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? :)

Toomuchtea - sounds promising then :)

Jenduck - we received an offer £55k below! Oh how we laughed :)

Jenduck that's only 7% below asking - and indeed seems to be the best that most EAs are hoping for at the mo - they boast if they can get you 93% of the asking price. Check out the RICS report for last month (the link is earlier up the thread)... 93% was very much seen as a badge of honour by lots of the agents that gave their opinion to this national survey. Any sense that they are expecting you to counter offer? If you could close at 5% under and want a quick sale - I think most agents in many parts of the country would urge you to bite their hand off! It very much depends where you are though and I guess whether you really want to move. What's your agent's advice?

I would say it's worth trying a counter offer, Jenduck - good luck!

Our buyer is a FTB - most of the people interested were. It's a great first time buyer property for people priced out of other bits of London. Not sure what the higher bidder's situation is - I couldn't get to speak to the EA today. I know he thinks we should stick with the original buyer so I just want to check why.

We have finally got an agreement in principle for our mortgage, phew!

Wahey Woodlands awesome news!

our viewer didn't turn up! losing the will again!

I've only had one no show and that really pissed me off

Tis frustrating to clean the whole house like that for no reason-and it won't stay clean for more than 24 hours! Wonder if we will get an excuse?

Very on your behalf, underthemountain! Tis very frustrating when the viewers can't even be bothered to show up, having made an appointment and caused you to change plans and run round getting everything prepared! Hopefully you'll get some kind of answer as to why they didn't come.

Good luck with your viewings later, CuddyMum! :) Hopefully they'll either turn out to have sold their property and be ready to go, or they'll kick your other interested party into making a proper offer.

We have another viewing pencilled in for Monday now, so hopefully they or the viewer tomorrow will like our house!

It's really surprising... We were on at £125k and getting no viewings. Dropped to £120k and now we're getting loads! I'd have thought people would have looked for house prices up to £125k (stamp duty) and then offered lower.

We're probably only going to be able to afford £270k (given the deposit money we're hemorrhaging with price drops and lower offers) but are still looking up to £300k with the idea of then optimstically offering lower.

Spirael it's bizarre isn't it - how price sensitive the market is. I guess loads of buyers when faced with sellers that won't budge an inch on price (largely due to NE) are just not bothering looking at houses just above their price range anymore. Well done to the kiteflyers for stuffing up the market!!!

We were told by the EA that if we had priced at £110k - even though we eventually sold for £112.5k in the closing, we wouldn't have got anywhere near the interest we got by pricing it for £98.5k - it was a risk but fingers crossed it's paid off (though admittedly it's a strategy better suited to the Scottish system). I think having an inflated asking price with the assumption that buyers will haggle down - isn't a good strategy in this market. Buyers know that the banks are being risk averse, 125% mortgages are dead, prices are falling and they risk NE by buying now, and lots of sellers are totally inflexible - it just strikes me that kite flying sellers really mustn't want to sell....

It's a really awkward situation - especially for second-time buyers who acquired their starter home at/near the peak.

We fortunately have a reasonable amount of equity in our house thanks to an initial inheritance boosted starting deposit and the fact that we spent the pre child years overpaying the mortgage where possible.

If we'd had a 95-100% mortgage we'd be absolutely stuck, as we're already listed at considerably lower than what we paid. Even if we hadn't dropped as far as NE, it would have eaten away at all the deposit we had - rendering us unable to upsize.

Problem is, no-one has any clue what the market is doing. We changed our mortgage last year and they sent round someone who valued our house at £137K. Even the EAs we called out when we first went on the market thought it was worth around £135k. (This was during the SD holiday for FTB.)

Fast forward to now, and we're desperately struggling to even obtain the £115k we need to be able to afford to upsize, so DD isn't using the tiny box room as a bedroom!

Yes, very interesting to hear that a small drop in price can bring people in. Our EA was asking if we could drop the price and we were unable to make up our minds whether a small drop would be worthwhile or not. Hearing your experience I think we will go ahead and drop it £5k and see if it helps! Keep thinking of chucking the towel in (not much financial leeway so maybe a bit risky to move anyhow) but we've already invested the time/money so....

