Opinions on how our house sale is going

[LittlePickleHead]

I'd just like to know whether our attempt to sell our flat is faltering, or if we should stick at it. I'm starting to get disillusioned but there are a few reasons for that

We are trying to sell a 2 bed garden flat is SE London. We have now been on for exactly 3 weeks. We had 4 different agents round, who all gave us the same valuation of £280k to achieve upwards of £265k. I checked other properties and can see why they gave this valuation based on our area and size - similar properties in nicer roads are actually being sold for closer to £300k so it seemed reasonable. We signed up with the market leader, and at the last minute he said we should try £285k. I was wary as I know this puts it into a different search bracket on rightmove but he was very convincing so we did it.

Since going on the market we have had around 12 viewings, 1 second viewing, and two offers of £250k (which we can't afford to accept). Viewings are now slowing down - there was one tonight (no feedback as yet) but no more booked in. Feedback has been mostly positive, negatives have been too small (it's actually a good size, two double rooms and 16 foot lounge, all on the web so shouldn't be a surprise) and one person said that they didn't like it being in the basement, obviously not something we can change.

Not sure where to go from here. As the market is still quite fast moving in our area it was made clear that if we didn't get a sale within the first 5-6 weeks it would be very tough.

Since going on the market I've found out I'm pregnant so the move is getting more urgent as we already have DD aged 3 and we are really stuck for storage (we've decluttered for the viewings and most of it is with relatives at the moment to try and give the illusion of space).

I'm thinking we should change the price to oiro £275k in the hope we get more people through the door? In order to fund the move we can't accept anything less than £270k, possibly £265k at a push.

Is there hope? Should we keep going? Or take it off the market, do the few bits I'd still like to do (add a fireplace, some built in wardrobes in the bedroom and sort out a small damp problem (not apparent but will be picked up in a survey) and then try again the spring with a lower initial asking price and hope we have more luck?

All opinions very gratefully received :)

Hi. I know selling can be frustrating - we give a lot of advice to friends, families and colleagues on buying and renting - and they too are just as stressful! We know alot of agents so let me suggest the following:

1. Stick with it. Ask for viewing feedback, if there are small changes you can make (tidying up, moving a piece of furniture out to make the place look bigger) then do so.

1. People buy a lifestyle, not a property. If you have a specific type of viewer (young couples, singles) and especially if they are a specific age range, add a couple of 'casual' items to make them 'feel at home.'

- Magazines are easiest (leave a copy of Vogue, GQ, Grazia, whatever you think suits on a table or worktop) - If you have a lot of singles viewing, clear away kids toys before the next viewings (no need to hide them, neatly away in a corner works) - Depersonalise... sometimes removing personal photos lets a viewer see themselves in the property easier

1. When does your contract stop being exclusive? Usually after 4 - 12 weeks you can introduce another agent. 2 weeks before this, tell your current agent you will be doing so - this often gives them a push. Then do one of these things:

A. Instruct a new agent and drop the price to £275k. Be firm with both agents that you won't accept less than £270k.

B. Pull the property off the market for 2 weeks and relist with a new agent at £275k - this often makes the property appear new, especially to those just starting to look.

1. How does your property appear in the agents website and on portals like Rightmove. If the pictures look average or the floorplan is not quite right make sure the new agent knows this.

1. Stick to the price you need and keep making positive pictures in your mind about selling at a good price - trust me, it works :)

1. This site has some extra tips that I think are useful (especially the plant pots one!) www.bbc.co.uk/homes/property/selling_sellingtips.shtml

I came across this site on MoneySavingExpert, londonandproperty.com/ , they are more oriented for buyers or renters, but their viewing checklist ( londonandproperty.com/buyers-viewing-checklist/ ) is really detailed and I would think its worth reading and 'reverse engineering' - i.e. if your property ticks the boxes on these things then point them out to buyers - they'll be impressed you are so thorough!

Also look on www.Zoopla.co.uk for 'sold house prices' to ensure you know what prices are being achieved in your street and close-by (results are 3 months old).

1. I wouldn't bother fixing the damp - it's a common thing to come up, just offer to knock the cost off the agreed price (as long as its above your minimum price). Hook the buyer first!

Best of Luck!

Jess

I think it depends how long you're prepared to wait. If you want to sell and move on with your life, do what you can to make the flat attractive to viewers and drop the price. If you've had two offers at £250k mark, then that's a good indication of what the market is prepared to pay. I don't think a £10k reduction is going to make that much of a difference tbh.

I also disagree that changing agents etc makes a difference - prospective viewers do their research and all these details are available on Rightmove.

