How to attract viewers

[Minime38]

So we are trying to sell our house. In 30 days we've had 3 viewers.

Out of those of say only 2 were genuinely interested in buying a house.

We are doing the viewings ourselves and have redecorated almost every room in the house before it went on the market.

We initially had a fixed price but changed this on the advice of our agent which is fine but it's done nothing to attract viewers in.

We have a Gardner coming next week to cut the grass and trim some plants but the garden doesn't look too awful as it is.

I'm not great when I can't control a situation so this is sending my anxiety through the roof and to make it worse just as we put ours on the market we've found our dream home but they are unwilling to accept an offer from us until we have a buyer so it's compounding the situation.im on tender hooks every time the phone goes that it might be the owner telling us that they have accepted an offer from elsewhere.

I gather that the market in my area has been a little bit stagnant since we put it on the market prior to that there had been a real boom.

I just don't know what we can do to actually attract people to come view the house and to be honest our estate agent hasn't been the most communicative and I think perhaps we made the wrong choice in agent.

Please tell me I'm not alone in finding this process so flipping stressful and feeling utterly helpless.

Any advice on attracting people in or keeping myself from melting down

Thanks NotMe—great tips there.

Just came across this on another thread. What not to do!
terriblerealestateagentphotos.com/

Thanks all, as way of an update we are over the 5 week and close to 6 week mark and not a single more viewer.

Today we had a number of estate agents round and have decided to go with another agent. We have their professional photographer coming around on Friday to take photographs.

We will be withdrawing from our current agent next week and going live with the new agent at the same time.

I also managed to haggle a very good deal out of them which helps a bit but doesn't make the loss of almost 1k easier to swallow.

I won't be recommending purplebricks to anyone at all in future in fact I'll be doing the opposite.

They've earned 1k for doing close to nothing, they simply take some ( in our case poor) photos, do a basic advert and put your property on rightmove etc, other than that there is no motivation or incentive to sell your home

We're currently house-hunting, and I barely read the descriptions any more: every property says it's close to amenities, well-located, in a desirable street, near transport links.

I look at photos, floorplan, Googlemaps and schoolchecker. Aside from location, the floorplan is the most important resource for me; it's amazing how misleading or confusing photos can be. So a readable floorplan with full dimensions and square footage would be crucial.

I'll usually view a property if it fits our criteria, but an online estate agent is a big put off. I don't have any experience with Purplebricks, but I did try to set up a viewing of a property through another online agent and it was just so unprofessional and lacklustre; I couldn't imagine relying on this guy to help facilitate the buying process. He rarely answered his phone and didn't even have voicemail. As a buyer, I really want to have a frank conversation with an agent about a property's condition, what the owners' timelines are, possible offers etc. An efficient, knowledgable local agent is a huge plus, so I hope you'll have better luck with your new agency.

Obachan what you have said pretty much sums up the lessons we've learned albeit an expensive lesson.

The new agent also have branches in our nearest city which is handy as we are in a commuter town so it's highly possibly we could have people interested from the city.

The floor plan is usually the thing I look at first before I even look at photos as that gives me the initial indication if the property is suitable, thankfully the new agent has floor plan included too.

I'd dealt with them whilst we were still looking at properties and they were really great to deal with and I did initially plan to have them sell our property but fell for the sales talk of the purplebricks agent.

There you go, you figured out the business model of purple bricks!

Peanut I was initially led to believe that they did more and provided more of a service, their agent oversold how much involvement he would have but unfortunately as it was face to face I don't have proof of that.

We had someone recommend purplebricks to us also which swayed my opinion too.

I should have asked more questions initially and should have read more reviews and probably should have searched on mumsnet. I don't know why I didn't because everything else I'd automatically check on here to gauge feedback. An expensive lesson learned.

The house we want is being sold by purplebricks so I can't even tell the agent what I really think of his sales techniques and the company as a whole when I tell him in withdrawing the property from them.

Another little update. We had a new estate agent round to take photographs. The difference is astonishing.

Unfortunately it appears we've lost the house we wanted which is upsetting but there isn't much I can do to alter it now.

One thing we have found out via a tip off is that the purplebricks agent is known in the area for some very shady business deals in which alot of people lost their money and in some cases homes. We had absolutely no idea at all and he neglected to tell us that part of his background.

Please don't go with Purplebricks if you're considering it. I can't advise against it enough

Thanks, that sort of feedback.is useful.

Good luck!

Nightmare. Mn have a purplebricks test going, hopefully yhe testers will
Read this!

We have been trying to buy a flat in London for DD. The one for sale via Purple Bricks was the only one with the contact being the owner and he showed us round. Lots of bulls—t from him about how he designed his weeny kitchen! How he wouldn’t pay for an agent to do what he could do better! We are actually buying from an agent who has chased up the vendor when necessary and kept in touch with both solicitors. They have provided a good service. There is quite a big difference between the two. I would not sell via PB. It shows the power of advertising though!

I did see that MN were doing a promo with PB I had to sit on my hands not to comment on it.

I certainly now won't be interested in viewing a home listed by PB.

