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!

Been reading this thread for moral support! We have been on the market for 12 weeks 40 viewings and 1 unproceedable offer.
We've decided today to come off the market because viewings are taking over our lives! I think we will go back on again in September. Has anyone else done this? I think we will go on with a different cheaper agent!
It's such an exhausting process and we don't want it to take over our summer.

Hi Twinky. The market usually slows down in the summer anyway because of school holidays & people going away, so I doubt you'd be inundated. I can see why you'd want to do this but I'd worry that once September comes you'll have about 2 months before everyone is focusing on Christmas & if you did sell straight away you'd be moving right over the Christmas period, which is a complete pain! Are you getting any feedback as to why people are viewing but not offering?

Starting afresh with a new agent could be a good plan. When you say a cheaper agent do you mean one of the cheap online ones like Purplebricks? Id strongly recommend avoiding that route tbh. They pretty much advertise your property online & do little else. I know from personal experience of wasting 5 months with them. Try not to focus on the fees rather than which agent will get you what you need. If you get say 10k more for your house & have to pay 5k fees to an EA who will negotiate hard to get you the best price possible, its still better value than getting 10k less & paying £1200 to the likes of Purplebricks who in my experience are incapable/unwilling to negotiate or chain chase!

Thanks for the reply Moving!

We have a train line at the bottom of our garden and the agents are telling everyone about it before viewing but it's still putting people off.

No we don't mean purple bricks just one of the smaller local guys. We had three people value it and we went for th middle ones in terms of fees because they all valued exactly the same.To be honest I haven't been overly impressed and I'm kind of just thinking the cheaper guys would do a similar job. They have been really rubbish st following up with the offer that has been made and I constantly have to chase them to find out any updates. In terms of fees it's about 3k cheaper to go with the cheaper guys but they are still around 5k. Fees are crazy around here. the most expensive would have been almost 11k!

We have pretty much had 3 or 4 viewings every Saturday foe the last 10 week's and it's exhausting as we have to get our dog out of the house every time! We need a mental break from it I think.

I'm not overly fussed about the Christmas situation as we have moved over that time before.

I think I'd like to.have the break and then go on slightly lower and see if it makes a difference

@flamingofridays and @GetOrfMyBin crossing my fingers that it all goes smoothly for you both!

Nothing to report here except for we seem to have been ghosted by someone who 'loved' the flat-buying with a sibling who wasn't on the first viewing, so arranging with the estate agent to come and do a second viewing with said sibling on Monday. Except for they cancelled and now the EA can't get hold of them

EA have had three flats in the immediate area sell in the last week which is promising, but are very low selling prices compared to asking. Looks like we're also going to have to drop again to get some more interest, so if we do that we'll be on at 10% less that original asking price.

Looks like we have really picked the wrong time to sell, Sod's law!!

Hi all,

Please can I join as this subject is the bane of my life at the moment

We initially put our house on the market this spring and fell for the oldest trick in the book of going with an overpriced valuation (to be fair we got 3 done and they all came in about the same). Anyway agent was completely useless and managed to produced zero viewings despite us dropping the price.

So we decided to take it off the market have break and start again with an online EA at a lower price (lower than most in the area). We launched this week and I'm trying to stay upbeat but finding it hard. We are moving into rented when we sell so no onward chain thankfully but God I'm finding this all very stressful!

to everyone else going through this too

May I join this thread too?
Been on the market 18 months, reduced £25 k in February. Just not getting the traffic through the door. Can’t reduce any further as want to move from north west to south east be closer to family. Daughter is going into year 9 in September. Total nightmare. Feedback is always the same “ kitchen and living space too small”. Changed agents twice. No idea what to do next.

It’s a top heavy house but plenty of scope to convert large garage and add on an extension to the kitchen. I’m thinking now people just don’t have the time or money to renovate houses?

Blitzen is it worth getting some plans drawn up for a garage conversion together with some costings? Lots of people can’t visualise what it would look like or how much extra room it can provide.

Yes we do have plans drawn up for the potential kitchen extension.

If you’re not getting traffic through the door then it sounds as if you’re still too expensive (sorry, I know that’s not what you want to hear). People probably thinking it’ll be an extra £30k on top of purchase price to extend and make it what they want.