Take the 250 I don,t think you will get more in his market. I think you will get offered that anyway at 275.

suebfg - unfortunately that's what I fear, although there are definitely properties that are going for higher than this. I did read that on average it takes 15 viewings and 2 cheeky offers to get a decent offer, so maybe we are nearly there? If not, we have no choice but to stay. it's not being greedy, its just the fact that the difference in price between houses and flats has expanded so much we need as much profit as we can to move. Obviously being so close to the stamp duty level is an issue.

Jess - thanks for all your advice, I'm going to have a thorough read and digest it all. We've done nearly all we can for the moment (you wouldn't know from the ea photos there is a child living here, we've depersonalised, it's light and airy and immaculate when we have viewings). A big difference i've noticed with the properties that are going is they have a fireplace (ours is a blank chimney breast). Seems like a silly thing, but I'm wondering if it will help make it more 'desirable'?

Anyway, we'll give it a couple of weeks, but I'm wondering if we;ve missed our chance for now and we should take it off the market and try again in spring. Or just get our head around the fact that we will need to be a family of 4 in the flat. It's doable, just not ideal.

x-post noddy - £250k not an option as I've just explained. we would have to stay. House prices have risen by £50k in this area in the past 6 months - flats obviously not following suit :(

I didn't realise that the stamp duty threshold is at £250k. Therein lies part of the problem. Unless viewers think your house is valued at well over the threshold, you will get offers at or just below the threshold.

You might get the occasional new viewer although I think most interest is when the property is first marketed. Or someone might come back who has viewed before. However, I really do think that a price reduction is the only way to secure a sale and if you drop to £270k, you are even more likely to get the offers at or below the £250k threshold.

Also, unless you are actually viewing the other houses available on the market, it's hard for sellers to gauge the value of other houses compared to theirs. Buyers go round a number of houses and get a feel for what a house is worth compared to others. Some houses/flats are just more desirable than others because of their position/natural light/layout etc and therefore command higher prices.

Do all EAs talk crap then? Why would they want to have us on their books if they didn't think they would get the price they've given us? I mean we have been clear on our minimum sale price, so if we don't sell then we've just cost them money. They all seemed to keen to have us on their books so it seems odd. But I guess there are not many first time buyers around at the moment, so they probably have their pick of the bunch.

It's depressing as we put it on the market due to the optimism of the EAs. On the plus, if we do stay we could save a massive chunk in the next year so if we could hold out that long we could probably sell for less. starting to freak out about the baby though - if its hard to sell now, surely it would be even harder with the main bedroom cluttered with a cot and all the other paraphernalia a baby comes with?

EAs are all about the number of properties they have on their books. They will suggest a high price to get you with them, let the listing fester at too high a price for 6 months then suggest that factors outside their control (weather, Olympics, leaves in the wind) mean you should consider dropping the price.

Note, I'm not saying you are priced too high (I've no idea about your area).

Ironically if your flat has been priced higher, you might have got less viewings, but if an offer did materialise it would have been less likely to drop to the stamp threshold.

If you would prefer to stay where you are than sell at 250k then I would not reduce further. Anything closer to 250 will make it even more likely that people will aim for the stamp threshold.

You could try the other options such as "offers over 265" or "fixed price 270". Popular with some. They put me off to be honest but maybe they work with others.

Agree with others that the stamp duty threshold will be a difficult one to break. It would probably take longer than next year to overcome the price inertia that it causes.

Other similar sized flats might be going for more - but are they basements? Only one might have mentioned it but it will play a big part i suspect.

Think you either have to sell now at 250k or sit tight for a few years and accept it could be longer if the london market stalls.

Good luck

If you have the time or inclination, have a look at property snake and it will show you the reductions in sale listings in your area. In our area for example, there was a house originally marketed at £600k, now reduced over the months to £470k, although the general reduction in prices seems around the 12% mark.

Estate agents do lead vendors up the garden path to get you on their books. Perhaps the incremental costs of marketing additional properties doesn't make much difference to them.

Your best indication of the value of your flat is value of previous flats sold in the last 12 months or so - anything sold in 2007 generally will be worth less now. Again, there are loads of resources to help - check out moneysavingexpert.com

IMO period features are a big selling point so I think you should put a fireplace in particularly as you have noticed all the sold properties have them.

We did - found a Victorian one online £100 my Dh fitted it, it made a bog standard room look really lovely. Congratulations btw :)

I now feel thoroughly depressed and utterly trapped. The reason we waited so long or dc2 was because of the house situation, but the gap was getting larger and I honestly thought we would be able to move. It happened first time which we weren't expecting.

