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!

Oh that’s prices here at the moment. These flats advertised at anything from £700k to £775k, for no obvious reason. Not selling, just sitting on the market. They are both in the catchment of an outstanding primary and secondary (same ones) so that’s not it.

It's exactly the same here. It can make a huge difference being ever so slightly closer to an outstanding school though if places are limited. Sadly its not as simple as just being within catchment, if a school is oversubscribed they go on distance & you can find that one child may get in where the next door neighbours child doesn't. It is that brutal, particularly in infant school where they have limits by law on class sizes!

Oh I know, we are in the heartland of primary school insanity, but if anything the one we like is a tiny bit further from the schools. I think nobody knows what they can get so asking prices become fairly meaningless! As we are chain free and ready to go I would hope our offers are seriously considered.

It could well be proximity to school then. You are certainly in a very strong position being chain free, so it doesn't hurt to try your luck!

I am in expensive Surrey too.

We 'sold' this time last year. The people we were buying from pulled out at exchange in May.

Now, the estate agent says our house should go for 10% less than before! So we can't afford to move now (moving 250 miles away).

We have taken the house off the market, and are going to rent it out and get a mortgage on the new house (if we can find somewhere.)

It is annoying. We were all packed up to move in May, removals booked, new life in sight!

So sorry to hear that loveka. It is indeed a horrendous market at the moment. We considered renting our house out too & getting another mortgage to buy the new place, but after doing our sums & seeing how much it would cost us in stamp duty for a second property, plus how much tax we'd pay (higher rate tax) on the rent we'd get & bearing in mind the possibility of prices dropping even lower, we decided against it!

Still no offers on our place. Had 3 viewings over the weekend. One said the road was too busy. Driving schools do their maneuvres in our road because its so quiet FFS! Not heard a thing from the other 2 yet. First one was a BTL investor. I assume he's not interested. The last couple to view seemed very keen, but still have a house to sell. It does seem to be picking up a bit, we have a viewing booked in for Saturday so far & hopefully more to come. Fingers crossed! Just need to decide which house we want then!

If you sell your original place within a certain time, the higher stamp duty doesn't apply (we have snuck in thankfully).

It seems there is a tax loophole we were not made aware of drspouse. Very interesting.. Still don't fancy paying high rate tax on earnings from rent while having to pay full mortgage on another property when interest rates are looking to rise further!

No I bet you don't!

You would pay the higher rate stamp duty on a second home on purchase but can claim the higher rate back if you sell your first home within 3 years. It’s not really a loophole (it covers the situation when you temporarily own two properties) and is set out in the guidance.

www.gov.uk/guidance/stamp-duty-land-tax-buying-an-additional-residential-property

Thats very interesting Agnes. I wonder why on earth did our mortgage broker, (who suggested possibly renting out our current house) not mention this? The old phrase "assume everyone is an incompetent until the prove otherwise" (& they very rarely do) is still alive & kicking!

Will update the thread again later. Have a doctors appointment now & can't be late!

Any progress people? Hope everyone had a good & productive weekend!

Yes we're hoping we'll have sold within 12 months but we were prepared to let it out for a year or so if we couldn't sell it.

We’re south England (but outside the SE bubble.) Been in RM two weeks, had three viewings which seems low to me considering the agent pushed us to advertise at 10k above what we were hoping for. Have reduced by 5k but wondering if the agents overconfidence has worried would-be buyers.

Hi Sausage. 3 viewings in 2 weeks considering by your own admission its probably overpriced isn't bad going. Ideally, the key is to get the pricing right from the outset rather than making a reduction after such a short period of time. Whats done is done though & hopefully with the price reduction & a bit of tweaking of the advert & photos, or rotating your pics at least, to refresh the ad, then you could get something soon. Fingers crossed!

My update : I made an offer on a house today! In case you haven't followed my story: the vendors of the house we've been trying to buy for 6+ months refuse to accept the market has dropped & won't budge on price. When we got an offer of 12% below asking & suggested that everyone in the chain reduce their price by 5k so we can accept it & proceed, they dug their heels in & refused, despite the fact that it is us taking the biggest hit by far!

We found out a couple of weeks ago via their EA that they have instructed a new EA & are having an open day soon, despite the fact they said they'd wait till March for us to get a new buyer! Cue us looking at other houses & finding one that could be a possibility!

