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? :)

Noddy I mean, not oddly!

V true Greeneggs if it looks like a bubble, walks like a bubble etc - it was a bubble - deliberately inflated (or allowed to be inflated) to create a fall sense of wealth (amongst homeowners) to mask a decade of falling wages.

I think there is a good argument that the 'tough times' we are now facing economically are not so much a recession as a return to normal. And as the Bank of England itself said last year, they expect them to last for at least this coming decade - which Mervyn King has christened the 'nasty decade' (aka time to repay debts after living on hock and bubbling asset values for the last decade). All of those folks who used to gloat 'my house earns more a year than me' needed their heads read - that's a bubble!

My genuine sympathies go to those priced out - they didn't cause this mess, they saw none of the benefits yet they are the ones suffering the most. I hope their time comes when they can buy a home of their own.

Folks who are selling, who have a mental figure in their head of 'what their house is worth' so that they don't feel as though they are 'giving it away' (often not based on anything real other than sentiment - i.e. 'we'd like to make £40k profit') are likely to learn, the hard way, that their ultimatums are not as real a barrier as the banks not lending daft LTVs anymore, or the need for the desperate to sell low to avoid bankruptcy.

They'll realise that such an inflated asking price was wishful thinking possible to achieve only during the peak of the bubble, and not based on any economic reality.

Who can be more stubborn? I would argue that ultimately those that CAN'T offer more are in a more powerful economic position that those who would LIKE not to cut their prices. It's choice versus compulsion ultimately. But if sellers don't have to sell then there will be stalemate. However it only takes one forced seller (a divorce, lost job, relocation etc) to set a new low price threshold for a street.

Our EA reckons that 80% of new instructions are from folks downsizing (due to poor pension prospects / annuities, rising bills etc) - think of that - if 80% are downsizing - only 20% are upsizing. That's a hell of a disjoint in supply and demand on the horizon isn't it - when it comes to large family homes, and is not going to end well for the downsizers, regardless of whether or not they 'don't want to give it away'.

YellowWellies - I very much agree with everything you said. The volume of transactions has collapsed because sellers are asking prices based on what they would 'like' or 'need' to get for their house whilst buyers have an absolute limit on what they can offer because of lack of mortgages and low wage rate growth.

The house we offered on last week was exactly this situation. An older couple with no children close to retirement who 'want' £x because they want to buy a cottage in Devon, do a world tour and also give some money to their children. All those things add up to £x and that figure has absolutely nothing to do with what their house is actually worth. They will not accept our offer because it would not allow them to do all the things they have planned.

Their expectations will have to change and that wil take several years. They are the typical downsizer for whom it wil not 'end well' as they will not take our offer which is 15% below their inflated asking price and ultimately end up selling for 25% less 2 - 3 years from now. It happens a lot in our town.

In fact, we offered on a house a few years ago where one of the owners eventually died and teh hosue was finally sold for 5% less than our original offer. Bizarrely, the EA never came back to us.

There is definitely a return to normal going on. I am old enough to remember banks only allowing mortgages of 3.5 x joint salary - asking prices on large family homes though are still based on expectations that a couple will come along with 2 children and be so desperate that they will offer 5x their joint salaries. They can't because banks will not allow it and no matter how much they want that beautiful home.

Incidentally, for those people who are selling on this thread I am not having a go at you. We are all probably in the same boat even though I dont have a hosu eto sell.

The entire problem is getting older 'over housed' sellers to sell family homes at a price that families can now afford in the new reality of the market - not in the bubble conditions of years ago. The market has to clear eventually.

Anyone who is buying for the first time or moving up to a bigger property as their family grows needs house prices to fall. Problem is that older sellers have the ear of Govt and they vote.

Price falls will benefit everyone in the long run

Out of the 4 houses we looked at in the last month, they all had youngish retired couples looking to downsize. Three of the properties had been on the market for months and there was a definite sense that they were priced according to what the sellers 'need' to retire plus what they had paid for the house, rather than what a buyer would pay. To be fair, it's a difficult area to price (not much housing stock, particularly of family 4-bed houses) but the fact they had sat on the market for many months surely is some indication that the price was wrong. One house was over-priced (by our reckoning, given that we've been looking at houses there for 6 months or so) by £100k on a £500k property. I'm not convinced they really wanted to sell.

The feel of the market just seemed so different to London, where the market (in our borough at least) is still very fast, lots of properties moving and therefore it's difficult to over-price as there's so many comparable properties on at the same time.

Some good news from the sticks - we've just had a proceedable offer in only 5% below asking price. Been on the market 4 months and previously had a couple of non-proceedable offers. Potential buyers have 1st time buyers' offer on theirs, so fingers crossed we can proceed without too many glitches.

Things are moving round here. All the ones I've had an eye on for us but not been to look because in no position have sold.

Great news iseen, we've got another viewing scheduled for this morning too, and we're counting down the days until Thursday when we go to closing. The viewing is from a friend bizarrely - which I'm not sure how I feel about... Would it be odd to sell to a friend? I've got to work in the office, so have just told her to let herself in... but have just remembered we need to hoover, put the washing away and make the bed - arse.

Beta some great points there. Indeed sellers future plans are no business of buyers, and to expect them to pay for it is just greed - I'd like to get a ferrari and world cruise from selling our house - but m'eh in this market - what I'd like doesn't come into it. Hard economic reality will trump fluffy wishful thinking.

