Support thread for house sellers

[Spirael]

Just what it says on the tin, really! I'm sure there must be other stressed house sellers out there? Hopefully we can band together and get some small joy of (hopefully?) seeing our houses sell so we can get a move on!

This is a thread of hand holding and mutual support for the EA dealings, weeks of silence, frantic house tidying, no-show viewings, silly offers and tough decisions. This is not for house bashing and price slating. There are plenty of other threads for that!

I've been trying to sell for a year now. Had a surge of viewings earlier in the summer making the right noises, but all has gone quiet for the last few weeks.

However, we have a viewing booked for later this afternoon from someone who has sold their house and is able to proceed - wanting to move before Christmas. Currently swinging between pessimistic and optimistic, while trying not to look at the house we want to buy!

Anyone else out there? :)

Well done YellowWellies! Toomuchtea, we had a viewer with two places to sell and not even on the market - infact they viewed twice and tried again for a third viewing to which I said no thank you. Wonder if it's the same people?

Good job noddy! It's nice to see the market moving - it's good for all of us. Also it sounds as though this lady has still made a pretty penny - it's great to see big family homes being freed up and the older generation moving into more manageable homes which still allow them to retain their independence. Family homes are best for families in my view.

Well fingers crossed we have managed to change solicitors, my last call of the day is done. I'm away to lie down like a big fat preggo cetacean. Tonight I am having a big glass of wine. I'm so chuffed that (fingers toes, eyes and legs crossed) this bid will allow us to have the baby up here on the island because the hospital is amazing and we know and love all of the midwives (we also rather fancied confusing future genealogists as DH is from Kent, I'm from Yorkshire and we married in Oxford) so didn't want to go south and be attended by strangers.

Also had a growth scan this morning (have family history of prem labour) and found out junior is 3lb11! I was born at 4lb4 so am really reassured.

What a crazy 24 hours. Where's that .

Thanks YW hope yours goes smoothly too. Wish we were in Scotland!

The woman is from MK and he is from Leighton Buzzard. I wish people would at least be marketing their properties.

I know how you feel - we had a first and second viewing, both at very short notice, from another lot not on the market. They were in the house with the agent for an hour each time. We called them the goldilocks viewers as they sat on every chair, stool, bed, sofa. They were complete time wasters and I later found out that they do this all of the time.

I tell a lie: we've had 1 offer, £20k below asking price. I tried to make them meet in the middle, but no luck. I'd happily accept£10k below the asking price, not sure if I'm being a bit precious holding out for that.

My sticking point is knowing how much I spent, more or less, on renovating the property - £10k under asking price is break-even point, £20k under is a loss.

We had a couple of viewings from those with houses not yet on the market who I quote 'didn't want to put ours on the market until we'd found somewhere as ours will sell in a heartbeat and we'd hate to have to rush and settle for something we didn't love'. They were both from people who had houses in the order of 20x the local average wage and hadn't gone through the house selling process in anything other than a rising market. Looking at our market they could have easily sat on the market for 3 years. We had already decided that we'd not accept an offer from them - interestingly none of our offers were from these people. I think there's an element of tyre kicking from folks who think they want to downsize but don't appreciate the reality of downsizing (i.e. you don't have 5 bedrooms anymore!!!!) and are a bit taken aback by smaller houses....

I reckon we've lost £500 on renovations, once we factor in moving costs - we'll have lost £3000 but as our mortgage was cheaper than our rent - maybe closer to £2k - but m'eh we want to move on and the market is falling quite steadily up here. It was this or accept a bigger loss next year and our buyer is looking for a forever home and is a cash buyer. The other option was to hang on up here forever and wait for the market to rise - but that could be a decade given the economy.

I'd be careful of getting too set on one specific price in your head. We were told quite clearly by the EA that we'd struggle to recoup all of our renovation costs as we'd put high end stuff in (a Rayburn, posh bathroom etc) which were suited to our tastes and we couldn't assume to expect these back - that's something that only happens in a rising market.

I don't know where you are but it could be different. We've been very lucky - we knew at the time we were buying it might well be a dead cat bounce in the market and it turned out it was - I was expecting to make more of a loss and if we had left it I think we might.

I've been a total cleaning nazi and the clutter has been banished for the last fortnight. DH can't find anything - poor sod. I'm soooooo happy to now be slobbing on the couch with washing on the rads, cat litter on the floor and washing up undone. Ahhhhh. That feeling is just priceless to be honest - especially at 8 months preggers. I just hope it all goes through smoothly....

