Sellers roll call! How many viewings are you gettingin this stagnant market?

[Pixiedust1973]

I thought it would be nice to update each other with our progress as I seem to of lost the other sellers thread!

My house has been on the market on & off since April last year. We found a house we liked, got a buyer before putting in an offer. Had a low offer but managed to negotiate them up & the house we want down to an acceptable level, just! Turns out after many months that their buyer can't proceed so we decide to cut off from our old agents & start afresh with a 25k reduction for quick sale, making us without question the best house in the area for the price! Comparables being 40-50k higher! Im in an expensive part of Surrey btw, hence silly money for very little!

Been on 55 days now & had 11 viewings, 2 cheeky try their luck offers we can't accept because they're 30k below our asking price already reduced by 25k. Id say that given how stagnant the market is we're getting a reasonable amount of interest. Getting lots more hits online since the new year & hopefully its only a matter of time. The viewers we are getting are proceedable viewers, mainly chain free. Probably explains the low offers! Had a second viewing on Friday & awaiting their feedback today. Thought they were keen but the later in the day it gets the more nervous im getting!

similar situation here, selling up due to divorce, sold very quickly and got a good deal on a house for me and dd. Several weeks into the process, after I had already paid out for surveys, searches, and associated legal costs, our buyers pulled out saying they couldn't get the money together after all. WE slashed by £25k to try and get a quick sale but nothing.

We took it off for a couple of months NOV/DEC as it was just dead and its now back on the market (last week) and only had one viewing so far ..really hoping new year brings more buyers out. obviously I lost the house I was buying.
Really need to move on but can't reduce any more either.....good luck!

On three months, had one cheeky offer in first week which we declined.

Probably had about a dozen viewings in total. Got a viewing tomorrow, the first one since early December. Have reduced by 10k. Hoping it's going to pick up now. We're in East Anglia.

the market really is dead isnt it

Good luck to you too Lostily. Its truly the worst time ive ever tried to sell. I used to work in an EA & have sold previously during bad times, so I thought I was being sensible in pricing to sell, but it doesn't seem to of equated to any realistic offers. The people we are hoping to buy from are in a divorce situation too & haven't remarketed their house as yet, according to our ex buyers EA its because they know they wont get any more money than we offered. I feel that they & their vendor have gone as low as they could be expected to, as did we with the previous offer, which was 35k under our original price & I was never happy with it.

We have now gone on with Purplebricks (who I highly recommend btw) so can afford to reduce a further 5k IF NECESSARY, & it would be an absolute bargain, given the most recent sale was for a renovation house 2 doors down that still went for more than we accepted from the ex buyers! Im finding the whole situation beyond a nightmare now tbh!

Similar amount to us then Easily. Good luck with tomorrows viewing! It only takes one, as they say!

Surprised to read this - I think there are still massive hotspots as we are househunting at the lower end of the market - so the cheapest family homes and everything we see has an offer on it already and the viewings are 5/6 people deep. its terrifying frankly.

Where abouts are you looking Omnishambles? Our agent claims he has a lady very interested in ours, she's viewed twice, but needs to sell her 2 bed cottage and nobody is interested.

Lostlily, it's frustrating, I need to move on from this house for family reasons, and psychologically I really do need to feel 2018 is the year where we can have a fresh start.

Easily-I am getting depressed stuck here in this home where I found my ex and his 'others'. To make it even worse he had to move back in because I couldn't afford to keep it on once the sale fell through. He is living in one room and I am basically living in my bedroom. its been like this now since last July
We cant reduce it more because even the agent said its absolutely worth what it is listed for and we both need to be able to move on

I'm in a 'cheap' London suburb.

Stagnant market? My town hasn't got the memo! A lot of houses still going Under offer/Sold STC within days of appearing. The problem here seems to be an excess of buyers and not enough houses for sale! Funny how it varies across locations - we're in the South East, prime commuter belt.

I think the cheaper end of the market will always sell better tbh omnishambles. Im finding that the cheaper stuff here & especially a few miles outside my area without the postcode & catchment area premium are selling better than the rest. Our house is in an area where people pay for the postcode rather than the size of the house. They come in, extend & stay because its so nice! We can't be arsed to extend & want to move outside the silly postcode area to a bigger better house that we could never afford here!