Our current EAs asked if they could advertise the property at 'offers over X' for the last week, which was a £10k price drop, and we've had....not a single new viewing all week, since the two on Saturday. So in our case a price drop has made no difference.

New agents come to take pictures on Monday. Onwards & upwards, I hope.

@ Spirael It is an awful position isn't it. It's just the not knowing and wondering about the future.

As to your comment that no one knows the market - I disagree this downturn after last year's dead cat bounce during the stamp duty holiday has been called by lots of economists ever since 2007, but they are not necessarily the ones who appear on the BBC. The market has been falling quite markedly last year (outside London) so it might not be the case that no one knows what the market is doing but rather that the price is falling sharpish and last years price and this one were both right at that point in time.

I was terrified when we saw that trend up here, because I couldn't stop wondering what next year's price would be if they kept falling at such a rate - hence when we saw that happening here we went thru the stress of putting it on the market at a far from ideal time i.e. just two months before my due date (we had planned to do this in January / February time). It was stressy and we're still going thru the paperwork stage, (I'm still nervous that it's not a done deal just yet) but had an awful feeling that if we waited any longer we'd have lost any chance of keeping our deposit (even with a total redecoration and renovation).

The signals in the market up here were pretty clear but you had to look for them and I had to remove my rose tinted specs and optimism that it 'might just get better next year' and after reading some of the financial press - we decided that we daren't chance our future on that vague hope that something might pick up in the market. I just don't see the fundementals there. I also had to try to look at our house objectively and compare it to the 'competition' - which is really hard when you love it and have put a lot of work in.

I know this thread is about moral support but my god I am feeling so much happier now we are sold and (paper work aside) know where we are - rather than waiting on the market and hoping that we'll be able to move on with our lives soon whilst watching more and more dire economic news on the telly. I would put the price tag on this feeling as being pretty high to be honest! I don't think hanging on for your dream price is the route to a successful sale necessarily - I think getting out before it gets worse is also a pretty good achievement too. It very much depends on your personal position and the amount of equity you can stand to lose - in our case that wasn't a lot!

I think any price cuts made need to be considered in a percentage. If the cut is

Just got home from work and am titivating quickly before the first viewer. The sun is shining and the heating is on! Husband is showing 6.30 people around.

Whoop! Fingers crossed for you Cuddy!

Now in the pub with three teenage girls and a pug drinking coke and eating Curly Wurlies! It's a bit sureal. Hope they like the house :)

Good luck Cuddymum!

Thank you Tunip. One done and next one at 6.30 - then try and keep house tidy for viewing at 11.00 am. Think I am in need of something stronger than a coke!

6.30 viewing went really well according to my husband - lots of cooing etc but you never know they may just have been being polite. I went for a nice walk with my daughter and the pug! Other daughter and friend thankfully were out getting ready for a party. I need a curry!! I'd better fumigate afterwards in readiness for the morning viewing.

Hi again, thanks for all your thoughts on our offer. Where we are, in Essex, the market is still fairly buoyant & houses on our estate seem to go pretty quickly & for near to asking price. For now, we have said that we would like closer to asking price & in the meantime are putting in a lowish offer on house we like (on market for a year, only 1offer in Feb) to see if we could absorb a lower final price that way. But ultimately will see what happens on mon.

We have also already spoken to our mortgage lenders, who have in principle agreed the amount we need based on selling at 185.

Good luck to everybody else, especially those with viewings this weekend! Hope the sun shines for you!

Last viewing over and the sun was shining gloriously! I am mentally and physically exhausted!

Update! Viewer from yesterday afternoon has said the house is too big. Viewer from this morning noticed some cement/pointing missing from three bottom bricks and suggested the house is moving!!! However, still need to hear back from yesterday evening's viewers and we also have a viewing tomorrow at 4.00 pm. Meanwhile, I'm off to find something to repair the pointing and am trying not to worry about the house falling down.

Our second viewer hadn't turned up after 15mins so I phoned the agents. She hadn't had a viewing confirmation so hadn't got ready. She's coming in half an hour which will be just as DH and the very muddy kids get back from the woods!

Now my noisy neighbours have got back from where ever and the kids are screaming at each other.

Cuddymum I think people try to come up with all sorts of little niggles in case they want to haggle the price a bit.

If you look hard enough you can always find some tiny thing.