Ugh, we've dropped by £5K but still not one viewing, yes it's only been 12 days but I'd expect at least 1 by now

Hi newbies, & welcome!

I'm having similar feedback BlitzenandMikey. Sitting room too small. EA has suggested we remove a sofa from there, but its not realistic with 4 adults living here. Extending is also a possibility & pretty much everyone in the road has a loft conversion, single story extension out the back to increase living space or both. I know the costings of the loft conversions & how much next door paid to do their rather extensive downstairs extension & conversions of space, plus plans are available online for all to see. In my experience, it doesn't seem to be lack of money stopping people from choosing to do the extensions, its lack of inclination to do it. I had someone choose to pay 125k more for a house in a less desirable location to mine purely because it was already been extended. This was frustrating because up until then they were stuck on ours.

One thing I would say is that if you're not getting the traffic through the door then its usually a pricing issue I'm afraid. We're still getting enquiries & viewings on ours, so not looking to reduce imminently as fully expecting any buyers to want to massively drop us further. Its such a hard situation.

Anyone had much interest at the weekend? We had a viewing on Thursday, which was very positive. They wanted to have information on next doors building work & costings, so I said to the agent what we'd been told & pinpointed to the right website. Questioned him today & he's called & emailed but had no response. Todays viewers said that it was smaller than other similar houses they'd looked at. EA told them that its not, they're all the same pretty much. I guess thats a no then!

Thank you all.

In terms of the feedback of rooms being too small surely people should look at floor plans before they come to view? That’s a bit of a peeve of mine if that information is there...surely they would have known the room is too small for them before they go? I understand it’s different seeing it in person but still.

Had a viewing today - the one booked in before the offer was made. It was this afternoon so probably won’t hear anything back until Monday at the earliest. When we got home we noticed things had moved. A bit outing but we have many board games in kallax cubes and some of these had been pushed back. Also in DS room some teddies/medals had moved. The seam on one of the teddies arms is waiting to be stitched as it’s come apart, but it’s been sat on the chest of drawers in that room without any of our DC touching it. Today it’s been moved and there was stuffing on the floor. I’m assuming the viewers had DC with them, which is fine of course, but I don’t understand how hard it is to make sure they don’t mess around with things?

I really hope when the people who put the offer in come back on Thursday they get the ball rolling and haven’t changed their minds.

and for all.

Its a bit of a peeve of mine too GetOrfMyBin. Infuriating! We do have rather large recliners in our sitting room. If money were no object we'd put them into storage & buy a smaller set. You'd think the fact that we can fit such large sofas in the room though is a plus point. It is also not a massive job to knock through to the kitchen diner or remove the wall next to the corridor & stairs to open up the space a bit more. Many houses here have done one or both. People just don't seem to have the vision here or want to do any work, which is surprising. Our house isn't a fixer upper & is entirely adequate for a couple with one or 2 small kids as it is, but it has masses of potential to add value to it. Where I used to live (a much cheaper location than where I presently live) houses with any potential used to be snapped up quickly & anything requiring work wasn't even priced that much lower than a standard house! Not sure if its the market or the area im in now or a bit of both tbh!

Not good that people had touched your stuff. Do you think they maybe moved things to measure up? Have a word with the agent on Monday to clarify what went on to put your mind at rest. Heres hoping Thursdays people who offered come up trumps for you!

So many mixed messages in the media at the moment about the housing market. Some saying it's improving on April's downturn and stabilising, others saying it's stagnated what do you ladies think? Is this brexit and interest rates or something else???

Where I am it’s on the decline although prices have been pretty stagnant for the last 3/4 yrs. I just think the affordability ceiling has been reached, lending is much tighter now. Plus I think Brexit & interest rates rises are now in peoples minds because the market is declining so you think well will it decline further?

Where I am the houses are very similar so when one person who has owned for 10 years or so & has loads of equity prices lowers for a quick sale it makes the others expensive. The days of doubling or more your money are long gone.

Re buying a cheaper property that needs a extension or loft as opposed to a more expensive one that has been done, I think where I am the idea of stretching yourself to buy, with 2 parents working & kids in the equation the idea of carrying out work is another headache.

