 1 viewer in 3 weeks.

Its priced less than a similar one on the road and imo its a far better buy as its larger and has far superior specification ... no polystyrene here .but plenty of wired in Bang and Olfsen !

We want to relocate and so need to sell. We would be prepared to accept a significant drop from the asking price but we are just not getting the footfall at the top end of the market.

Nothing has sold locally here for about 2 years, but we are taking entry level £750 K, most properties in the village are in excess of that.

The problem is that there are not that many buyers with that kind of money to spend.

Sometimes it depends on whereabouts you will be in the chain. If you are selling a first time buyers property then I agree the right price is probably the defining factor.
However if you are selling a large detached property then you are probably relying on a chain being in place first before it gets to your property (if that makes sense). There are a few cash buyers out there looking at more expensive properties but less of them.
We had one couple keen to buy ours but the chain collapsed as their buyer had to pull out. Nothing to do with the price of ours ( although we have priced realistically in the first place).

"Nothing has sold locally here for about 2 years, but we are taking entry level £750 K, most properties in the village are in excess of that.

The problem is that there are not that many buyers with that kind of money to spend."

Bet it would sell if you drop the price. :-)

I understand where you are coming from though. If you aren't getting any viewings you are thinking the demand is not there and dropping the price won't make a difference. The thing is though, many potential buyers are put off by unrealistic pricing and don't even bother. Unrealistic pricing is causing a buyer's strike.

For example, we would like to move but every house we see advertised is overpriced by about 25%+. One house I would consider is up for £265k. It sold less than 2 years ago for £197k. They've done no work to it (I remember viewing the details last time) and in fact it looks shabbier now. It was on the market last time at £265k too, but sat unsold for ages before selling for less. Why, oh why are they asking £265k now with the state of the economy / housing market at present? At the current price (and knowing the previous sold price) I just can't be bothered wasting my time viewing and making a realistic offer (less than £200k - start at £175k - perhaps go to £185k) when the vendors are asking such a ridiculous price.

Less than 2 years ago was 2009 - when the bottom and everything else fell out of the housing market. Where we are in SE London everything is more expensive than 2009 - it's just a 'grow up' situation. Something being too expensive for your budget - doesn't mean it's overpriced - it just means you can't afford it - you should have bought it in 2009.
The previous price is irrelevant when you know what local properties are selling for now. If you buy something in a jumble sale at a bargain price (and in 2009 there were bargains to be had because everyone thought the world was collapsing with Lehman Bros) and that item turned out to be valuable now, would you be happy to sell it for £10 because that's what you paid for it?
Your vendors are asking £265 now because (like it or not) the housing market is not in the same state as 2009.

Where we are (east midlands) everything is cheaper than 2009, the prices that seem fair are actually around 2005 prices so it seems ridiculous that some houses are on the market for 20% more than the 2009 price.

I think our price is realistic, yes, we have reduced by 20k since August. This was supposed to be a support thread!

And thank goodness the housing market isn't in the same state as 2009 and we didn't buy then, there are much nicer houses within our budget now

can I join? my buyer has just pulled out because he said things weren't moving fast enough for him. This is a man who pulled out of one property to buy mine and has now walked away from mine when we're probably fairly close to exchange and has gone back to the previous house he wanted after bullying them into dropping their price. tosser.

It is far too simplistic to suggest that it's all just about price - it really isn't.

Houses are just so overpriced I think - Estate agents are taking the piss, out of both the seller and buyer. Whenever we like the look of a place the first thing we do is go onto Zoopla so we get a 'last sold' date and price, current prices in the area and recommended price for the house we are interested in.

Without fail, every house we have done this for, the Zoopla price has been at least 30K under.

Our current 'favourite' house has been on the market since Sep 10. It's priced at 249,999. The current owners bought it in 1996 for 82,000. The Zoopla estimate for it is 180,000 and other houses on the same street have sold between 170,000 and 200,000. We have pointed this out to the EA a few times, but they / the sellers just wont budge. If they want to sell, they just have to budge.

The other thing that P's me off is the unrealistic descriptions etc. We were quite interested in one house that was marketed as a 3 bed. The description was quite basic though, with no dimensions and no floor plan. We spoke to the EA a few times who kept saying that we should just come to view it and we'd 'buy it in a second'. Eventually (about a month later) we got the measurements/floorplan. The third 'bedroom' was 3m x 1.5m, barely big enough for a single bed (EA knew we needed 3 doubles). If we had driven up (2 hours) and seen that bedroom we would have hit the roof.

Ours has been on since Saturday...lots of hits on rightmove but no viewings yet.

Can I ask about auctions?

I really want to move asap and was wondering if any of you have ever done it/considered it??

How much less would it go for than if sold normally??

onesandwichshort - if it's Scotland it will be my parents house! LOL .

Some of you will have beautiful houses so I agree it probably is not all about price. But my parents house needs £££££££ of work spent on it, if it was in lovely walk in condition then it would be worth the asking price but its not.

Oh I want to know about auctions too. Like how much they charge to sell etc etc. Would be interested also if anyone has done it this way. Seems so simple on Homes Under The Hammer.

Oooh, my mum mentioned auctions to me at the weekend. Is it a massive gamble?

I think you can set a reserve amount. But I don't know if you need to pay fees regardless of whether or not it sells.

\link{http://www.home.co.uk/guides/selling/sellingatauction.htm\this} looks useful.

oh yes there are certainly houses that are overpriced. I called to view one a few weeks ago and the agent said to me that it had subsidance in the kitchen and needed at least £50k spent on it to rectify that. Yet it's on the market for the same price as other houses in the area. But there are lots of other factors which determine whether houses sell or not and it can be something as simple as a feature of a house which makes it unsellable.

Greentown:

The thing is the properties in question are not selling for the asking price. They are not selling but sitting on the market unsold and encouraging further unrealistic pricing from others.

So 2009 was a bad time for the housing market and the economy. What has changed since then that makes you think things have improved? Round my way there were no job losses a couple of years ago. Now I'm seeing redundancies all over. My company has shed staff, several friends and school acquaintances have been made redundant. Many of these people are highly educated and at the top of their game and have never been out of work. The banks are not lending anywhere near as much and house sales are down to less than half the long-term average. Inflation is rampant, way above the 4-5% nonsense in the official statistics. People have far less disposable income and shops and other small businesses are going to the wall on a daily baisis. Household incomes have suffered the longest sustained fall since the 1870s. It's all going pear-shaped and yet you think houses should be rising in price?

You are right though the housing market in 2011 is nothing like 2009. It's much, much worse than that.