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Join our Property forum for renovation, DIY, and house selling advice.

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Join our Property forum for renovation, DIY, and house selling advice.

Property/DIY

Dear Vendors ...

52 replies

Slacking9to5 · 11/10/2011 21:10

If your house has been on the market for three years and you haven't sold it or reduced the price by one penny in that time, you are overpriced. Considerably overpriced.
If point #1 applies, and the EA tells me you are in no hurry to move. May I ask WTF you are on the market if you don't actually want to sell?
Please tell me you don't really believe someone with skip along and offer you full asking price?

OP posts:

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MoreBeta · 13/10/2011 14:44

alabamawurley - is absolutley right. It goes beyond economics and any rational understanding. Indeed, some offers I have put in under asking price were treated as an insult - especially if the owners are quite elderly and well off.

I know an old lady living just a few doors down from me in a large house, started out at £750k asking price over 3 years ago. It needs a lot of expensive renovation, is damp and so squalid she lives in one room.

She has had plenty of offers but all under her totally unrealistic asking price. She is living in a cold, damp, squalid house she can't afford to maintain or heat but she is adamant she will not sell for a penny less than the peak asking price she set in 2007.

She will die alone and cold in that house. Go figure.

ElderberrySyrup · 13/10/2011 15:15

That's true Bramshott. If you have a young family you see time ticking away as your dcs grow up.

Beta's old lady probably doesn't actually want to move really and the lack of buyers at that price is a convenient excuse.

ElbowFan · 13/10/2011 19:12

Could it be that some of these 'sales' are the result of divorce proceedings and only one party actually wants to sell?

ElbowFan · 13/10/2011 19:14

...obviously not the old lady above!

There are also some folk who are really picky about who they sell to! A property near me has been up for ages, but is not yet sold as the vendors have not found a buyer they like!!!

discrete · 13/10/2011 19:23

Plenty of people think along the lines of:

'I don't want to move but I've been told my house is worth [stupid amount of money x]. I doubt it's true, but if it actually is worth x, then I'd love to have x in the bank. I'll put it on the market for x, and if no one offers x, I'll stay, if someone offers x I'll sell.'

I know people who thought along those lines and did actually sell for x. Not recently, but it can happen.

ElderberrySyrup · 14/10/2011 09:21

I've just blown my mind by doing some looking up of sold prices. Two things stand out - the amount the high-priced vendors are hoping to make on their houses, and the massive hits people have actually taken in order to sell.

This was a mind-blower - house that was on at 615 went this year for 578.5 - a fairly small reduction, BUT the owners had bought it for 950 in 2007! (950!!!!! This is a nice Victorian house but hardly a mansion, in a nice but not premium Northern town, hardly any garden.) So they took a hit of nearly 40%.

The other ones that stood out - bought 2006 for 200, on at 730 (work done on it though);
bought 2007 for 435, on at 725;
bought 2000 for 202, on at 635;
bought 2003 for 420, originally on at 850 now reduced to 699.

So people who bought at peak are still expecting to realise massive profits. Wow.

schoolhelp · 14/10/2011 10:50

1) If your house has been on the market for three years and you haven't sold it or reduced the price by one penny in that time, you are overpriced. Considerably overpriced.

yup, you've got it, so why bother us?

^2) If point #1 applies, and the EA tells me you are in no hurry to move. May I ask WTF you are on the market if you don't actually want to sell?
Please tell me you don't really believe someone with skip along and offer you full asking price?^

cos a) in a few more years we'll have got through DCs' education on full school bursaries and still own and live in our home, and actually if we could we'd raise the price even more to put off people considering it. b) we are not quite as restricted as you in our choices. c) we live with a different rhythm from you and don't see why we should hurry to suit you

Please accept that if you cannot come to a deal, then walk away. When you can't buy something, you can't, that's all.

HTH

ElderberrySyrup · 14/10/2011 11:00

I don't understand what you mean by a, Schoolhelp, esp the bit about school bursaries. Is this another variation on not actually wanting to sell?

Slacking9to5 · 14/10/2011 12:25

Schoolhelp that is the most bizarre post I've read in a very long time.

Why are you on the market if you won;t sell? And yunno, if you are overpriced, no one is going to buy. I can guarantee that.

I'll add this. The housing market is very sticky right now. I've been buying and selling houses for twenty years and this is the stickiest. Vendors have to be flexible in order to get a sale. Anyone looking for property is not going to want to even view a house that has been on the market for three years without a reduction. It tells them the vendor is unrealistic, inflexible and probably quite difficult. You need to be giving out the right signals to buyers and stubbornly sitting tight in an overpriced house whilst expecting your EA to try and flog it is not doing that.
EA friends of mine will take vendors off their books if they do this, unstrangely they have the best record and reputation locally for fair prices and high sales.

OP posts:

ElderberrySyrup · 14/10/2011 12:34

Slacking I wondered if Schoolhelp meant some kind of thing to do with private school bursaries where the means test means you are expected to sell your house, but you don't actually want to, so you price it high so no-one will buy?
Hopefully she will come back and clarify.

Slacking9to5 · 14/10/2011 12:43

Do they do that? Honestly?

How extraordinary!

OP posts:

ElderberrySyrup · 14/10/2011 12:49

I don't know Slacking.
Wouldn't surprise me. It's the only way I can make sense of the post.

Slacking9to5 · 14/10/2011 13:20

I thought burseries were salary dependent? I didn't think you had to sell your house to get one?

Don't the school check up on how your house sale is going? Aren't they just the teeniest bit suspicious when you have it on for way over the value year after year?

OP posts:

CaptainNancy · 14/10/2011 13:25

Goodness- lovely morals there schoolhelp! So glad your children are far more deserving of bursaries than children of genuinely poor parents.

slacking - you are right about the market- round here either it sells within a week, or remains on for 12, 15, 18 mo.

