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? :)

I haven't had Anything to add since our first viewing was also our second. This morning I thought I want feedback. We've had our house spotless for this women for two visits with her family and she should at least be polite enough to get back to us. She's turned around and made an offer! It's significantly below asking price, too far below.

I think we priced fairly realistically based on estate agents advice and we're lower than other 4beds in our area and we've rewired, new heating, new floors, new plaster, new woodburners etc . It's all pretty high spec too.

I don't think we can cope with 20% extra off the price. But I'm not sure how much she'll manouvere.

We've only had the one person view twice. The estate agents told me this morning that's more than others that went on the sometime as us have had! Very quiet. But having said that things are selling so viewers appear to be buyers IYSWIM.

Good luck with the revisit. Isn't that the awkward question one

No news here either, all gone deadly quiet this week. :(

At least it means I haven't had to do any tidying! I'm starting to try and get my head around Christmas plans now, since I'm pretty resigned to the fact we're not moving this year either. The house is going to be very crowded!

In the absence of anything else to try at present, I'm chipping away at niggly jobs. Like replacing the soil stack, which functions completely fine but has an unsightly split above the waste level that was pointed out in the survey when we bought 7 years ago.

We didn't see it as an issue or quibble over the price based on it, but in the current financial climate I can see potential buyers using any excuse to try and force the price down. One less worry about further price reductions post-survey (assuming we ever get that far...) if I get it fixed ahead of time!

No viewings here either! That'll be no viewings for two weeks. An wondering about amending price to offers in excess of but am not sure. Good luck with the London viewer Tea and hope your person increases there offer Misfor.

Sorry for typos - fingers and brain not functioning as a team.

Misfor that sounds as though it could be a cheeky first offer (and in this dire economic climate well you can't blame someone for trying!). Good luck with the negotiations - don't take it personally (they're only trying to do the best for their family, as indeed we all are) - I hope you find a mutually acceptable price.

Lots of folks seem to be quieter with viewings - I'm wondering if buyers too are holding off til after Christmas now (or waiting until the hols to have a good look online at what is on the market as there is a glut of supply in many places and it can be tricky not to miss stuff) perhaps some are figuring things will be cheaper in the New Year, others don't want to try to rush to be in before Christmas (given how slow banks are being), or just plain can't be arsed to have to go to lots of viewings over the festive season. Sellers aren't the only ones with families after all.

As we've not had a spring bounce for two years now - there is less of a worry in terms of putting it off as a buyer. It definitely feels like winter is on the way here already. Our market seems to be closing down for the winter. I think we timed it pretty well considering. Also am now so fat and knackered with pregnancy don't think I would have been very enthusiastic with viewings now.

Toomuch I think you're right about 'offers over' in England - it tends to elicit a different sort of bid to the offers over system up here in Scotland.

Well I'm up for £435k and was thinking offers in excess of £425k - opinions welcome. :)

I have always ignored the acronyms around price and just used the price as a point of negotiation. So if its 225 OIRO, OIEO, no offers i'd be expecting to get it around 10% less.

My last next door neighbour thought it would mean he'd get over and tempt a bidding war. He did get three offers 'on at offers over 225' he got offers of 215, 210 and someone unproceedable of 220. This was late last year. He sold for 215.

If it would temp interest would the price you'd except be sufficiently tempting to try a no offers price? If its clearly a really good price maybe people wouldn't negotiate.

Definitely worth doing niggly jobs. It's not just that buyers might use it to drive the price down, it puts people off disproportionately to the scale of the job. Partly because as a buyer you assume it's the tip of the iceberg and for every job you notice before you buy there'll be even more you don't find out about till you move in.

Cuddy, a small price cut together with a change to OIEO tends to put me off because it suggests the seller wouldn't be prepared to take below it so it kind of feels like a price rise rather than a price cut IYSWIM?

Tunip I do know what you mean - I think I'm just grasping at straws now.

To be honest, we've already done pretty much all the niggly jobs that buyers are likely to see. I doubt they'd even notice the downpipe has a split in it!

The survey should notice, however. I fear buyers then demanding £ks off for something that is only about £200 to repair!

A survey is likely to bring up the roof too, as ours did seven years ago. Basically just stating that it's old and will eventually need replacing! We didn't see that as a problem, more the surveyor covering his ass, so didn't renegotiate.

