Listing, viewings and offers thread 3!

[Fortheloveofscience]

We filled up our old one, hoping I'm not posting out of turn by starting the next, it's the only thing keeping me from going nuts with the endless cycle of no viewings - viewings - feedback - no offer - no viewings - viewings etc!

Hope this is the thread where we all sell and get our dream houses. I'm working from home and doing 'backseat cleaning' - nagging my poor OH who has the day off to do everything for our second viewing this afternoon from the only couple to have shown serious interest.

Thanks LDMJ, that's exactly it - we are not going to sink, but we are not swimming as comfortably as we were!

We are very happy in our new house, we just need to sell the old one...

Can I ask for a bit of advice? We found a house we like and we're getting ready to put in an offer. House is on for £230k, estate agent told us it's been on the market since November last year and they declined two offers. Last offer 4 months ago, he wouldn't tell us how much. The thing is, if we can get it for up £215k, we're mortgage free. So, my suggestion to DH was that we offer £210k and say we can go up but we would then need a mortgage. Would that be enough to persuade you as a seller to accept a slightly lower offer? Or would you prefer nearer FAP with a mortgage?

The house will need an extension eventually, but we're not finding anything we like at the top end of our budget, so we thought we would look for a decent, if a bit smaller than we wanted, house and extend it ourselves. Does that sound like a sensible move? DH seems to think I would like a project I totally have not yet drawn plans, sections, elevations, but I worry we will end up putting it off indefinitely and end up living forever in an ugly house.

And to everyone who has had a shit few days/weeks. In Brazilian superstition, August is traditionally a bad month - or so says my granny - this too shall pass

LinaBo - Just a thought (you may have already done this) but is it worth speaking to the planning department at your council to get some provisional ideas as to if your extension plans will get approval? It would be awful to move in with plans to extend and then find out you can't get planning permission.

As for the offer, 210k is quite a drop from 230k. How inclined the vendors are to drop to that I guess depends on how keen they are to sell quickly rather than get near the FAP, but my inclination is if that they've already declined two offers they're probably are looking for something nearer to the FAP, but there's no harm in trying. Good luck!

LazyDailyMailJournos I appreciate you've probably thought of this, but have you considered if there are any ways to get some money back out of your house whilst it's on the market. Maybe rent the driveway on a temporary basis, or use Airbnb to let it out for the odd weekend or something?

Kitkat, the EA said the planners can be a bit 'fickle' - his word! - but next door has done very very similar so I suppose they can't say no? That's what we were counting on. I think I will have word anyway, thanks for the advice, I really didn't think about talking to them myself.

KitKat it's us that has an unsold house but we have no drive and it's unfurnished so we can't get much from it.

Lina being honest, I'm wary of cash buyers because they have less skin in the game until exchange of contracts. With a mortgage needed you have a bit of comfort that the buyer is having to go through the application and pay for the valuation - which means they have a bit more invested from an early stage. I know it's no guarantee that they won't change their mind and pull out, but someone that's spending money from week one feels like a slightly safer bet.

Based on my recent experience of trying to negotiate with two (yes two!) sets of vendors who had both been on the market for over a year, don't fall into the trap of assuming that time on the market will make them more motivated. In my case it became apparent that both sets of vendors had been on the market for so long because they were completely unwilling to negotiate or be even a tiny bit flexible. If the agent has advised that they have already turned down two offers then I'd be worried about their willingness to negotiate - which I think is a reasonable part of the process regardless of how long you've been trying to sell!!

In your shoes I would ask the agent what their bottom line figure is - and make it clear that you don't consider that the asking price is 'it', given how long they have been trying to sell. You can then weigh up whether you want to go back and sweeten the deal by pointing out that you can trim off at least 30 days from the transaction if the price means that you don't need a mortgage. However whether this suits the vendors depends on what they're planning to do - if they need to find somewhere else then they may not want a very quick sale!

Thanks, Kitkat and Lazy - that's exactly the kind of insightful opinions I was looking for. I'm trying to find a balance between the most positive financial outcome for us and not offending the sellers to the point where they refuse to deal with us. EA is not sure what's they position re moving, all he knows is that it was an investment property but that the owner's mother has been living in it - so he doesn't really know if they need to find something but he said he would ask.

We got our sale's draft contract today - I'm terribly stressed about the possibility of losing our buyer if we don't find something quick enough (even though I know we could lose them at any time for any reason). Houses in our estate are just not selling and the other 3 beds have been on the market since March. Plus I've already rescued all my clutter from Big Yellow.

Oh Lina I can really sympathise; the stress is so horrid. It's where were for the last fortnight - that sick panic about realising the sale is ticking along yet you can't find anywhere and you're terrified of losing your buyers. And the places you find all seem to be marketed by vendors who are completely unwilling to negotiate or even attempt to be realistic about their expectations...

I'd turn up the pressure on the agent, as they should absolutely 100% know what the vendors are planning to do - how can they not?! It's one of the first questions that I was asked when they came round to do the valuation!

Same here Lazy. In fact when we got our offer and refused the first one they asked what we wanted to take it off the market. We told them and they came back within an hour with the offer we wanted. If the vendors are set in fap the EA should know. When we first offered on the house we have been accepted on they told us straight away our first offer would be too low.

I just find it baffling that the agent is saying they don't know. Don't get me wrong - I have a list of people and companies that have been inept or incompetent (and it's rapidly getting longer!), but this is basic stuff.

Our agent knew from the day we instructed them:
-What our plans were
-Where we were planning to move to and how quickly we wanted to proceed
-What type of buyers we'd prefer
-What our asking price expectations and absolute bottom line was.