If we sell for £250k the most we could probably buy for is £300k, but that would be using all our savings and leaving us with no safety net or money for any work that needs doing. That's quite aside from the fact that £300k won't get us much, especially now we have schools to consider. We've already tried to rent in order to rent somewhere bigger and that fell through as we'd have to change to a btl mortgage which would be more than the rent we could charge.

I feel like an idiot and want to stop it all now. I know there are many in our position, but the thing that gets to me is that dh saved for 8 years to get the £25k 10% deposit on this place. If he had instead got a 100% mortgage 5 years earlier we would have a lot more equity and be in a stronger position. Just having a rant now, I know there isn't really any advice and we'll have to suck it up!

Look at this thread here - the OP had a similar problem. I remember that she did get lots of offers at £250 and did eventually sell, but I can't recall whether it was at £250 or higher. She's still around so might be able to update you!

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/property/a1522200-stamp-duty-pricing-problem-Reckon-we-fit-in-that-no-man-s-land

Thanks tedglenn- I could have written that same post word for word!

The offers are sticking at £250k because of the stamp duty change from 1% to 3% at that point. You can't do anything about this.

I'm in the same boat

Is there another way such as another cheaper area you could move to.
I live 30 miles out of London on the high speed train line (less than 30mins to kingsX) and you can get 3 bed houses for well under 200,000.
There are disadvantages but many advantages as well.

Katcat - we may have to consider this. I feel gutted about leaving the network we have built up, but now space and schools are starting to win, especially since we have a deadline of the new arrival. Where abouts are you (PM me if you don't want to say on the thread)? I definitely need somewhere easy to make friends.

The other properties that are selling at £280-£300k seem to have the advantage of slightly more desirable location, and ground floor rather than basement (although we have direct access to our own garden, offstreet parking and our own entrance, which the others do not have). We have tried to bring as much light as possible into the flat, so it doesn't appear dark for being basement, but I guess some people prefer to be higher up and sacrifice direct garden access.

Is there any way of adapting the space to suit with renovation as you like the area so much?

noddy - unfortunatley not. The way it is laid out means there is no way of extending at all, and there isn't really any way to change the layout either. I think the only thing we could do is rethink the kind of place we want to live in (i.e. 3 bed flat or 2 bed house possibly) to stay in the area. Its hard though - if you are spending £15k on stamp duty and fees I do feel like it has to be something you love - especially as it will take a very long time to make that money back in this market.

Couldn't you try to sell at £275,000 on the basis that you would pay the stamp duty? That way you would net £266,750 and the buyer would be saving £8,250 and getting a flat in the next bracket up re quality too. I would have thought that estate agents would have all sorts of tips to help sell properties blighted by the step up to 3% at £250,000.

Do you have a floorplan? I do this for a living and often re jig spaces to suit even when people think no. If there are 2 doubles and a garden isn't it big enough?

The main issue for us is that there is not enough storage (although we could add alcove wardrobes to the bedroom to help), the access to the garden is via a side passage, so DD can't play outside while I am inside doing stuff, and the main thing is the fact we are possibly going to be slightly out of catchment of all the schools near us (we are applying for DD to start next year). This is main reason for moving, space wise we could get by though I have nowhere to put anything any more. I'll PM you a link to take a look.

Don't give up... three weeks isn't long! A few years ago, we were trying to sell a house for £265k, and eventually accepted an offer for £256k - the stamp duty threshold is a PITA, but it isn't impossible to get an offer a little above.

I just wanted to agree with bradbourne that it's very early to give up hope - 2 offers in 3 weeks is very positive, not something to depress you! It shows you have a property which someone will want to buy. Yes, the £250k stamp duty threshold is an issue, but if you're prepared to wait it out for a while you may break it.

Alternatively, if you really need to move you may be better off in the long run taking £250k now and renting for a while. It will allow you to build up a bigger deposit for your next purchase, put you in a strong position as a buyer, and give you a chance to see what property prices are doing next. Don't be swayed too much by what you think other flats/houses are selling for - the reality could be very different from their asking prices. You may also be surprised at how much you can negotiate off your next purchase - accepting £20k less than your current "bottom line" may not limit you that much. It's a very small discount in the grand scheme of things.

It sounds like it's not going too badly to me with 2 offers. However, what about getting a diplomatic friend round to give you a few ideas on how you can make it really stand out against the other properties at the same price? I know from personal experience that other people are better at seeing things that could be cheaply and easily done to make your house more appealing. We had a house on the market for 6 months once, then bought a new rug, and got two good offers. Could have been luck, but I don't think so!