Anyone for a 'trying but failing to sell my house thread'?

[BlardyBlaaaaa]

I'll start...

This time on Monday I was on cloud nine. Just taken on new EA, had one viewing. The couple 'loved our house', put in an offer later, their buyer cash buyer, so all good.

The thought of no more viewings (we were on with online agent before so I had to conduct viewings), no more tidying, no more being in limbo.... Well, guess what? The couple changed their mind about relocating to my town and have retracted their offer, so back to bloody square one again.

Added to that, the EA for the house we want to buy is an arse extraordinaire and never returns my phone calls or emails.

I hate this whole business. Anyone else want to rant with me?

I'm sorry for those struggling to sell but the market has ground to a halt in London. It's not your houses that are the problem at all. Buyers have dried up almost completely. I know because I used to struggle to get a time slot for viewings, now EAs are begging me to view their houses. For example, in February there were 550 properties on the market in my post code, this month there are 830! It's more than the summer slow down: the market is saturated. Only those who have really slashed their prices (by 15-20%) seem to be selling. We put in an offer 25k below asking price in Feb, was rejected. The same house is now reduced in price by 100k. Needless to say, they came back to us but we politely declined to proceed. The house is still unsold.

If you need to sell, please consider all reasonable offers as the market is in serious trouble. I'm sure there weren't this many houses on the market summer 2013, it's not just a seasonal slump.

If anyone wants to check their own area, look under the market trends tab on rightmove to see no. of total and new properties in your postcode. May help you decide your own plan of action. Good luck everyone!

I agree Apatite - all but studio/1 bed flats at the bottom of the market are just not shifting like they were. Things weren't even making it onto right move 2-3 months ago and now I've seen the same properties in our price bracket on for at 6-8 weeks.

We were told by one estate agent £320 no problem, we've sold for £290... we were getting plenty of viewings but only 1 other offer of the same £290. Still back in Jan we would have probably got more like £270 so we're not complaing just glad we've got a very strong buyer.

It's even been on main news that they are now expecting the UK outside of London to have housing market price increase higher than in London so the SE bubble has definitely burst.

Seriously consider changing agent. We changed agent to the ones we bought the house through and who had a lot of sold boards up and they sold it in 10 days. There after sale is crap which is why we didn't want to go with them but in the end they sold it. Also consider if price is right? And if you could go to rented so it's chain free? Helped us saying we were going to rented then put us in a really strong position to buy. Put your rightmove links up? Perhaps you could all help each other on presentation? Maybe something is putting people off?
It will happen! Things have really slowed down recently. X

m.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28774391

Apatite, I can't see the market trends thing on rightmove - I'm looking at their website but on my phone - is it only on desktop site?
In any case, we're in the SW so not as affected by what's going on in London and there are only 2 houses currently for sale in my postcode - ours and one other.
Think our agent is a bit crap but have a 12 week tie-in so will have to wait to do anything about it.

Lizziemint, I think only the desktop site has it, though I've not tried looking for it on the mobile site properly.

The way to get it on the desktop site:

Click "house prices" tab, then "market trends" tab then put in your postcode. You'll get the sold prices up to April (these are the crazy prices people paid earlier in the year coming though!).

Click on the "marketed properties" tab. This will show you the proportion of new and total properties by type of property. Note with horror if the number in your area has shot up (summer is typically a slow time when both buyers AND sellers don't come to the market, if there's a surfeit of sellers, that's a big red flag). Relax if actually your area is trundling along as usual!

Board you made me laugh. Just don't show viewers your special freckle! ;0) we have just reduced our price. I think everyone is on holiday.

Stupid auto correct, I meant Blardy.

Found it on the desktop site apatite, thanks. In my postcode, the overall number has gone down in June/July but the number of 4 beds (which ours is) has gone up very slightly. Not sure what that tells me!

Had our first viewing for a month but not feeling very hopeful. She liked plenty about the house but was concerned about the size of the third bedroom. We have it set up for DS with single bed and she was having trouble visualising a double in there. It will take one and have space for a wardrobe. She wants 3 doubles and an office/4th so I'm thinking that actually rules out quite a few properties. Most modern 4 beds seem to be 2 doubles, 2 singles that I have viewed, unless much more expensive.

Thanks Apatite for the info. Rightmove shows 10% more properties on the market than 6 months ago, which I can live with as two major developments have been started.

hello folks. Just checking in to see if anyone's had any luck.

We're in wet Normandy having left the house immaculate for potential viewings (no easy task when packing too.)

EA emailed me yesterday to say a couple had been round, liked the house but thought it overpriced and might offer us £50k under the asking price! I mean there's a cheeky offer and then there's one that's quite insulting... I feel quite personally affronted.

We politely declined and have heard nothing since.

When will it ever end? Will things really pick up in September?

I moved 18 months ago but I just thought I would share my experience.

Our last house was the first one we had owned and therefore our first experience of selling.
When we decided to sell we got half a dozen or so agents in to value etc. We also gave them our specs for what we wanted. We went with the agents that had sold next door, but they were hopeless. We had few viewings and no offers. However, the whole time we were on with that agents another one of the agents who had been round to value kept contacting us with houses to view.
We changed our agents as soon as we could and went to her. After 6 months on the market, she sold it within 1.
She worked for a regular high street agents, but she was so pro-active.

So I guess what I'm saying is 'try before you buy' with agents. If they keep hassling you to view then you can be sure they would do the same when selling your house.

Thanks Pipbin. Do you mind me asking if you got close to your asking price with your successful EA?

We went for OIEO, and got the exact asking price.

Great, thanks. Think we might adopt this tactic.

She was brilliant. She sold the house to a regular contact of the agency. He was looking to build up a BTL portfolio.

I don't think that we would have sold it by just going through an online only agency.

I recommend finding a personality you get on with, rather than an agency.

Hi can I join? We put our house on the market about 5 weeks ago. Second viewer had 3 viewings and the put in an offer just below asking. Great so we accepted and started looking.

Our buyer then found she couldn't get the mortgage she wanted. No bank would give her a mortgage for less than 20/25k. She changed her offer to reflect the cash deposit she had. It was too low for us to accept so we declined. Apparently she's going to see what happens in the next 6-8 weeks. So we're back on the market and feeling fed up already!

To the Scottish poster above who used Remax and had concerns about paying upfront, most good Scottish Agents do. Certainly paying a marketing fee and home report upfront is quite normal. Yes, the Remax franchise kind of places will defer but the Socttish Solicitor Estate Agency firms who are governed by the Law Society will take fees up front but are governed in what they do so can be a much safer bet when it comes to marketing your home.

I remember your house - in all honesty your photos were your issue.

Just put ours back on the market yesterday with a new agent. So far 120 views on Zoopla.

I'm trying not to stress too much as there does seem to be a glut of properties so although the house is immaculate now, I'm not going to go overboard with fresh flowers etc unless we have a viewing booked.

I understand that formal offers have to be made through agents and so on, but I am just curious if any of you tried to negotiate/discuss directly with buyers? and have that worked out for you? To a certain extent, I expect it to be a useful way to reach agreement between buyers and sellers.

I would never recommend that newstart.

Hi Crutchlow35, thanks for the advice. I kind of feel that it is not the right way to do it, but can not figure out exactly why. Could you please give a bit more insight ?

Because as a seller you can be manipulated into accepting an offer you might turn down if it came through the agent. It might be thousands of pounds but similarly it might be white goods, furnishings etc.

I always advise clients to simply refer buyers back to me if they mention money.