I have also seen a rather nasty crop of 'uplift' (?)clauses on houses with large gardens- basically the vendor will get 50% (or more- 100% in one case!!) of any money you make from battle-axing the garden within 20 years

Ormirian · 14/10/2011 13:31

Well clearly they aren't in a hurry to sell and do hope that that miracle buyer will waltz along. They certainly aren't obliged to drop their prices to suit you

FFIW we put our house on at the lowest price the EA advised and sold it in 6 weeks. Everything else has been sitting there for months, if not years. Other vendors dropped their prices and sold too. But we were in a hurry. I suspect that when (if) my parents put theirs up they won't accept an offer much below the asking price.

MoreBeta · 14/10/2011 13:40

CaptainNancy - yes I have seen a lot of 'garden uplift' clasues cropping up too. The problem is that the vendor woudl never dream of living in their home with another house built in their garden but they think the new owner will and want to take all the value of that off them without the hassle and inconvenience of actually doing it.

What they forget is that building another house in the garden will devalue the original house - they never want to take that into account though. They think the house they are selling will be worth just the same and the garden planning is 100% money on top.

CaptainNancy · 14/10/2011 14:05

Indeed, indeed, but obviously anyone they sell to will be a mere pleb (because let's face it, only nouveaux could afford their property nowadays), and quite deserve having someone else live in the garden I'm sure.

ElderberrySyrup · 14/10/2011 14:39

There's a couple in my village who sold off part of their garden before selling their house, to give them money to buy and do up their next place.
Unfortunately not only did they not factor it into the price (which was overpriced to start with) but it has completely destroyed the atmosphere of their house, which is a rather ugly Victorian rectory on the edge of the village which used to be approached through a little spinney, all rooks cawing and spookiness.
They sold off plots on either side of the drive, so the trees have gone and you now approach it between the two new houses, which are pretty much on the doorstep, so the first impression the buyer gets will be dreadful.
Needless to say they've been unable to shift it, and that's despite it being one of the few big houses in quite a popular village.

schoolhelp · 14/10/2011 14:56

Goodness- lovely morals there schoolhelp! So glad your children are far more deserving of bursaries than children of genuinely poor parents.

Hi there Captain, no probs. Schools want DCs but they have rules, and they're fine as long as we follow their rules. I have no problem with telling the complete truth and following what is suggested to me by those with the purse strings. Unlike people who are prepared to move home and otherwise tweak their circumstances to get their DCs into schools. You see, it's the school that decides who deserves the bursary, not you or me. If they're not able to come to a deal on the bursaries, I won't complain or mortgage my home or change my life. Unlike many on mumsnet.

This thread seems to forget that deals consist of a buyer and a seller. I can never understand why a buyer would throw a strop about not being able to buy something, surely nobody's interested? The seller only has a problem if they cannot find a buyer. Oh and of course the EA who works on commmission will have a problem unless house sales keep churning. Personally I wouldn't buy a home I couldn't keep for at least twenty years, and would rent for shorter spans. Which is why my finding the right place seems a different exercise from the OP's. And why we both find each other's take completely bizarre.

ElderberrySyrup · 14/10/2011 15:06

Wow. And have you told the estate agent and any potential buyers the complete truth as well, or are you happy to lie to them and pretend you are actually trying to sell your house?

CaptainNancy · 14/10/2011 15:07

Schoolhelp- you're completely right that people who sneer at those paying fees whilst buying a school place through their mortgage are beneath contempt (but I'm certainly not inthat category). Thing is that bursaries being reserved for people with huge assets is one of the factors that puts parents of bright but impoverished children from applying, it reinforces the idea that independent eucation is not for the likes of them IMO.

I don't think slacking is throwing a strop though- quite the opposite. I think we're all having a wry laugh at these deluded vendors.

schoolhelp · 14/10/2011 15:21

Wow. And have you told the estate agent and any potential buyers the complete truth as well, or are you happy to lie to them and pretend you are actually trying to sell your house?
Dear me. I have said to EA that I'm not interested in selling beneath said price. They have taken it on. You may like telling your life story to your EA, but I don't have that sort of relationship with mine. Of course if the price is met, that's not a problem. However, luck will be on our side if the world is full of people like the OP. Thanks for the tip on uplift too!

Thing is that bursaries being reserved for people with huge assets is one of the factors that puts parents of bright but impoverished children from applying, it reinforces the idea that independent eucation is not for the likes of them IMO.
It's up to the school to decide who they want, not the parents. Unless society changes that's the way it is. So all this 'unfair, unfair' stuff is irrelevant. Actually it almost explains why we must look less undesirable, compared with everyone else who has your sense of entitlement. No child is entitled to a bursary. Mine isn't. Yours isn't. It's a privilege, entirely at the grace of the school. Try asking nicely.

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Slacking9to5 · 14/10/2011 15:59

schoolhelp what's with the attitude?

This thread is poking fun at silly vendors. As it happens we decided on a house a while ago so have been watching the market just in case.

To be fair, your EA needs bollocking for being so shit that they will have houses on their books with deluded vendors and no chance in hell of shifting. I have a list of EA's who do this and I tend to avoid doing business with them.

OP posts:

CaptainNancy · 14/10/2011 19:33

Genuine LOL! I wasn't talking about my children. No-one mentioned fair/unfair- you're reading that into it yourself. I certainly wouldn't send my children to a school that acted as though it were doing me a favour by having them.

MoreBeta · 14/10/2011 19:52

schoolhelp - are you telling us that you have come to a deal with your school where they know full well that you have no intention of selling your house but they have gone along with it and given you the bursary anyway?

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