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?

Sweary!! I'm not sweaty, promise!

Everything crossed Toyko

that sounds like good news for both of you @tokyo and @moving

If she is flakey though @moving maybe still have something else as a back up!?

Our mortgage has been approved and our buyers are having their survey here next week but I understand they have received their mortgage offer this is their home buyers survey. I'm hoping they dont try to knock anything off, all the work we have done is very recent and signed off with building control so it can't be anything major!

Ok the surveyor has been, he was actually very nice! He was here about 10 minutes, just whizzed round, didn't look in the loft, said his office would have a report to the buyers mortgage lender by the end of the day, please God let him not devalue it!!!!

@twinkydink if your buyers survey is anything like @TokyoSushi's then you should be fine!

Today is the deadline for us to hear back about our offer, I'm not holding my breath. Haven't spotted anything else we like so are going to wait until prices start dropping round here. Nothing is valued in light of Brexit yet here.

spoke to stepdad this morning, he's on with swapping mortgage over and porting original mortgage and adding additional borrowing.

total PITA. hopeing they wont try and squeeze any more cash out of me tbh though I am fully expecting they will try!

had a look through all my paperwork last night and couldn't find one single bit that said ANYTHING about it ending in april!

Can I join in?

Our house is not yet on the market. We'd intended on putting it on after Christmas, but finding out I'm pregnant with my first means we need to get going quickly! We had a note through our door from a couple who are looking for a house in our road, having had a sale opposite fall through. We arranged a viewing, yesterday, which seemed to go really well.

I'm really getting my hopes up now! If it goes through, we might even avoid going on the market or needing estate agents altogether. Has anyone on here done a private sale without an EA?

That sounds exciting Archbishop fingers crossed!

Thanks for those that advised we put a time limit on our offer. Agent called just before this deadline expired, of course. Our offer 8% under asking is 'far' too far away from the asking price apparently. Not sure why the vendor is selling but it's chain free and I know vendor bought for 75% of the current asking price only a few years ago, and has done diddly squat to the property!
I have asked if the vendor would consider doing some of the (urgent) work on the property before I can consider whether we can increase our offer

Sounds positive with the surveys. Fingers crossed they come back fine.

I'd check again with Santander tbh Flamingo. Surely this is their error?

Bit of a result there Archbishop. Hopefully these people make an offer. Not done a private sale myself, but had many useless EA involved in sales & purchases so it may as well of been a private sale. Congratulations on your pregnancy btw.

These people seem like opportunists tbh Tiddle. Sorry about that.

Had some shocking news today. Apparently, our buyers need to change their solicitors because their current ones are not on the approved panel of their lenders. How we got 8 weeks in & basically at the point where they could exchange on their purchase of our house before this was discovered is anyones guess! Plus no news on their sale yet either. This is clearly going to delay things somewhat, but given we are in no rush, the longer they take the better.

Sorry to hear that @tiddle 8% under asking is not ridiculous around here, it's pretty standard! It doesn't sound like they need to sell. I would be wary about proceeding with them regardless of what happens next.

@moving that is ridiculous! I had a little panic about it as I heard Natwest only use solicitors on their panel but then found that most solicitors are on their panel! Can anything be transferred over or will all be started from scratch.

@archbishop I have sold privately but it was to a friend. We got the house valued and and her offer was based on us saving fees so it saved us all some money and no need for any viewings! There were no issues at all and it was nice being able to update each other.

Thanks @twinkydink and @MovingThisYearHopefully

It is quite a distinctive property within a small school catchment area. Asking price is more common here, but I think their asking price is nuts (and reflected by lack of viewings). Think we'll put in a slightly increased offer next week, I have an idea of the best price we can do.

@twinkydink

Please stop tagging me in this thread. It has nothing to do with me!

I think most of the stuff can be transferred over Twinky, with amendments if necessary, there will still be some delay though as they have to go through the papers for their sale & purchase. Hopefully no further enquiries will be raised by the new solicitors. We will see.

Looks like our flaky friend who said we can stay at her place is already showing her flakiness lol. We made arrangements for her to come over tonight for a meal, a catch-up & to get keys before she goes abroad next week, but she's not responding to messages now. Ah well, it sounded good for about 5 minutes lol.

Application for porting is in. Stepdad thinks it will go through without issue and pretty quick! Hope so.

Car has gone back and weve got a hire car for a week while we find a new one!

