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?

Haha thats crazy!! Love it!

The garage called and they have agreed to refund me my money!! Wahoooo!!

Sorry you're having such a tough time of it Hendal. Purplebricks are crap tbh. We wasted £1200, 5 months & lost the house we were buying plus costs due to them. Not sure an open house will work tbh if you don't have any interest. Lack of viewings is generally price related unfortunately. What has your local comedian property expert said? Did you pay for them to do viewings too?

Doesn't sound great Tokyo. Our ex buyers buyers were with one of the lenders who lend to hard to lend to people & it ended up that they were completely unmortgageable. I honestly hope this isn't the case with your lot.

Yay for the auto club jgm & flamingo. So pleased you got your money back on the car flamingo. Such a relief.

Me too moving feel like at least one of the many weights has been lifted!

Out of interest how old are all your cars? Dont know whether to buy an older one circa 3 grand or finance a newer one!

Sensible brain is saying older, spend less money as were buying a house but then newer might be more reliable / cheaper on tax / to run and not need fixing...

Dont know what to do! Dp is swaying to newer. We can afford it but... agh i dunno!

Mine is an 11 reg, had it about 2 years.

It's £30 tax which is fab!

Ah that is good! Dp had a mondeo which was £30 on tax but alas it was a manual so it had to go. He was sad. Its been a good car. New car being crap has just rubbed salt into the wound.

Think we will prob go with a toyota. My grandad used to work for toyoya (no longer with us) and my mum had 2 yaris' and an auris over the years and i dont recall her ever having problems with them!

Slight progress this evening, our buyers mortgage people have got to the stage where they're coming to do the valuation so they might thing that there's some sort of chance!!

Don't need to spend a lot of money Flamingo. Key is low mileage, that means more than age. Mine cost me £1600 just under 3 years ago with 44k miles. Its an 02 reg, so 16 years old. Still looks quite new though & drives nice, doesn't go wrong etc. My old car was 20 & still going strong on about 110k miles, it was only written off because some daft cow drove into it. Spend as little as you can. If you want to go ultra cheap there are still a few Starlets out there you could get for a few hundred. Toyotas are very reliable cars.

Hope this is positive news Tokyo. With our ex buyers buyer it took over a month of faffing about before they did the valuation, then they refused to lend for a silly reason that they didn't notice until the valuation that should of been obvious from the start. At least once the valuer comes you will have some idea anyway.

MovingThisYearHopefully That’s what I’ve been fearing, that they are rubbish. We had 3 valuations all in the same so thought pricing was about right. He’s suggested we adjust it to being a range but we’re not too sure just yet especially if we’ve just dropped the price.
We have paid him to do viewings. We’ve got a dog so thought would be easier if we could just take the dog out and leave the agent to it.

@hendal generally people on here are against the range prices as it doesn't really give an idea of what you are willing to accept. if it's 325 to 375 most people would be wanting to get it to closer to the 325 mark.

What's the lowest you are willing to go to? I agree with @moving in that no viewings is linked to price. How long since you dropped it? Any feedback since then?

Feeling frustrated. We put in an offer for a house last Friday, and still nothing from the EA. I've called and popped in to see what the delay is and been told they keep missing each other.
Now I think the EA is holding out for us to increase.
Have never said an offer is time limited, but might say it expires end of tomorrow? It is about 8% under asking on a property that has had a sale fall through (offer was over asking) due to survey and non compliance with building regs. There are also roof issues. So my offer takes all this work into account.

Any thoughts ?

twinkydink
It’s on for £380 and the minimum we could sell for is £375ish, and it’d be tight for us to get the next place, as these aren’t dropping in price just not moving.

That’s the trouble we’ve had no feedback. Other than the agent suggesting the price range. We dropped the price 2 weeks ago.

We’re thinking we might take it off at the end of the month if no interest and leave it until spring and try again then. We’re lucky in that we aren’t totally desperate (not yet anyway), we could manage here for a couple more years if needed.

@hendal if you're already on at the bottom of what you could take then I can't see how a price range would help. you can't accept lower so there's no point advertising that you would consider it. I think going on with a high street agent would help at least then there is someone you can hound for updates!

@tiddle I would put a deadline on it. Say you are looking at other properties and just need a yes or a no so you can proceed on them. Reiterate what you have said above that you are a serious buyer but you won't pit your search on hold for this property. A week is a ridiculous amount of time to respond to an offer !

Well I’m all done. House exchanged Monday and completed Tuesday. Good luck to everyone on the thread.

Jem the london property market is brutal at the moment - we put our house on sale in May, had a buyer and found a place and it all fell apart in July just before exchange when our buyer's buyer pulled out - found another buyer in September at the same price and it all fell apart again last week when the buyer at the bottom of the chain pulled out. Unless you can get a cash buyer, you're really at the mercy of the entire chain.

Hello :)

We put our apartment up for sale on 01/08/18 (link to rightmove listing below); and it sold after 4 days to a cash buyer, who after 2 months pulled out leaving us with no buyer and no way to purchase the house we were currently in the process of buying.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-55790604.html

It went back on the market on 1st October (lunchtime); and unlike previously it has had no interest or viewings, so I am really worried because if we don't get a buyer fast we will have no chance of proceeding with the purchase of the house we chose.

We really want it all to come together again as we have already spent over £2,000 on solicitor fees/ survey/ mortgage arrangement fees.

We had some help from another thread stating to change lounge/ bathroom photos as they look too cluttered and take the 'unexpectedly re-available' off so we will make sure we do this asap!