If DH's work pay for relocation (which there is rumour they will) we'd break even or make a £500 profit - not much for 3 months hard graft, still we're counting our blessings. Another house with the agent went to closing yesterday and despite lots of notes of interest - there were no offers

Where are you relocating to YW?

When we come to sell we will almost certainly lose money on the loft conversion - I say that because when we were valued in 2010 the price they suggested (which was probably a bit optimistic as they all are) would have made us break even, and the market has come down since then. But that is fine - the way we look at it is that it has enabled us to stay in the house for longer and thus not have to upsize at the top of the market, so it will still have been worth doing. Other than that any money we've spent really counts as maintenance (eg replacing a tired bathroom suite with a new one of similar quality) so we would expect that to be dead money.

We will never get back the £40k we spent on our huge loft conversion either.

Good attitude Tunip - we did ours to turn an unliveable wreck in the most perfect location (think views like these:<a class="break-all" href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=hoy+hills&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&biw=1280&bih=614&tbm=isch&tbnid=ktA4hgCsrrAFSM:&imgrefurl=www.orkneycommunities.co.uk/IOHDT/index.asp%3Fpageid%3D1381&docid=XOeafrl3fJcCeM&imgurl=www.orkneycommunities.co.uk/IOHDT/pictures/big/hoy_hills_snow.jpg&w=420&h=279&ei=IYtcULbQBYHl4QTjv4DwDQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=102&vpy=152&dur=32&hovh=183&hovw=276&tx=198&ty=90&sig=113310268319354759219&page=1&tbnh=106&tbnw=159&start=0&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0,i:68" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Hoy Hills and Scapa Flow into a lovely house - and it's been such a happy home. I'll miss the life up here very much. But not the weather. Once (fingers crossed) the sale has completed I will put the rightmove link up. We're relocating back to the Central belt for a combo of work and family reasons.

Think of it this way - you might end up getting a cracking conservatory or garage or loft conversion in the house you buy - and the sellers there might end up effectively 'paying for it for you'?

If it makes anyone feel better about their break-evens, we're currently listed at £10k cheaper than what we paid in 2005. Since we moved in we've spent £10k doing major renovations, above and beyond general maintenance.

So we're on a £20k loss so far (on a house currently listed at £120k) and we haven't sold yet...

The owners of the house we like have done bugger all to it and have added no value but still want close to the asking price that is now £15k more than they paid 4 years ago. They apparently have an offer £10k under on the table and has been for weeks but have not accepted!

Cuddy sod them. Don't fall in love with the house - you'll pay through the nose for it. Apparently a friend who works for one of the bailed out banks informed me that the banks are ending their forbearance with those in arrears this spring (as they'll have re-capitalised sufficiently to be able to take the hit) so there are likely to be a flood of repossessions on the market. Go for one of those rather than giving credence to your sellers' unrealistic attitude. You've been utterly reasonable.

Spirael are you upsizing? Fingers crossed you get the same percentage off your future home. A falling market always helps upsizers - so long as you find a realistic seller. There must be some out there - we all seem reasonable!!!!

I have fallen in love with the garden - its so unusual to have anything larger than a postage stamp round here. However, unless we get an offer I won't go back to view the house. No viewings lined up for this weekend and bugger all new houses (apart from little houses) have come on to the market in ages.

Wow craziness!

Stay strong cuddy think head not heart. Though I know that's much less fun. For example I saw this and rather fell for it (largely for the garden) www.espc.com/properties/details.aspx?pid=317390 but it's far too small, right on a road, is a bit of a wreck and we are not doing a fixer upper again especially with a baby - but I could so easily have had my arm twisted. We're not looking until the spring / summer even if i have to wear blinkers by which time our target market could have fallen by another £16 -25k or so if the current trend continues. Which could save us up to £48-76k once mortgage lifetime costs are considered. Remember every £1k borrowed costs you £3k to pay back.

Cuddly and Tunip we've resisted doing a loft conversion for that reason - if we did it, we'd gain the extra bedroom we need, and could stay in the house for a few more years, but we wouldn't gain any space downstairs and we're already at breaking point there too! So it seems more sensible to stretch ourselves now to move to a bigger place and hopefully stay there for 10 years at least.