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 I can kind of see what you mean with regard to decorating/kitchen design etc, but surely you would expect money to be taken off the 'standard' price if a house needed a new boiler/had a really skanky old kitchen/a leaky roof etc? Identical flats on this street are going for similar amounts so it's not like we're massively overpriced. For example, the house we're hoping to buy is priced at around £40k less than similar houses as it needs a new kitchen, the bathroom to be completely reworked, needs new plastering etc. You wouldn't say that once we've done all that work we should sell it again at the price we paid for it, would you?

Hmmm we're on the market for 10k under our break even point after fitting and extending a new bathroom, installing a heating system and brand new radiators and hot water tank, insulating the walls, buying an additional 1/4 acre of land to ensure that our septic and garage were on land owned by us (rather than the next door farm - gotta love Orkney deeds!!!) and redecorating from top to bottom of the entire house. Our agent was very clear - the current market won't pay for improvement works. I mean it's not as if we did them for someone elses' benefit or to the buyers taste - we did it for ourselves to make the house nicer whilst we lived here. The time for improvements being an investment is long past. In fact the time for houses to be an investment seems to be gone - if folks wanted peak 2007 sale prices they should have sold then. We were humming and hawwing about doing the kitchen but surveyor friends were clear - you won't get even half your money back - so just leave it to the buyer to do to their own taste.

If the market had fallen Woodlands yes you could easily do all that work to the house you are proposing buying and it could still be worth less than you paid for it as a wreck. :( we're not considering a fixer upper when we look to enter the market again next year (largely because I'm preggers and the thought of living in a building site again is hellish), but might if it were our 'forever' house - however if we knew that we might want to sell in a shortish period i.e. less than 5-10 years I wouldn't touch a fixer upper as you'll not cover costs IMHO.

Whoa whoa whoa... This thread is for supporting sellers through the awkwardness of dealing with EAs, prepping for viewings, coping with periods of silence etc. Not for tarring sellers with the brush of ?If you can?t sell you?re priced too high!? or ?People shouldn't pay for your X, Y, Z!?. It?s right there on the tin in the intro.

We're not all evil money-grubbers, you know. And all markets are not created equal. If you need a buyers support thread for where the sellers you're dealing with are overpriced and/or refusing to negotiate, then go and make one. This is the sellers support!

Very at the idea of all the upside-down St.Joseph's being buried. Not something we're intending to resort to... Not least because our front garden is concrete - there'd be no-where to put him!

Got our viewing this afternoon, left the house immaculate this morning. I really hope she likes it! And offers asking price.

I just dont think the current market is bouyant enough to pay for improvements, however much they are needed.

Good luck with the viewing! No need of a buyers support thread here as to quote Dragons' Den - we're out (to rented for a while!). Apologies if a bit doom and gloom - I think a bit of realistic market analysis is helpful (even if its not what we want to hear, I could have throttled my surveyor but with closing and a sale in sight I'm grateful now) I suppose how keen folks are to sell will determine their actions - we just can't at this point in our life sit on the market for years - as we'll be far too cramped with Junior arriving and we want to be back further south closer to family. I guess it depends on how much folks want life to move on or whether they can sit and wait for a dream buyer. We just want sold quick and for as good a price as we can - and looking at the long term trends (up here in this market!) that seems to be bail out quick hence St Joseph, and thinking about putting a cork up my cat's arse.....

Erm....I was a seller a year ago.
We dropped our price by £20k and low and behold we got a chain free cash buyer in 3 days.
but if you dont want to hear that, fine,
I'm off.

Well, that was a fantastic result for you Badvoc. :)

Meanwhile we've dropped our price by £20k and are still waiting, so unfortunately it doesn't seem like that's the magic solution for everyone!

about corking your cat, YellowWellies!

I hope it all works out for you.
Its a soul destroying business., thats for sure.

Was very pleased to come home just to see that next doors gardener has trimmed our front bushes - he hoped I didn't mind and said he was just told to tidy the bushes up!!! They l

Bl

Bloody phone ... Anyway great timing for our Saturday viewing!

Well, we'll see - we're not desperate to move so if we don't get a decent offer we'll hang on. A very similar flat a few doors down recently sold very quickly for about the amount we're looking for, and nothing on our road hangs about for long, so I'm quietly confident. We do need more space but if we can't move and the market crashes we'll simply do a loft conversion. We would have considered that anyway but we know we wouldn't get our money back for that as people won't pay over the stamp duty threshold.

Good to hear about the hedge trimming, CuddyMum! Our downstairs neighbour has just done our (joint) hedge and it now has no leaves on it! Ah well.

Hahah brilliant! I wonder if I can somehow divert a cleaner from somewhere to do my house before the viewings tomorrow as I'm having a can't be arsed / fat preggers / shirking from home day.... Oh god hurry up closing date and hopeful sale, am normally such a slattern - I am so looking forward to not having to clean with more than a monthly frequency again....