FYI Our buyers reasons for pulling out were:

Maintenance fee of £43 per month (for upkeep of road and shrubberies) - although they knew this cost before viewing and offering, they also were specifically looking for an apartment/ flat so compared with other leasehold or maintenance fees involved with those its very cheap! - this apartment is freehold, not leasehold - the charge is something all 10 houses way in the close for upkeep of private road etc.

They said that their pack said it was at 'low risk' of subsidence and this starts at zero chance; I have checked with my solicitor and other surveying companies and they have confirmed the scale to be:

Low
Moderate
High
Very High

However, they said they come from the north where there were major problems with the salt mining industries so said they were sensitive to this subject.

They said that there were 'alternative energy sources within 5k of the property which could effect the ongoing value' - this is new to me, if there was a wind turbine in my view looking out the window I would understand but this seems ridiculous.

Those were the only reasons, we were 1-2 weeks away from exchange and they had moved their cash into a readily available cash account for this to all go through ASAP as they said they were keen to move in as soon as we could get out xD!

@Ramsey1989 that sounds a nightmare, how odd that they pulled out over quite minor things

@twinkydink thanks, we have set a time limit on it but I'm not expecting much. Something fishy going on methinks, I wonder if the vendor has even been made aware of our offer

@TiddleTaddleTat

Yes and the reasons do not even seen plausible in my opinion, which leads me to believe they found another house or literally just bottled it and changed their mind.

When we were looking for a house to buy back in August I really struggled with selling agents truthfully putting out offers to the sellers, and not stating the exact amount we had offered to other buyers who were offering at the time.

There was one that didn't pass on our offer at all; and in fact used it as bait to make another couple offer more (they had already seen the property twice and came back for a third viewing the day we offered), so we didn't even get the chance to up it or anything.

There are the odd selling agents that go by the book however and do not use these kind of tactics, so perhaps the owners are just thinking it over but sometimes a time limited offer can be good idea rather than gritting your teeth and waiting.

As far as I'm concerned the buyers should be ripping your arm off at your offer Tiddle. Or at least negotiating. The fact that they are messing about makes me wonder how serious they are about selling, or if they need a certain amount to move on themselves & are doing the sums to see what is possible. They could at least keep you informed though either way! Frustrating! Time to give a deadline I think.

You may be best placed taking it off the market & starting afresh when you've saved up a bit more money hendal tbh. To get 375k you probably needed to be on at 400k to start with. I don't see you getting that much at 380k unless your house is something special & really competitive at 380k, which given the lack of viewings tells us its not. If you want to stick at it the only thing I'd suggest is marketing at 375k NO OFFERS!

Congratulations Auntpetunia. Hopefully we will all be joining you in new homes very soon. Hope the move went without a hitch.

I agree with you Ramsey. Their reasons for withdrawing aren't plausible & frankly bollocks. I hope you find a new buyer soon. Nice place btw. I do agree that you need to do a fair bit of de cluttering though, if only for the photos. You'd be surprised how much of a difference that makes. Both DH & my cars were full of crap from the house & prior to every viewing it took me 20 minutes to put lots of stuff into the garage to make the place look less cluttered lol.

We have a bit of a situation with ours. Solicitor rang me to say that although the developer who is building our house owns the land, they are not registered as having title yet on land registry. Apparently they may still push us to exchange, but until they do officially have title our lender will not agree to lend. Solicitor is going to chase this up. Bizzare situation. Does anyone have experience of this?

@MovingThisYearHopefully

Thank you, our agent is coming round Saturday afternoon to take new photos as my request.

By this time furniture and soft furnishing and rubbish will all be either thrown away or in the loft, I have to admin when viewing other properties the ones that appealed the most had some furnishings but no clutter at all and tbh barely looked lived in xD! guess I should have learnt from that, however having got a buyer after 4 days I just didn't think about it.

I haven't come across your situation before unfortunately, it is rather a sticky situation and I can understand why the lender would not agree to have it basically on their risk without making sure there will be a title deed to hold and secure the loan against.

@MovingThisYearHopefully

you cant buy from them if they arent registered - they dont have the necessary paperwork to sell. They cant pressure you to exchange without a lender in place - its up to them to sort out registration before exchange.

@MovingThisYearHopefully I know , it's not a bad offer considering the state of the place!
I have found the EA's silence really rude actually and it makes me less likely to increase the offer (or buy anything else with that EA, for that matter).

Good luck everyone

@moving what's does your solicitor advise? I wouldn't be happy exchanging in those circumstances, that's a big issue! And not one you can rectify so it leaves you at their mercy.

@tiddle do you have any other viewings lined up for this weekend?

We definitely won't be exchanging contracts until we are ready & the chain before us are ready too. We have always been clear on that & the fact that if we are to break chain then it is under the understanding that we need 4 weeks notice between exchange & complete to find somewhere to rent. It seems that all around is pressure for us to bend to others wishes, but its not gonna happen. Not with me in charge! Could just do without the stress really. Solicitor is going to look into it all & get back to us.

We have had some good news though. A friend of ours is going away for a while & has said we can stay her place if we need to break chain. She is known to be a bit flaky, but if it works out we will save a fortune & simply need to cover removals & storage. Result or what?

I feel a bit calmer and less sweaty today! We finally have the person doing the valuation for our buyer coming tomorrow in week 9 I think this will be the final thing, if you've been following the whole sorry saga we have a buyer with a 'non standard lender' who I'm assured has been doing everything else while taking 9 weeks to organise this mortgage.

I suppose tomorrow is the big day, if the valuation man downvalues then that'll be the end of this buyer, but if he says yes, I'm lead to believe we're almost there!

Perhaps I'm less sweary today because I now actually just feel completely sick!!