Board when selling your house - do you really need it?

[rosieposey]

Im going on the market on Friday hopefully. We have had our house on the market a couple of times now and each time our sale fell through ( in the last two years) I took a 6 month break as had just had DS and now we are ready to do it all again.

This time i don't want a board put up outside, my mum doesn't know we are selling (well she does but for personal reasons i don't want her to know we are selling right now) and she drives past my house a few times a month. Added to this i hate all of the neighbours knowing and asking questions all the time, i would like to just get a sale and for things to look like they are progressing normally before telling anyone.

Lastly there is an identical house in our street which is up for 40k more than ours, they have a driveway and garage whereas we just have a carport but we think they are crazy for putting it up at the price they have epecially given that we have tried to sell twice now and never got above 248k in offers on ours. They have put their house up at 45k more than they paid for it a year ago and thats why they have just reduced by 5k and its still on the market.

Our house is only 3.5 years old and a nice large 5 bed detached but i reckon that the more expensive one which is only a year old (same builder but different phase) might actually help ours to sell as it will make ours good buy considering how much cheaper it is for exactly the same sq footage.

I don't want a board up because i think if the vendors on the other house see ours up for substantially less they might take theirs off and like i said i am hoping they make ours seem like a good buy. We will only be putting it on at the same price as last year and the year before as we just cant seem to break through the dreaded 250k stamp duty thing - no one wants to pay the extra even though the house is probably worth 260/265k

Anyway do you reckon it matters if you don't have a board up? I think most houses are found on the internet anyway right?

We didn't have a board. But the EA didn't do a good job of describing how to find the house on the details so people got lost... We had several no shows, but then again they can't have been that interested if they didn't keep on looking for us (no photo of the house from the direction you would approach it didn't help...)

I think you are doomed if you want £260k. Sorry.

Lobby for stamp duty to be incremental not slab and you may get it then. It really distorts the market.

We enquired about the house we bought because it had a board outside.

It is an extra marketing tool rather than a main one though. If you don't want one start off without one. If it doesn't sell quickly then you could consider having one at a later date.

When we were househunting we'd look for boards going up in the area as sometimes they'd go up before rightmove.

Also, once we'd seen one on rightmove we'd drive along to the street to take a look - the board shows where you are unless you're very recognisable from the rightmove photo.

We didn't have a board for similar reasons to you. We sold in under a week (in london) but ours us the only white terraced house on our street so it would be easy to spot.

Lots of houses that we looked at didn't have boards BUT they were murder to find as the EAs invariably didn't give us numbers or directions.
Fine if you are determined buyers like us (relocating and had to find something asap) but less determined would be put off.
We didn't actually find one of them and as it was a wkend we couldn't check up with the EA as they were shut so we never went.

If you have a fabulous location eg. Close to desirable schools; then it can really help.

However not having a board doesn't mean that your mother/neighbours will not know. For example I get an email once a month telling me about properties for sale in my area. Also gossip in this town is very good about house sales.

When we were looking we did right move then walk round to have a look. If there'd been no board we'd struggle to have a look. We'd probably have still enquired if we really liked it but would put us off tbh. There is one nearby that is on right move but no sign and I'm always slightly unsure if it is or isn't for sale.

Relaxed, we dont want 260 - we will put it up at that looking for offers around 250 which its more than worth ( i know this as we got offers around this last time) its just worth putting something on for about 10k more than you would realistically expect - or so the agent would have us believe anyway!

Bowlersarm i think i will do that - start off without a board then get one if there are any no shows ect - i think our house is pretty easy to spot as its one of 5 of our type of houses in our street but it is really detached with nothing close each side of us -the other ones like ours are a bit more squashed in.

I hate boards too, and didn't have one when I sold a couple of weeks ago. But we are not on a road that anyone would go down unless they lived here. If you are on a main road it's possibly worth it. My parents bought a house out of the blue once because they drove past and saw the sign. Prior to that moment they had had no plans to buy! But you're right, most people will see it in the paper or online.

You don't need a board.

If you really want to sell, it seems you are cutting off quite a few buyers by not having a board though. Not everyone is on the internet night after night you know.

We also thought we could make it not obvious to neighbours that we were selling by not having a board (they were the reason we were) but within days the whole street knew. This was from local press advertising and rightmove so we ended up just getting the board anyway. In our case it helped identify the house as it was a modern detached on an estate full of similar looking homes.