Sellers roll call part 2. Who is still on this treadmill?

[MovingThisYearHopefully]

I thought it was about time to start a new thread as this one is close to 1000 messages.

Who is still here & what is your story?

Heres me: I have been trying to move since April last year. Had a buyer, buyers lost their buyer in October & still haven't got a new one. We remarketed at a low price in November in order to continue buying the house we were at point of exchange with, but were unable to get enough to move on & lost the house in February.

Prices are definitely falling here in Surrey. Realistically we're looking to get 10% less than our original asking price, if we're lucky. Getting viewers has never been an issue, regardless of price. This process has been stressful beyond belief & almost split me & DH up. Surely our luck must change soon?

One thing that seems to be helping us get more interest than other properties is that we have now agreed to go chain free. Is this a possibility for any of you struggling? If offered significantly less than asking price then as far as I see it you are within your rights to say chain free was based on near to asking price & not affordable at a significant amount under! Worth considering perhaps?

we're with Santander at the minute, will be borrowing with nat west, we have a mortgage in principle with them. Santander wanted our actual childcare bill which is enormous and will not lend to us.

we also have a loan with Santander for the car, which has about 3 years left on it.

getting depressed with the whole situation - honestly thinking about not moving at all!!

Yes we are with Santander and they wanted our actual childcare bill. I guess that's how they work it. We are porting our mortgage but luckily we still passed the affordability checks to save the exit fee.

yeah we wanted to port but they wont lend us more, or even the same amount we are already borrowing. arses.

so fed up today.

Flamingo Hopefully it will all pick up again once the summer holidays are over and you will sell fast. It will be the right house for someone. That's what I'm telling myself anyway.

im trying to tell myself that, im prob just having a bad day, work is shit today, im just getting down about staying there, worrying whether we will be forever skint if we buy something expensive, worrying whether we will ever sell!

its just so stressfull I don't think I have ever been so unhappy!

Flamingo oh no. It's making me sad to know you feel like that. I think a wine is deserved tonight. If it's any consolation I feel like an utter fool for moving to our current house. It was all we could afford and our first buy but I really messed up regarding the children's schools. I drive them to school every day. It's only 10 minutes but tough going with work and a husband that works away all the time. You WILL sell and find what you want I'm sure. I just try to look at in the way that the longer it takes to sell the more I'm reducing my mortgage and my huge early repayment charge

thanks beautician

it certainly is, i'm not usually a big drinker either!! it was my birthday yesterday and I got a really nice set of bath bombs and a mini bottle of wine and a lovely glass so I know what im doing once ds is in bed!

I feel like a fool too, I saw the potential in the house, and I like the house itself, it just doesn't suit us anymore. For instance we never expected dss to be living with us full time. The lack of garden is an issue also, though, that can be rectified at a cost.

I am trying to see it the same way, we go on holiday at the end of the month and I am considering starting to overpay the mortgage in September only by like 50 quid or so, but it will add up over the months if we don't sell soon. Also, by jan the early repayment charge will be no more which is good.

I am trying to see it all in a positive light but everything seems to be getting a bit on top of me at the moment.

We do have a viewing tomorrow, and I think I will chase up what position this guy is in. Also, the guy who offered is supposed to be coming back on sunday but hasn't actually booked in, I might ask her to ring him because I could really do with knowing what time its going to be!

Just been sent an email from a local agent touting for business. It begins 'As I’m sure you are aware, the property market is particularly strong.' Errr...

Ha! Particularly strong!

Circumstances have changed at casa flamingo. Remember i mentioned neighbours being knobs? Well next door lady has kicked out knob boyfriend and apologised and she seems serious. She's involved police and solicitors.

They were a small part of the reason for moving (if we had fenced off garden we would have still had to hear them as they did spend a lot of time outside) but now that's gone. Fencing garden would still be a bit of an issue but... considering all this effort it's taking to sell.... I'm thinking I could put up with it for another year or 2?!

Dp Is probably going to have me killed!

twinky sorry to come back late to your posting (long day at work) but I think you are right. The agents are definitely responsible for many of the pricing anomolies I am seeing.

I can't help but wonder if it isn't time for a major shake up in the EA field.

If their valuations are wrong (I had 3 agents value mine at the value I have failed to get any viewings at). If mugs like me are paying all their marketing costs up front and if they are not proactively ringing around to try and match buyers and sellers, why do we need them and why do we need to pay them vast sums of money?

If Rightmove would allow private sellers access to their platform, I could see EA's becoming a thing of the past. I would happily arrange and pay for my own photos, could easily write a brochure and would actually prefer to show people round. Solicitors could verify fund availability and actually I would feel much more secure giving a Solicitor details of my Bank Accounts than I am showing them to a stranger in an EA office.

What more would we need?

If Rightmove were unhappy about opening their platform to private sellers, perhaps there is someone else out there who would like our business.

hasthemarketsplit I think you're on to something... I have often wondered this. I have no evidence to suggest my EA has done ANYTHING except upload to Rightmove. And I think I could've taken better photos. My friend moved last year without an agent and it worked just as well (friend of a friend of a friend selling a house that fit their needs, the buyer and seller didn't know each other in advance).

I debated just uploading mine to Facebook!

I know some people who have viewed houses sold by PurpleBricks where the sellers have shown them round and it put them right off. So it wouldn't be fool proof... but it's food for thought that's for sure.

