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? :)

YellowWellies Don't offers from people not on the market make even less sense in the Scottish system? I'm not sure how well I understand the system, but isn't it the case that everyone submits best and final offers on the same day? So there's no sense in accepting one. Whereas with the English system you can say 'Well ok, we'd take that much in principle, so we'll go with that unless someone else ready to go comes along before you're ready to proceed.'

Any offer is good news, I wasn't meaning to put a downer on things and you're right about if a buyer is committed and falls in love then they will move mountains to sell their own and get into yours. A motivated buyer is the best kind. I hope it works this way.

Yes I should stress that from a Scottish perspective (if you go to closing) offers before a buyer is proceedable make no sense at all and indeed you usually only find them being made by English people who don't really understand the system (I'm English myself I should stress!). There is also a financial penalty in the Scottish system for making an offer which turns out to fall through if you go to closing. Because all parties tend to have sold / or are actively looking - it makes our system much quicker and also much more realistic on pricing.

It's red brick Georgian farmhouse at the front, 70s dormer bungalow at the back. Some of the rooms have completely different types of windows on opposite sides. It's listed and at first I wondered if the reason for the lowish price was that the 70s extensions had been done without consent and the poor buyer would have to reinstate the original roofline at vast expense. But it seems it was listed after the work was done.
It has a poky kitchen next to a breakfast room in the new bit and if one could get listed building consent and a good architect it looks like a nice breakfast kitchen could be created. But I've always heard it was a good maxim not to buy a listed house unless you can imagine living in it without doing anything very much to it, because listed building consent is not always as easy to get as you might think even in cases where the thing you want to change isn't part of what makes it historical and nice.
The main question which viewing will answer is how much is left inside in terms of original features, because there aren't a lot of internal photos. If it was basically gutted in the 70s I'm not interested. It is very pretty from the front and the garden is huge but I would rather compromise on those things for a house with more character.

Toomuchtea - at least you have an offer and you never know what will happen. I hope they can sell their house quickly. I've had no further feedback and have another viewer at 6.30. I just hope the kids keep the house tidy when they come home - no chance!

No feedback yet from our Saturday viewers - apparently the EA are having trouble getting hold of them. I'm guessing they've probably offered on the other house they viewed and are waiting to see how that pans out before telling us they're not interested.

However we now have yet another viewing booked for next Saturday morning. They're coming thick and fast at the moment... Hopefully one of them will be the one!!

Hopefully the house you're viewing has the features you want still recoverable and a sensible conservation officer, Tunip. :)

Hi everyone, can I join? I'm feeling a bit deflated!

I thought our sale was going swimmingly, but now the buyers' solicitor is asking for an asbestos and fire safety report. It's a flat in a converted Victorian house, the Victorians were not exactly known for using asbestos were they!
Is this normal?

Also they're demanding that we extend the lease, and pay for any associated costs (a quick google tells me this is perhaps the best part of £500). But the flat is a share of freehold (via a company which the owners have shares in), so there will be no problem for them to extend it themselves if they want to. I simply don't have the money. Not sure what to do about this! Also it's really annoying as we're only months out of their "safe" limit. There's 74 years + some months left on the lease, and they're asking as it's below 75, apparently. I don't know if it's their mortgage provider or the solicitor who's demanding it.

I simply don't have the money for this, we're really skint atm. Not sure what to do?

I too am getting fed up - we have had our 3 bed end of terrace house on the market since the end of June we have had 44 viewings - 3 offers one fell through because the mortgage she wanted was taken off the market - the other two were too low - we had 2 really good viewings this weekend one was going to bring his wife back as he really liked it the other one was going to bring her children back tomorrow as she really liked the 'feel' of the house and felt it was 'a smiley house' - the estate agent followed them both up today and both told him they liked it but didn't love it - which has been the general opinion for most of the viewings - why do they give such good vibes only to let you down when they walk out the door - we are moving into my parents property (which me and my sisters inherited after my dad died from cancer in April) and have no chain so should also go in our favour, am at a loss as to what to do = FED UP :(

I can only sympathise with everyone else. As I was cleaning mascara, finger prints and foundation of my mirror (again) I caught an image of myself looking drawn, hunched and pale with dark circles under my eyes. If one of my latest 5 viewers isn't interested I'm not sure what else I can do. The house looks the best it can - it's clean, tidy, spacious, nicely decorated, nice lighting and radiators etc and it smells good too! At least the flowers have lasted from Thursday night. Off out again in a minute with the dog and two teenagers.