The roof is sound and we have no leaks/damp - the loft is dry as a bone. We had the pointing done and the guttering replaced a few years back, so it has been maintained.

Our neighbour is a builder and he reckoned it'd be £4k to replace the roof, if we ever wanted/needed to. If a buyers survey does flag it up, does that mean we're going to need to reduce the price by an additional £4k? Or, because the roof is sound, do you think we could get away with saying that roof replacement isn't required and therefore give no reduction?

Though I don't know why I'm even worrying about this stuff, as we haven't even got a proceedable offer yet!

As I understand it, you should only expect to have to negotiate on jobs that need to be done in the short term. An old roof that will need replacing one day is just what you would expect from an older house and it's not reasonable to expect a price cut.
Having said that of course, I bet there are buyers who would try it on, and I bet they would get a higher quote than 4k and try and get more off than that.

Marshmallow If people think your bedrooms are too small after having seen them on a floorplan in the agent's listing, it's because you're not presenting them correctly.

I hate giving my work away for free (it's how I make my living, after all, and business is not good because people are not moving), but here are some tips:

Move everything out of the bedrooms other than beds, bedside tables, and wardrobes or chests of drawers. Put it into storage off-site.

Remove everything with a large pattern, especially feature walls, duvet covers, and curtains, because they cover a wide amount of space and give the eye too much to take in at one glance.

Use blankets rather than duvets on beds. This gains 6 inches of visual space. Use tailored valances rather than frilled for the same reason.

If you have fitted furniture, paint it the same colour as the walls.

Take down curtains and replace with blinds installed in the window recess.

We sometimes use 4'6" beds in double bedrooms and 2'6" in single rooms. Wardrobes and drawers with 40cm depth. Trick of the trade, not my fault you didn't take a tape measure on your viewing!

The five best things to spend money on when marketing your house are a professional deep clean from top to bottom including the windows, a gardener, 12 weeks' storage in a depot for all your stuff, cut flowers in the house, and a mini-survey of your own which confirms that your asking price is realistic and you've been transparent about the work required. Your buyer won't trust the survey and will commission their own, but its very existence makes it very difficult to be argued down on price disproportionately.

Thank you 1605. Very useful.

A survey of your own also avoids the fuckwittage guesswork that EAs go in for when pricing. FWIW, I'm not surprised about the variations on an unusual property, 30% variance between highest and lowest valuations is absolutely normal.

Hate OIEO. If you're not prepared to negotiate, don't put your house on the market.

Forgot one of my golden rules above: all the television programmes will tell you to use a mirror in small rooms.

Wrong. Mirrors double a room's contents. Only use them to reflect light from a window.

I also think having a survey of your own done avoids the temptation of thinking along the lines of 'but I need to make x amount of money on this house and the EA promised he could get me that if we put the house on his books' - a survey cuts straight to the point, tells you what the house is worth at this point in time (not what it might have been worth at peak) and what it is realistically likely to sell for, and means you have to face up to a real price sooner rather than later. It also helps with the realisation that 'cheeky bids' might not be that cheeky.

1605 I'd heard about using reduced scale furniture in houses that are dressed (always something that has put me off buying a showhouse to be honest!!) - a friend bought a show home and found that the kitchen units were reduced scale (about 2/3 as deep as normal) to give the illusion of a bigger kitchen. She was well ticked off, but I guess it emphasises the point of doing your own measuring. Maybe that's what all of our keen cupboard opening viewers are checking for

Offers over in Scotland is pretty dead now, most everything is selling under the o/o price. I think if you are having to fiddle with the acronyms on your ad - then the elephant in the room is likely to be the price or the presentation. Only doing something about those is going to sell the house. OIEO sounds like a hard work vendor to me and would put me off.

Had an EA admit to me last week that when going to see a potential seller he just agrees to whatever price they say they want and then guages whether he thinks he can negotiate them down over time.

Seen a few sellers trying to upsize and just putting the price of a 5 bed house they want on to their 3 bed in the hope they will magically get the money they need rather than earn it or borrow it.

TBF, houses at the top of the ladder are selling, and their completion prices are escalating.

Rarity value. There are few really big houses, and yet more and more people have weekend stepkids, need a home office, or need somewhere for elderly family.

Everywhere, or do you mean London/SE?

I have noticed that round me (Yorkshire) although there is a lot of stuff that doesn't move and comes down in price, there seem to be more houses than ever that come on over a million.