I can't understand people coming back for a second viewing until they're in a position to proceed Easily. It wastes your time & theirs!

Been in your situation myself Lostily. Its a horrible, horrible time. Still can't get my head round the fact that the ex had full legal rights to come & go as he pleased & abuse me at will, regardless of the fact we had kids there. I had to pay a local handyman to complete the numerous unfinished DIY jobs he'd started or we'd never of sold. Thankfully it didn't take too long for us to sell because the market wasn't so bad as it is now! You have my extreme sympathy!

I'd love to know where you are Caroian. Im in East Surrey & the market here is pretty dead. Im getting more interest than most because we're priced cheap to sell. Houses in cheaper locations or over into West Sussex are selling much quicker. Our agent is doing a bomb in Crawley at the moment, but nothing much here!

I'm in the north. House went on just before Christmas. We had 2 viewings within 48 hours and then a further one the week after. 2 offers and we have accepted just below asking price. So not much interest at all but luckily the people who have been obviously liked it and we probably were priced a little low.

I am in Herts. Had the property on the market for 4 months over the summer last year. 25 viewings, 3 2nd viewings, 2 price drops (£20,000) and no offers 😣
We took it off November/December and have gone on with a new agent. First people to see the house put in an offer we are prepared to accept but they have only gone to market (though desirable flat and priced to sell). We have given them 4 weeks to sell before we will remarket.
Lots of properties have sold here in the last couple of weeks, I think the market may be starting to improve.

Oh god I hope so

We're to the East of you pixie. I think there are a lot of "micro markets" at the moment. So things can vary enormously within relatively small areas. Hopefully things will pick up for you soon - we're well past Christmas now and I think people do start to consider moving around now if they've been "putting it off".

The market is only stagnant for stupidly overpriced properties with greedy/deluded vendors... anything that's priced even vaguely realistically is selling quickly and easily.

I only wish that was true sall74. I am tracking many properties, & its true the stupidly overpriced properties are indeed getting very little interest, but the ones priced to sell aren't getting huge amounts of interest either because post Christmas IS a pretty stagnant time in the property market. Yes, there are some people around, but the market isn't heaving with buyers & sellers.

True there are many ridiculously overpriced properties around, but some of us are priced to sell! Its unfair to tar everyone with the same brush without being aware of the facts! There is a house same as mine but priced at a ridiculous 50k more than ours, & most others are 40k higher. Where they get some of these prices from I have no idea. Even pre Brexit that house wouldn't of sold for that much!

We got lots of interest last year when we were priced 25k higher, but most people viewing were not proceedable. We did accept an offer, but due to them losing their buyer & then their buyers being unable to get a mortgage, we had to remarket 6 weeks ago. As we were in a chain we reduced the price by 25k in the hope of getting a buyer quickly. We have had a lot more interest in comparison with the competition houses I am tracking. Probably 5 times as many hits online & 4 times as many viewings as the overpriced comparable, but no offers as yet that we can accept! I do see it as only a matter of time for us, when the market picks up in the spring, but of course im inpatient. We started this process last April & waited for our ex-buyers & then their buyer, when we probably should of remarketed it in August when it was busier. It is what it is though!

Anyone else got any news? We're still waiting to hear from our couple who did a second viewing a few days ago. Agent is going to chase them up again tomorrow. Everything crossed!

We have had an asking price offer accepted (unsurprisingly). It was really our only course of action though in our particular micromarket.

We are southeast London / north Kent borders. A friend bought a house a few roads down two years ago and basically had to fight to get one. Not so now :( we went on end of November, had two viewings before Christmas with one offer which we accepted. Buyer has disappeared off the face of the earth so we have gone back on the market. Was only really offline for about a week in the end as our agent had doubts so realistically has been on for 6 weeks, some of that over Christmas of course. We've had 3 viewings last week, one said they want a second viewing but not arranged yet. And no new viewings in the meantime.
We are very competitively priced compared to everything else nearby but still wondering when we should think about dropping the price...

I've been house hunting since October last year and I can agree with salls sentiment that many properties are over priced.

I feel in my area like sellers are expecting buyers to pay for their next step up the ladder by adding 20/30k to a property they bought a couple of years ago which they have done nothing to (think some sellers don't realise it's all there on the internet now- paid prices, photos of previous listing planning applications etc).