The house we saw has been on "discreet marketing" for 3+ years. My suspicions were the vendor was trying his luck with a price that nobody was prepared to pay pre-Brexit & would only sell if anyone was mug enough to pay it! The EA told me this wasn't the case & they were now seriously wanting to move & open to offers. I said that bearing in mind the condition, recent sales etc that any offer would be nowhere near the asking price. The response being I had nothing to lose by trying, so I did, only to be met with "they want much closer to the asking price" Total waste of time. My first instincts were correct. My offer was 9.5% below their optimistic asking price, so all things considered quite a fair, even generous offer.

Onwards & upwards...

Re catchments look up on the LA website to see the furthest distance offer. For our school it was 250m, I know a parent who paid 1m for their property in the “catchment

oops to soon.

catchment area. However they are 500m away so no place.

Not sure if it’s relevent but myself & some friends were looking at moving & the traditional move would be to Surrey (SW London). The majority of us discounted it as you no longer get the big house for your money & the cost/length of the commute. One couple have relocated to Bristol & one to Edinburgh. They have taken pay cuts but in some industries it’s not as much as you would expect. One has moved to Kent but only needs to commute to London 1-2 times a week. Another couple are thinking of moving to Birmingham.

That makes perfect sense confused. The market in Surrey definitely isn't moving. At least it certainly isn't where I am.

Found out today that the house we have been hoping to buy since we first saw it April last year, & had our offer accepted on last July.. has gone back on the market again! DH only text the vendor 2 days ago to see how things were going & she said they were still deciding what to do & hadn't instructed anyone yet. We only knew they were going to remarket it because their old EA, (who we were buying through) rang & told us a few weeks back that they'd instructed a new agent & were having an open day. Knew it was only a matter of time before I was contacted by another EA about it. Why be deceitful about it? Its not like I wasn't going to find out!

Probably just as well. The amount of lies that they have told us since we sale agreed & the blatant refusal to renegotiate throughout the chain in order for us all to proceed has cost us all dearly. They may well live to regret it. Don't know what we're going to do now!

Pixiedust1973 Oh no, things will work out though. It’s so stressful.

We are staying put, will probably do the loft.

Thanks confused. That would be our best option tbh, but we're almost 2 years on from the preparation for sale stage & a year next month from first hitting the market. I desperately want to move & don't want to put up with any more building work, or our selfish arsehole neighbours any longer! We have 4 adults living in a 2 bed plus boxroom house. Its bloody awful!

Sorry for going AWOL! Hows things progressing for everyone?

Anyone new to join us who has just gone on the market?

No news our end. The market here really is dead as a dodo & very little is selling! What is selling are houses that are larger than mine that don't need any loft conversions or extensions doing. Our neighbour, dead opposite, had his house on for 150k more than ours, but because its been extended & had loft done its sold. A bit of a kick in the teeth tbh, but im happy for them!

The house we were trying to buy has been put back on the market. Its been just over a week now & they're not showing as under offer yet. They have stupidly put the house on at the original asking price from a year ago of 600k, which nobody was prepared to pay back then, so are seriously deluded if they think anyone will now. Still, knowing my luck they get an offer they're prepared to work with & move on. It seems everyone else moves on eventually, except us!

Pixiedust1973 remind me where you are again??? The market here in Hertfordshire, which was totally dead last summer - 25 viewings and no offers, has picked up massively! We went back on with our old agent, got 9 viewings booked in over the week. Only 6 took place and 3 of those booked in for a second viewing. The reason only 6 took place is because number 6 made us a good offer to cancel all further viewings. There are loads of sold signs gone up over the last two weeks. Hopefully it will spead to your area soon.xx

Im in Surrey Yolo. Its madness here. 95% of property is over priced, so even though we have priced ours to sell we are still getting very low offers, which if everyone was priced at the same level I wouldn't mind, because its all relative. Unfortunately most people want pre Brexit prices & have added an extra 10% on top, so there is really nothing much for us to look at unless we can overpay by 100k.

Hi again pixie, sorry to hear you're still struggling. Any improvement in the state of your neighbours building work?
Our move is proceeding as planned and we are hoping to complete around Easter. Fingers crossed.

Thanks Helen. Still on for Easter completion for you? No news here whatsoever. No viewings, no offers. No change next door. It is pretty much the same as it was 12 months ago so no point anyone holding their breath on that being finished. Even when it is, doesn't change the fact that its a total eyesore they've created. Its not just us though, hardly anything is selling. Only way we could sell is by selling at a level that the fast home buying companies would pay at!