The days of doubling or more your money are long gone. This is in regards to people who have bought in the last few years. So much of London & the SEs market was driven by constant demand at the bottom & equity. When it’s normal for a terraced home to cost 1million I’m not sure how it’s sustainable

@GetOrfMyBin that's so weird-I wouldn't dream of messing about with other people's stuff at a viewing. Opening kitchen doors to look at space yes-moving teddies definitely not? Also know what you mean about floorplans-our bathroom is in the basement which is clear on the floor plan-yet loads of feedback we've had from the EA is that viewers don't like it being in the basement. Why come and have a look then?

@Walkaboutwendy I think where we are in SW London Brexit is one issue, but I think the main one is that now theres new taxation on landlords (I think?) that a lot of them are selling up. For example, in a 1/4 mile radius of us there's 40 two bedroom flats like ours up for sale. So of course, buyers can afford to be picky and force prices down

It seems to vary massively depending on where you are. The cheaper areas seem to be still doing quite well, but expensive areas are struggling. Brexit was definitely the catalyst where I am, in Surrey. Up until then you could pretty much name your price. It was ridiculous. After Brexit the effect was instantaneous & has only continued to decline & stagnate over the last 2 years. Prices have absolutely dropped & its without doubt a buyers market & these buyers know they can call the shots. Ridiculous offers are being made, (regardless of how realistically priced a property is) that nobody could afford to accept. I have had offers on my house from people who haven't even walked through the door. Literally trying their luck with a super low one-off offer that we simply couldn't accept.

There are also still many deluded sellers who think they can ask for pre-Brexit prices + 5% on top & are then wondering why they're getting no viewers. Common sense & market conditions dictate that realistically they should be marketing at around 10% below pre Brexit prices. The few things that are going SSTC are where people can afford to price really competitively, mainly because they're relocating to a much cheaper area so can afford to accept less. Its incredibly frustrating!

Any updates? We have potential interest from last weeks viewers, who are waiting to hear on an offer on their place, plus a chain free buyer viewing tomorrow & another viewing on Saturday so far. Positive stuff, but im not holding my breath!

I can visibly see similar houses reducing in price though so not expecting a great offer & the need to reduce soon if we get nowhere!

sorry not checked this for a while!

thanks moving though I am not hopeful as I have seen their house on rightmove, its being advertised by an online agent, the description is so minimal. I think its overpriced and so does my estate agent (she valued it at 10 grand less) so whether it will sell any time I don't know

we have another viewing on sunday but I am honestly not holding out any hope. I am so sick of living there I really really want someone to buy it. I know I will have to live there this summer but I cant do another summer, I really cant!

Just a quick check in as at work. Our viewer on Saturday liked the house and they were very interested, but they’re in a chain. Their house is on the market but they’ve had no interest yet, so not proceedable. Estate agent doesn’t want to get us tied into a chain. Really hoping that the first people get the ball rolling after their holiday - they’re back tomorrow.

Also no other viewings booked in.

Hello all
Thought I would join this thread after reading through. We too are trying to sell, we are relocating a long way away for work and need to sell asap. House went on the market two weeks ago and we have only had one viewing. I contacted the estate agent and they advised against reducing the price as they said "Its a lot of property for the money". We think its reasonable and is certainly the cheapest in our area but still no joy.

Apparently the market is completely static at present across all price ranges. I should add we are in Cornwall, a work colleague who is buying in Truro says even the new builds have been reduced in a desperate attempt to get sales. Our EA thinks its the early summer lull possibly because of the world cup. All I know is that it is so frustrating, I hate checking my phone every 10 mins to make sure I have not missed a call, I share everyone's anxiety especially the OP. Not sure how to get things moving

FTB browsing her!

I think people are worried about extensions/ putting in new kitchens/ bathrooms because its harder to recover costs in a stagnating market, while labour presumably isn't getting any cheaper. I think in many areas ceiling heights have been reached.

In the area where I was looking, there didn't seem to be much of a difference in price between new refurbs and houses which were perfectly acceptable, but hadn't been decorated for 20 years.

@GetOrfMyBin really hope that the others come back from holiday and get straight onto the market!

Update here is that we've dropped the price by 20k. Hoping that this will work, we can't keep on dropping otherwise where do you stop? We only did it late this afternoon, already have a Friday viewing booked in. And hopefully the viewers who we thought had ghosted us last week come for a second viewing, they're pencilled in for the weekend. But again, if last time we reduced is anything to go by then I'm not getting my hopes up!