They clearly don't do any sort of checks on who they allow to become their local property expert. A bit more digging and I've uncovered lots of local news articles of this agent and his going -ons. We didn't live here when it happened so had no knowledge of it. However a I mentioned it to a neighbour who knew about it and him and assumed we did too. Alot of people in this town deliberately won't view PB homes because of him. I just wish I'd know.

He's waited the 6 years for all trace of the financial mess he made to disappear from his record and then immediately joined PB.

I'm planning to leave reviews anywhere I can regarding my experience. I'm fully expecting PB to be in contact to ask me to take them down. I'm actually surprised they haven't demanded I take this down.

Thankfully I've kept all the texts and emails etc to corroborate what I've said.

My house took 14 months to sell.

The minute I dropped the price I was getting that many viewings I couldn't keep up.

If you're getting no viewings the price is too high! Sorry

We had two local agents round who valued our house at 10k more than we put it on for. We’re on with purple bricks but the market here is slow (other agents of houses we’ve viewed have said the same). Our agent isn’t bad though. But I would like to know if we’d have had more than four viewings if we’d gone with a local agent. Keep trying to work out if our house advert is rubbish.

Kate have you tried asking the local agents how the market is?

That was the final nail for me when I was considering switching and I phoned around a few and asked some questions such as how many people they had on their books looking for our type of property and to give me examples of how many properties they had sold, when and how long it took.

Turns out the market here wasn't as slow as I assumed it was

Also in terms of the house, I was wondering the same about mine, I've been reassured alot by the comments I've received on here once I showed them my advert, that it isn't the house and it isn't the price either however the advert and photos are doing nothing to sell our house

We’ve viewed quite a lot of houses on with different agents and they’ve All said the market has slowed here. Possibly because there are a lot of new houses being built.

Good luck with your new agent Minime. We are having a similar experience with Purplebricks to some degree. Promised the earth but failed to deliver. Where I live is genuinely a stagnant market. Very few houses are actually selling & many have been playing musical estate agents to no avail for a year or more. A lot of it is to do with overpricing & a house getting no viewings is usually down to price.

We were on with a high street agent a year ago. Priced to sell & getting viewings but the agent wasn't great. We gave them notice but found a buyer at the 11th hour. It dragged on for months but due to incompetence & lies all round we found ourselves at square one again in November. Decided to try PB as it couldn't be any worse.

We priced it low to sell & got plenty of interest & from great proceedable buyers, mainly chain free. We even had 3 offers. This is where PB fell short. These dream buyers knew they were in a great position & offered us 25k below our already low asking price, which we simply couldn't afford to accept in order to buy on.

Our agent was unwilling/unable/uninterested in negotiating us an acceptable price. This was incredibly frustrating for us. We lost the house we were buying & still not had an offer we can accept. Personally I want to bin PB off, but DH is refusing to spend yet more money, so at the moment we continue. We had some professional photos taken by a mate & took the seemingly crazy step of increasing our price to what it was pre-reduction, with the thinking that if these dream buyers now offer 25k less then we can accept it. We are getting viewings still at the new price & hopefully soon will get an offer. If not then I really don't know.. A sensible person in my situation would remove the house & remarket when things pick up, but im not sensible & I want to move asap!

moving I'm so sorry to hear of all the problems you've faced trying to sell you're house. It's awful. I know how soul destroying these last few weeks have felt for me so for you it must be much worse.

I thought as part of the t&c you sign with PB it states that they will always negotiate to get an acceptable offer on your behalf?

Our relationship has deteriorated so much with PB and that agent that I couldn't have stayed. The promising the earth was one thing but the lack of communication and the sheer lack of integrity from the agent was the final nail.

They've shot themselves in the foot somewhat as I work for an organisation that covers all of Scotland so naturally I've been telling any of my colleagues whom have asked all of our issues. Similarly my husband's role covers the whole of the UK and he too has been warning people off.

We've already had two people whom were considering PB change their minds and gone elsewhere.

I hope sometime soon the PB bubble bursts and people see them for what they really are, advertising only agents not estate agents

Thanks Minime, whats worse is that our EA is an old school friend of DH, so its really awkward. Technically they're supposed to do a lot of things, in reality it doesn't always happen. These local experts are all self employed & service varies hugely. With ours I think she's just completely inundated & can't give the level of service she wants to. 5 months on though takes the piss. DH is adamant he wont spend more money when we already wasted so much. I understand that, but nothing is happening & we found a potential home at the weekend that we both loved & if we don't get an offer soon it will sell & we will lose out again.

Moving it sounds like you're caught between a rock and a hardplace. You have my full sympathies about the home you have seen. It all feels very unfair to potentially lose out twice. Have you had any luck with further viewers?

Since we changed agents it's been like night and day. They are actually working to promote our house and we've a good amount of viewers lined up for this weekend. In fact we will have more viewers this weekend alone than we did within 6 weeks of being with PB.

I have noticed though that the market around here seems to be picking up again so I'm hoping that will be the same in your area.

The house that we want to buy had an offer made, initially they were going to accept it but they haven't but it still leaves me in the position of needing to sell before they will accept out offer.