Muddypaws I am sorry for your loss. 44 viewings is a lot of tidying :(

Came back after this evenings viewing and the EA had left me a note to say that the people from Sunday loved the house but weren't on the market but would arrange a valuation. She hasn't heard back from the people who said we had subsidence or the viewers my husband showed round. Not sure how the viewing went this evening but I ended up in the pub again with the dog and kids and had a selection of hot snacks. Husband is away so at least we have been fed and can chill!

You're telling me it's a lot of tidying!!! Luckily having an empty property to move into just round the corner from us, the 4 dogs (3 inherited from my dad) and 3 kids can all just migrate round there each time there's a viewing, along with all the unused clobber teddies off end of bed all the paraphanalia from top of kitchen cupboards etc. Not really sure what else to do to make people 'love' our home. Hope this evenings viewing went well for you CuddyMum -each time we think maybe this is the one!! keep smiling!!:)

Ah 4 dogs hence 16muddypaws!!

Sounds like lots of people have had viewings in the last few days - good luck! Tunip, that house sounds really cool - will be interested to hear what the inside is like.

Our offer on the quirky house has been rejected - we can't go higher than £250k and they want more like £265. They'll be lucky (though they did have an offer at that level before which fell through). It's an equity release scheme so fairly hard nosed asset managers. Our offer on the dream house was also not enough - they've had more than one offer of more than £15k more than our maximum. Oh well.

Went for a second viewing last night of a house that's on the road we want which we saw a couple of weeks ago but my DH wasn't keen. The price was reduced yesterday so I persuaded him to have another look. He came around to it a fair bit more and we have actually put in an offer, but he still thinks it feels small/it doesn't blow him away. It's exactly the same as the other houses on the street and I wish he'd accept that that is all we can get for our money! We will want to put in a loft conversion a year or two down the line and I think he also has an unrealistic idea of how much that will be. I think this house is perfect in that it's moveable into straight away but there is potential to do a bit of work here and there and put our own stamp on it. It has a lovely new kitchen with built in dishwasher/electric oven/gas hob - just what I want!

Oh God I saw that house on the Internet yesterday!! Makes mine look naked.

Wowsers! That is amazing!

You may have a point though - this house that DH thinks is small is fairly minimalist, with not much in most of the rooms. It is exactly the same size as the one up the road we missed out on but which had piles of junk in every room, which he thought felt bigger. Just goes to show that crowded rooms can feel bigger than empty ones.

We've been for our viewing.

God, it's so hard when a house is empty and feels shabby and manky and there is a smelly old carpet! My head is saying yes but my gut is saying it's really not sure, and there are a few nice features but not as much as I would like. But then, it's a lot nicer than anything we've seen for the price, and we've been watching the market closely (ie looking at internet, not going for viewings) for 2 years.
There are no fireplaces left and none of the bedrooms is really a nice shape. But there are LOADS of receps. The garden has some lovely old trees in it. All the rooms are a bit smaller, with lower ceilings, than I was expecting, which is probably good because it's probably part of the reason for the low price (it looks like it's going to be posh inside but it's not).

I love my house. I don't want to move. But we are so short of space, the secondary school isn't very good and there's no downstairs loo which is a problem when you have elderly parents who find stairs painful. I thought one day I would find a house to move to that I was sufficiently in love with to make it exciting, and I don't think this is it, but frankly we only have a certain amount of money and maybe I need to get real.

Viewers from yesterday loved the house but when they went into the garden felt it was overlooked - I can't do anything about that. The people from Friday evening won't return the EAs call to give feedback and Mr Low Offer has disappeared. I'll give it four more weeks and just take the house off :(

What a shame about the garden, Cuddymum.

As you say, you can't do anything about it being overlooked. We looked a house a couple of months ago - about

I would say the majority of houses around here could be considered overlooked and those that aren't front directly on to the busy high street. The EA said people are being very picky lately. I wouldn't mind but the last two viewers are not even on the market.

Buyers just don't have any imagination when it comes to gardens. If it's too small, then there's nothing you can do about it, but if they are worried that it's overlooked they could plant a tree or put some trellis in and make a private area that isn't overlooked. I hate comments like that from viewers :(.

We had a viewer (nearly a year ago now) who loved the house. Everything about it was exactly what she wanted, until she went outside and discovered there was no shed in the garden and no garage and that was that. Despite there being driveway parking for three cars and she could have had a shed put in.