It's good to hear that some people are pricing their homes realistically - their properties will sell I've no doubt. We are using Zoopla and nationwide house price index to assess house prices not asking prices.

I can only comment on north west area where I'm looking but General sentiment here is a bit doom and gloom at the moment, salaries aren't keeping up with house prices, inflation is running high which makes you think twice about monthly mortgage payments and everyday squeeze, Brexit is creating uncertainty and there's a fair bit out there suggesting a house price correction.

Just all things that play on your mind when looking, especially personally as I bought end of 2007 at the last price crash and it's now reflected in my deposit for my next house. Determined not to get caught out this time buying an overpriced pup.

Funny you say that lilmiss as I have been thinking the online info might be putting some people off ours. The landscape changes at my end of the road so the house has an extra 1 1/2 floors compared to the others and it's deeper too with a bigger garden. There's only one other house like it. Unless you know the area well I don't think you'd realise by looking online so would think it's too much compared to the other (much smaller) houses in the road. Also we bought the house cheaply but in horrific condition, basically derelict. We spent 2 years and over 100k doing it up. So it looks like we are asking for loads more than we paid but it's a very different house! It wasn't listed with an EA when we bought it so there are no 'before' pictures online, just our price paid.

Helen I think this is where a good listing blurb comes in really handy. As quite rightly you can justify the increase in cost - especially if the floor space is significantly different to other sold houses in the area.

If you have things like a boiler recently installed / under warranty etc or new roof make sure they put it in the listing they are big selling points that definitely make me feel better about a house being more

Congratulations on getting a house omnishambles. Thats great news! Hope things go smoothly to completion for you! Good to see the market is still good in places. I guess if you are buying & selling in the same market its all relative!

It was the same here 2 years ago Helen. Sellers could pretty much name their prices & they were literally flying off the shelves. It was crazy! In comparison with then its literally dead now & only the very motivated sellers are selling, eventually! Or those who don't need to buy on immediately! We're having similar problems to you, where people are looking online & putting 2 & 2 together & getting 5. Many people, particularly those not local make a blanket presumption that everything is overpriced without doing their homework, which is soo frustrating to those of us who are not greedy & have already priced to sell!

The current pricing is a nightmare Lilmisskittykat. If everyone were singing from the same hymn sheet then it really wouldn't matter if all houses were 20% cheaper than they were 2 years ago. Trouble is, you have those of us who are prepared to reduce who are then stuck in a market with very little, if anything, to look at, because pretty much everything is so optimistically priced! Its so frustrating! In our situation we have a vendor who was prepared to reduce their already reduced asking price by 12k. They had originally been priced 42k higher. They in turn have got a very good deal on another house. We had accepted a 36k drop from our original asking price, which was the lowest we could go to to buy on. There is literally NOTHING ELSE we could afford to buy because they're all too unrealistically priced!

Best thing to do would be to come off of the market & wait for things to level off, one way or another, but we don't want to lose the house we want, & the vendors are currently waiting, so hoping we get an offer we can work with soon!

Got another viewing tomorrow & one on Saturday booked in so far this week, & still waiting to hear on the second viewing from the other day! Fingers crossed for me & the rest of us!

That's a good point, lilmiss, thanks. I might ask the EA to tweak the blurb a bit. They've written 'lovingly restored' and 'surprisingly spacious' but that doesn't really cover it! We put in entirely new boiler, rads, plumbing, electrics, flooring, completely replastered, integrated fire and intruder alarm system, bathrooms and kitchen, mix of new and restored windows etc. I'm feeling tired just thinking about it!
There's a very similar size and type of house on a busier road nearby in similar condition to ours when we bought it - on for 40k more than us. Can't imagine that will ever sell!
Since posting we've had a second viewing booked for Friday so fingers crossed we get an offer from that!

Helen I hope the viewing Friday is 'the one' and you won't need to tweak your listing but absolutely get the works you've had done woven into the blurb.

It sounds like a problem and risk free house move when you list everything you have had done. Makes the house far more attractive I think personally

It will sell - you only need one buyer - mine took what felt like forever but we got there in the end. Just hoping finding one won't take as long!