I agree, he must know. Maybe he's trying to see how interested we really are first? As obviously previous offers have gone nowhere.

Husband has already hinted we're putting an offer in on Monday, but I've now suggested he gives him a ring and have a talk about minimum expectations and the seller's plans.

Drspouse - sorry I meant to address my last comment to you. My brain has melted from two small children and lack of sleep! But I'm sorry that there's not much opportunity to re-coup some money from your old house at the moment.

Good luck LinaBo getting your offer accepted.

We have viewed a total of 5 houses today over two different towns (knackered now)! I think it's clarified for us which town we prefer, and the three we viewed in our preferred town had two houses that we both really liked. One of those though would be a bit of a 'project' which we originally said we didn't want, but it's under budget and you could see what a good house you would end up with if you spent some time and about 20k on it. The other house we liked has really lovely sized rooms, a big garden and was in a great location; but didn't have a second loo / bathroom, and only parking for a single car with on-street parking being a bit of a nightmare due to lots of double yellow lines, but it had a really nice feel about it. Obviously though both houses could sell before we get a buyer, so I think we're trying not to get too attached to either of them.

Lina I am a definite exponent of the 'be direct' approach - and make it clear you aren't interested in 3874545 rounds of going backwards and forwards. They've been on the market for a while - do they want to sell or not? Mind you I have been dicked around by so many estate agents in the last 2 months that I plan to never have anything to do with their industry ever again

Kitkat it's definitely a good idea not to get attached before you're in a position to proceed. From the sounds of it I'd go for the first one, unless the parking issues at the second could be resolved? If you ever need to re-sell then parking is a big issue for lots of people so I'd definitely want to be mindful of that.

I think I might have found out why they have turned down the previous offers: DH and I were having a nosey and wanted to know how much they bought the house for, but no info on zoopla/RM/open land registry. Land Registry says info available on the title register, so I bought it. Turns out the mortgage company has put a charge on the title. Is it as bad as it sounds? The title doesn't say how much or why they put they charge, just that the owner needs their permission to sell (unless I misunderstood it). Should we ask EA to clarify? Argh!

LinaBo, I think any mortgaged property has a charge against it (as a 1st dips kind of thing) from the lender. So if your vendor has a mortgage with the mortgage company the mortgage company would have a charge against it.
As would a house you own if it is mortgaged.

I can see why that would be the case, fialor, but they bought the house in 2012 and the charge was put in 2015? Unless, of course, they bought it for cash to start with and then (re?)mortgaged it. I hope it is as simple as that, as we were quite excited about this one.

It might be a new mortgage, potentially was a 3 year fixed term, then a new longer term lender?
Just giving you the possibles that it might be.

Though it can also be true that it could be a debt/2nd mortgage charge - in which case there should be two charges against it.
That's what tends to happen for example when an elderly person with property goes into care. If they have a mortgage still, the lender has a charge, but the LA (local authority) also has a charge applied so they can recover care costs once the person passes on.

LinaBo, I forgot to say all the best!
Fx for you.

Thank you, fialor

Good luck for today LinaBo. xx

LazyDailyMailJournos - I think the parking issues at the second house could be resolvable, because it has a single driveway but a grassy front garden area next to it, which you could easily make into a double driveway. But you'd need permission from the council to extend the dropped curb, (and I think possibly 'change of use' planning permission to change the garden area into a driveway). It looked like the house opposite had done this. From speaking to a neighbour, the double yellow parking restrictions seem to be in place for the sake of the residents anyway because there's a busy train station 2 minutes walk from the house, and apparently some people were using the street as a free car park which was inconveniencing local residents, so I could only hope the council would be happy for locals to improve their own parking situation. Both me and DH like this house, (which is dangerous I know as we don't have a buyer yet, and there's a real chance this one will sell quickly). I'm going to view another couple of houses on Saturday I think so as to keep our minds and options open.

Thanks, Kitkat

Hmm, that was interesting. I was just doing some washing up (our kitchen sink overlooks the front of the house) andI saw an estate agent that came around a couple of weeks ago to give us a quote for marketing our house park up near our house and walk in the direction of our door. We eventually went with a different EA but this particular EA company are quite pushy, so I thought she was going to knock on our door and start being a bit pushy about getting us to sign up with them again, but she went into our neighbours house instead!

As a background to this us and our neighbours are friends, and one of our neighbours messaged the other day after she saw our house up for sale on Rightmove and said the valuation on our house had given her and her husband something to think about, but I wonder if they are serious about going up for sale too! To some extent I guess it doesn't matter as I guess we are attracting different buyers as ours is a shared ownership still and theirs is an outright sale as they bought the other half of their house last year, but I do think it's going to look a bit odd if we are both up for sale at the same time, and highlight that there's problems in the estate so people are wanting to move out if you know what I mean? AIBU to feel a bit miffed if they do decide to put theirs on the market at the same time?

Don't think it would necessarily highlight issues. We are buying a house where the neighbours was also up for sale. You see it quite often

Is it a new build? If it is, what I've observed in our own development is that people seem to move in cycles - not sure if influenced by the neighbours, but when one board comes up, a few others the same road seem to appear. I always thought it was because you tend to move in at around the same time and then outgrow the house at a similar timescale.

Apart from a one bed flat, no other house has ever been resold on our road (20-ish houses), and this year two have been put on the market. We've all been here for 8+ years. And neither of us had a board, so not influenced by each other. (Though I have to say I've been watching the market for a couple of years in preparation for this move and every time another 3 bed was put on I'd be slightly miffed, because the layout is very much the same in all of them. Our neighbour's is a 4 bed so very different price ranges).