I do see a pinch point and scrap between downsizers and upsizing families for three bed houses - given that the downsizers who came to view our place were thinking that two bedrooms would be too small for the two of them and considered three beds a minimum (I think a certain generation has got used to having much much more space than the rest of us). Although if there is a dash for the exits from big family homes as energy prices rise - it could mean that the market is disjointed and the difference between unpopular big houses and more popular modest houses becomes compressed.

You have described my neighbours exactly!
They want to move to a seaside town and need xxxx amount to do so.
Shame we bought our identical house 6 moths ago for £30k less than they are asking!
There are bigger houses with garages for sale only streets away for the same price!

Selling to a friend is an interesting one.... but a buyer is a buyer?

It's a 3 bed we're selling. One sold round the corner a couple of weeks ago for just £1k more than we've been offered. There are 2 new build developments within a mile in similar price brackets. What you're not getting with those is a garage nor more than handkerchief garden.

This is a very interesting thread - DH and I will be downsizers in another couple of years. We will be doing some work on our house and if we can get what we want we will downsize, but if we can't then we will stay put and enjoy it ourselves. The point is that we won't want to sell for less than £x not because we can't look ahead and see he house might be worth still less in years to come but because we are assessing one set of pleasures ( loft flat and lots of hols) against another (living in a house we love and having time to garden etc). I don't think there is an answer to this problem for buyers trading up.

No I think you're right higgle I think the market will make the decisions for a lot of people but until then lots of folks will be weighing up the pros and cons as you say. If austerity bites and the current benefits which allow pensioners to afford to stay in big homes they couldn't afford to heat on their own (without the winter fuel allowance for example) are cut - and it's looking increasingly that way, and if fuel prices continue to rise and the market continues to fall, I think lots of people will decide that downsizing might offer them a less stressful life. Especially as rising costs for repairs etc continue.

It's funny isn't it - it would be ludicrous if someone who had had say dot com shares and didn't sell them before the crash, was still insisting they were worth dotcom bubble prices - we'd all tell them they were mad. But that's exactly what the 'not going to give it away' crowd are doing with their houses - they missed the peak but aren't willing to accept the new reality. I guess it's the emotional attachment. But yes when we have looked at places and the buyer has priced in the equity they withdrew for a new car or kitchen - well unless they are going to throw in the car - we're not paying for it, is my rule.

Friend's viewing went well. Am trying to wrack my brains as to whether there are knickers and socks on the bedroom floor from going to bed last night. Classy bird eh? Hey ho she might have got a more 'realistic' viewing than most...

I know it is either an investment so you take the ups with the downs or it is a home and you live in it.TV property shows have sold a dream of £££ easily made and people can't let go.It is over even though most people esp agents can't admit it

Adding insult to injury, we had a flyer through the door this morning "Join us on 29th and 30th September for our Home buyers' event at xxx sales centre ... Reserve this weekend and receive a superb Sony entertainment package: 42" HD LED TV, DVD Home Cinema system, and HD digital recorder".

EAs are just as unrealistic.

I rang the selling agent on the house we offered on. Told him the hosue was overpriced as it was on at only 50k less than a much larger house at the end of the terrace.

He argued that the house seller at the end of the terrace had accepted a lower price for 'a quick sale'. I told him I knew that it had taken 3 years to sell so hardly a quick sale.

I think the slow pace of the market also has to be factored in - it gives buyers much more time to research their potential purchase. In the boom you would be rushed into making an offer as the EA would be making out that there were two or three other parties interested and you had to offer today (often not even subject to survey!). Now they can't do that.

And when buyers have time to do research they can figure out a) what the vendor bought for and when and b) what they have done to the house (and note if there is a disconnect between the two sums) and c) what has happened to regional prices and d) other recent sold prices. And make an informed offer accordingly. This isn't helping sellers achieve the prices they want if they are unrealistic. Pace of the market is another key feature to consider.

YellowWellies - those steps a - d are precisely the ones I went through with the house I made the offer on. It makes no difference. The sellers have been led to believe prices have gone up by the EA when in fact they have gone down in our area over the last 7 years.

I set out my calculations in a letter with evidence from Land Registry and other house price indices, added estimates for the work that had been done. It was the calculation the EA should have done when talking to his seller.

Fact is that EAs simply quote a high price to a seller to get them to sign up and then leave them to sweat on the market for years. Bad for every one.

I am not even trying to get a bargain, only pay the actual fair market value based on real transactions.

If they come back in 6 months my offer will be lower.

I have been looking to buy since last year november onwards. Most places I have viewed which subsequently sold re appeared within 6 weeks or so. We made about 3 or 4 offers all refused 3 of them came back to us. There is limited finance for people without a decent deposit and a spotless credit check so this will push prices down.

Well we had an offer today but at £55k below! I have declined and will see if they come back or not. I am flexible but not that flexible. It's almost certain that we would not get this amount off when we buy.

What is the % though you may be surprised If you will take a reduction so will others.Do you have a minimum?

87%. In an ideal world i would like 96%. I rather wish I hadn't spent £40k on the loft conversion as a similar house (without any work) sold for about the price I am looking to achieve.

I have made enquiries about a house we are interested in to see how flexible they are.

Well it appears the vendors of the house I am interested in are really not flexible. They have an offer of £10k under the asking price on the table but looks like they are holding out for more. This would make our downsizing exercise pointless.

Ah if you are downsizing you can'r really expect the same reduction. What about renting for a year?