As to Badvoc dropping by £20k I would say it depends on your market as Spirael says. (I guess it also depends on whether it's 20k off a 500k house which is a 4% reduction so small beer in some areas where prices are falling that every two months, or 20k off a 100k house which is 20% and probably more tempting to buyers but scary for the poor seller!).

I think it's very local and some of us will have to be more realistic than others. Some places are still seeing rising prices (some but not all of London), but other markets are really price sensitive at the mo' (check the RICS report to read more on yours) - sadly for us, ours is very price sensitive - a similarish 2 bed house to ours (not quite as good views but still nice, equally done up, more land, more outbuildings, but perhaps to an older persons' tastes) which is on the market for only 10k more than us has sat there for eight months with NO viewings whereas we've had 11 and have 3 more lined up and are going to closing after only a fortnight on the market. It's with exactly the same agent, the particulars look nice (and whilst I don't think it's as nice as ours, I'm biased to love my own house more and recognise that to someone else they probably look equally nice). I can't believe that such a small difference in price (about 7% of asking) can make such a big difference. To us that amount of money was worth a quick move - but I recognise that for other people that amount of money is a make or break.

The flurry of interest in ours has made me wonder if we underpriced and whether we should have added 5k onto the asking (which I would have liked but took professional advice from a couple of surveyor friends against this) but I wonder if that would have priced us out entirely. At least this way we stand a chance of a bidding war and getting over the asking price.

Maybe.... Roll on Thursday! At least we'll know then.

For those of you with more staying power in this market determined to get your ideal price - good for you. You have much more patience (and love of cleaning) than me!!!

Off to clean now (after my Crunchie and coffee). Good luck for your viewing Spirael :)

And good luck YellowWellies for Thursday.

Hi, can I join in? We've had our house on the market for about 7 weeks now. No viewings for the first 6 weeks but 3 have materialised in the last week. I followed the list of what not to do when showing someone round the house for the first viewing so let DH take over for the last two :) Haven't heard a peep from any of them since so I imagine that's not good news.

As for pricing, I think we overpriced ours but it's difficult to gauge because buyers seem to expect to knock a certain amount off the asking price. We would be happy to get (and judging by recent sales nearby, would be reasonable to get) 20k less than we've marketed for so we sort of took that into account when setting the price. Not sure if that's the right strategy however.

Allbelly - I think it's a tough one to call - so far by potentially underpricing we seem to have rumours of offers over our asking price. We shall have to see on Thursday when we go to closing.

Whether it's a bidding war for a 'cheap' house or folk making 'cheeky offers' on 'overpriced' houses - the market will find it's balance I guess. A house is only worth what someone is willing to pay as the saying goes.

Good luck and welcome!!! I'm worrying that I'm sounding a bit like Eeyore (gloomy gloomy) on here because I'm pretty pessimistic on the market (rather I think the economy is totally jeffed!!! )but honestly I'm a fairly cheerful soul in real life. Also we're hoping to upsize so a falling market actually is really good for us as the next step gets closer and we won't need to get a scarily big mortgage (apologies to those downsizing for whom a falling market is not good).

I've been quite gloomy about our chances of selling, I'm driving DH mad with my complaints I think. Having said that, since I first posted the EA have been on the phone arranging a second viewing so maybe it's not all bad!

We're also upsizing, well, probably the same size but in a better area, so can also see that a falling market won't really affect us negatively.

I'm on tenterhooks waiting to exchange, should have happened 2 days ago but bloody HSBC lawyers being picky.

Good luck every one else :)

I've been driving DH mad as the anti-clutter Nazi. The poor guy can barely take his shoes off let alone leave a book lying somewhere without me tidying hiding it. I blame nesting instincts combined with a desire for a quick sale so I can stop fannying around pretending I live in a clean, tidy and hygenic way.

Good luck Bumbez!

Thanks for the recommendation of HG Mould Spray, Spirael! It has indeed worked wonders.

What is this mould spray of which you speak?
(not a seller yet but will be in a year or two)

Spirael recommended it further up the thread to deal with our mouldy grout/sealant in the bathroom (to at least make it look nice at first glance even though it all needs ripped out really). I got it in Homebase (£5.49, ouch!) yesterday. I have tried spraying with bleach before and also Cilit Bang mould remover spray but neither had much effect. However this stuff really did the trick - I sprayed it on, left it for 30 mins and then rinsed off. The vapours were really getting up my throat - powerful stuff and needs lots of ventilation!

It's this stuff, Tunip. Though you can get it from other places too... Homebase, B&Q, Robert Dyas. There are some sellers on Amazon as well.

It's amazing stuff, clears bathroom mould from dirty grout and sealant with minimal effort.

It does make your bathroom smell like a swimming pool for the next day or two, however. I quite like it.

X post, Woodlands.