Anyone can track the number of viewings with EA like Purplebricks HopefullyMoving. You just follow them & they notify you. As a potential buyer its great, but as a seller its shit. I think that EA like PB have a lot to answer for with the overpricing problem personally. They overprice to get the instruction, promise the earth & then sit back & do nothing. Its like a very expensive private sale AD on Rightmove, particularly for those of us close enough to London to have to pay £1200 for it!

Sorry you're having a shit time Flaming. That house looks lovely. If your potential buyers do come back & can offer you 95k, don't instantly say no, use this offer to negotiate down on your ongoing purchase. You may even do better that way. If you get the house for 140 or 141k, then you've saved 5 or 6k, which you can then afford to reduce your own house by. Everyones a winner! This is the only way to move on in todays market. Everyone has to stop being fixated on price & look to the bigger picture (of moving on to a new home) & reduce accordingly up the chain or nobody is going anywhere. The key is to find vendors willing to play the game throughout the whole chain, then nobody has lost & everyone has saved, except possibly those right at the top if they are not downsizing into a smaller retirement home, as many often are when kids have flown the nest!

We had another viewing today at our place. Lady who is already under offer & we are on her shortlist of houses she is considering. Very happy with that. We also are still awaiting the promised offer from the couple waiting for confirmation that the offer on their shared ownership housing association flat is acceptable to the HA. I'm thinking it will be Monday before we hear back on that. Plus DH's workmate is keen too, but needs his wife to view before he can offer. Could we have more than one offer coming along at the same time? Or are all these people going to buy larger ex-council houses like people usually do? It really is time our luck changed!

Just had a skim read of this thread out of interest. We are (very early doors) SSTC; their mortgage valuer is here tomorrow but there is a chain and I am very very aware that it could so easily go wrong.

We were on the market for about 8 weeks with thousands of viewings and no offers. Then had a very low offer which we were hoping to negotiate up but ultimately I think they weren’t interested enough. Then about a week later we had an offer from someone who’d viewed a month previously and been mulling it over, considering work that was needed etc and made a sensible offer which we accepted. We are chainfree as moving in to rented temporarily (due to needing to move ASAP) and that was a selling point. So now we wait, there are two other houses below us on the chain and I’m not expecting it to be quick but hopefully, hopefully we will get there!

I'm definitely not a fan of doing my own viewings, I feel like people think they have to act interested as they dont want to offend you! So that then gets your hopes up with them then telling the agent the next day all the things they didn't like!!

I'm not sure getting rid of agents completely is the right way to go but I just want someone working for me who's a little bit more invested. They just all seem so content with the whole 'the markets slow' line. There's not any actual real advice coming from them.

I dont know, it's just such a stressful process!

had a viewing this evening and one booked for Saturday and I'm trying not to think about them too much. At least my house now looks like a show home!

Keeping my house looking like a show home is the bit stressing me out the most 😂 we're not dramatically messy but showing for a potential buyer is a whole new level of clean and tidy!

I am the opposite twinky and prefer to do my own viewings.

I agree about the lack of investment. I despair when looking at some listings and dread to think how much people are paying for such a poor service.

I also wonder how much people lose in terms of undervaluations. When you have been on the market for weeks it is easy to believe it is all about price, when I suspect it is a much more complicated mix of factors.

It is very stressful, but fingers crossed for your viewings.

I've never looked around a house with an agent, it's always been the vendor doing it, and I've done all my own viewings as has everyone I know - is it a regional thing?

Thought I'd chip in with our experience. I agree with the overpricing comment. We are buying and are paying an overinflated price, but there's nothing else to buy and our kids are growing bigger and if we keep waiting for more supply then we erode the benefit of getting a bigger house for them as time goes by. I think we are paying £25k to £35k over.

We've done a lot of viewings but actually paid extra for the bloody agent to do them.

I've viewed houses with the owners and with agents. I don't mind either way.

Meant to add, I am viewing a house next week with an agent because it's vacant possession but that's the first one. flamingo I'm surprised our agents didn't try to upsell viewings to me, they tried to sell me every thing else possible!

Haha! We're paying £1000 plus vat to the agent for everything. We specifically wanted her to do the viewings only because we have a 2yo and I'm not overly confident however we've done over the half the viewings as many people can't view in office hours so i am feeling slightly ripped off!

That's true, lots of people want to view in the evenings. We're paying 1% but I'm not convinced they're earning it, although friends say they're good when it comes to progressing the sale, maybe I'll find out one day haha!

I hope you do! I hope I do too!!

Whereabouts are you MargeryB? In London the overpricing is in some cases £80k+ (600 down to 520 and still not selling) and they are really motivated sellers. I think a lot of people who aren’t achieving what they want will stay put. So you end up with low stock available as only those that have to sell will sell.

I also read today that a lot of people are now holding off because of brexit (particularly FTBs) which as mentioned before stalls the entire chain.

Also an article today that said 50% of properties on the market don’t sell at all and in London apparently that goes up to almost 2/3rds. I think that can only be due to overpricing - you can compromise on anything if the price is right!

Also for folk selling their houses - I would as a buyer recommend to get the EA to show prospective buyers round! The vendors are generally more knowledgable and helpful but as a buyer you can’t ask what you really want to ask without risk of offending! Plus looking round you feel awkward and like you’re intruding! When a vendor is really personable it’s OK but sometimes it’s really awkward!