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Property/DIY

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Original poster

How do you decide when to give up?

33 replies

nikos · 24/10/2011 10:00

Had a viewing at the weekend, which came to nothing. Am about to start a new job and with winter coming am thinking of taking house off the market until the spring (have been on since spring with some second viewings but no offers). What are others doing? Just wondering if houses go stale if left on the Market too long?

OP posts:

wideawakenurse · 26/10/2011 08:44

We put our house on the market in early August. We has 40 odd viewings, but no offers and every viewing keep coming back with feedback on small things that we couldn't do anything about. Also the relationship between the EA and us broke down.

On the other hand, the properties we were looking at were going for very close to the asking price. But thats because they were 3-4 beds, in 'nice' locations, good schools etc. The perfect family home I suppose. However, even if we had got an offer on some sorts , and stretched our mortgage really far we were still compromising on the house we were buying.

So we came to accept that we'd never get what we want for this place, and we'd never truly get want we want elsewhere on our budget.

We took the house off the market the other week and made the decision to stay put and make the best of the situation. We plan to extend and do the loft etc.

To be honest, we were gutted it didn't work out for us but the relief of being out of the 'no-mans land' is immense.

Good luck.

Original poster

nikos · 26/10/2011 12:06

I know exactly what you mean. The house we are in is far from ideal but neither is the long spell of wondering if this viewing is going to be the one.
FWIW I don't agree that price is everything at the moment. In some areas things are just not moving at all.

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wideawakenurse · 26/10/2011 12:13

Nikos, I really thought our house was less than ideal until we had some quotes from builders etc and started researching what we could do with the place.

I think the difficulty comes in when you put your house on the market, you start to detached from it. Its really hard therefore to 'fall back in love' once this has happened.

If the prospect of selling really is bleak than maybe staying put but doing what you can to it might be an option?

Agree about prices not always being the issue too.

Original poster

nikos · 26/10/2011 19:52

I think we might have to do that - problem is this is not our forever house so don't want to do massive alterations. So it's difficult to know how far to improve as we won't make the money back, but if it doesn't sell we could be here for quite a few years
Have taken to doing the lottery

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ElderberrySyrup · 26/10/2011 20:29

Nikos we nearly moved in 2007 and ended up doing a loft conversion instead. (We had always assumed it was impossible in our house, but our buyer reckoned you could and his builder thought so too, so then when our buyer pulled out rather than going back on the market we decided to do the conversion.) It was an excellent decision - made the house liveable for us, permanently if necessary (though it is not our dream house) so we are now in a position where we will move if the market falls enough to make it worthwhile, if not, fine.
The odds are that if we sell after a big fall in the market we will have lost money on the building work, but it will have made the house useable for us for a bit longer so it will still have been worth it.
If you are trading up rather than down then hanging on for a few years until the market has fallen further, then having another go, might make sense in any case; the question is, is there any minimal work you can do that will not cost a fortune but make it a more suitable house for you for a few years? I think Wideawakenurse is absolutely right, it is worth getting a builder in as they may see possibilities that you don't.

noddyholder · 26/10/2011 20:36

I am renting atm. Prices here are falling every week it seems so I have decided to wait until next year.Things can only go one way now. All my 'property' friends and builders are getting rid of places at reasonable prices as they say they have seen it all before.Even the agent who sold ours in August said things are dire.

Original poster

nikos · 26/10/2011 20:55

I've always assumed we couldn't do a loft conversion because of being in a fairly modern house (built in the 80s). Did u have to raise the roof in yours?
Noddy- we want to make a jump up so am hoping that prices might come down a bit. We are able to overpay on the mortgage so there are some benefits to where we are.

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ElderberrySyrup · 26/10/2011 21:02

We didn't have to raise the roof but we thought it wouldn't be high enough - it's a 200 year old house but not a very high roof compared with neighbours.
To be fair, you can only stand up in the middle of the rooms, but as our house has low doorways and beams all over the place, very tall people are not going to want the house anyway.... It's actually a lot of usable space, plus a lot of eaves storage which means that you don't mind not having a loft to keep junk in. I love our loft rooms, sometimes I think they're the nicest rooms in the house!

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