Our house is now on rightmove finally! We had a viewing this evening and two lined up tomorrow. I said to estate agent “that’s great news” and he said “yeah usually interest in the first week is high then it dies down by the second week” hope he’s more upbeat when he’s showing people round!

Hope you don’t mind me joining in. I’ve been following your stories with interest as we’re now 3 weeks on the market, about 8 views and no 2nd viewings.

Going to speak to EA today about dropping price as we know we’re being a bit unrealistic. We have a real “marmite” house - it’s just about finding that one person who likes a bit of a quirky house.

However I’m sooo impatient!!

Hope you find a car quickly Flamingo. When I was looking I wanted 4 doors & a sunroof, ended up getting one I'd originally discounted because it had 2 doors & no sunroof lol. Getting an auto is limiting, but so much easier than it was when I passed my test 17 years ago. Mileage is the thing to look at rather than age. If you can get something older thats done very few miles you can bag yourself a bargain!

Everything crossed Jem. The EA was probably just trying to be realistic tbh. Its really important to make the most of the first few weeks when interest is high. Thats why its vital to get your pricing, photos etc right.

Welcome Alex. 8 viewings in 2 weeks is pretty good. What sort of feedback are you getting? Could be most of these people are simply not in a proceedable position, or is price being mentioned in feedback?

Good luck to everyone having/going on viewings today & awaiting offers. DH & I will be off to our new build development again later for a bit of a peek!

Can I join? This is ours -

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-67725418.html

I chose PurpleBricks vased on the MN feedback thread - they sounded quite good, and the local agent really knows the area as her Mum loves around the corner, so we thought it would be a good fit. We put our house on the market on 26 Sept and have had ONE viewing since then! Feedback was great, they liked the house but were looking for more expansion potential.

Problem is, we have found the perfect 4 bed and they've accepted our offer. I know we shouldn't have been looking until we were proceedable, but it's a house we've loved for years, and it would be the perfect family home, and came on the market so we popped in for a look and fell in love!

So we now need to sell ours asap - we dropped the price on Tuesday from £475k to offers over £450k, and still have no more interest. What do we do? Wait it out? Drop further? It seems WAY too cheap at 450 as there are smaller 3 bed detached properties in our village for over 500k so I was sure we'd get some interest at this bargain price but so far, nothing. So depressing...

OMG I've just double checked our listing - the agent has put bedroom 3 as being 1.5m wide!!! It is just over 2m so no wonder people haven't been coming - I have just asked her to change it but GRRRRRRRR.....

We have de-cluttered a little and had new photos taken, not sure about them but link it below:

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

Our EA said everythings been quiet for viewings over past two weeks, so we are yet to actually get a viewing after putting it back on the market on 01/10.

Our rightmove add assumes it has been up since 1st August; though it sold 1st time after 4 days, so in reality has actually been on the market just over two weeks but buyers wont know this...

Does anyone have any suggestions on getting this sold asap?

@kittycrackers - you’re not far from us! This is ours.. but we dropped the price today to £420k to get it moving.. the south east is really bad at the moment!

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-56751144.html

@movingthisyearhopefully - I’m quite pleased with 8 viewings but all the feedback has been about garden / parking etc. It’s in a very unique area so is a real marmite house. Hopefully now we’ve lowered it we will have some luck.

We’re moving up North for a big change, so I’m lacking patience!!

Oh wow Kitty & May. I am from that neck of the woods too. Reigate to be precise. Don't mean to sound stalkerish, but I know exactly where both your houses are. We actually looked at 2 places on Wildcroft Drive Kitty, so v close. Your house looks lovely & I am sure you'll get a buyer soon at around that price. Your problem is your EA I'm afraid. Do you have Lisa as your local property comedian expert? We wasted 5 months on the market with them & ended up switching to a proper EA as despite having many viewings because of our low price, when it came to offers we didn't have the level of service you'd get from a high street agent, so it didn't work out. So frustrating!

Your location is lovely too May. The EA call it Redgate lol. I'm guessing your biggest thing putting people off there is parking, or lack of? Its also probably too expensive. Our 3-bed semi in Reigate with a massive garden, garage, off road parking etc started at 425k & we eventually sold at 385k. Way lower than we expected tbh, but as you know, the market here is really shit & nothing is selling unless its completely stand out stunning or really priced to sell. You can see the houses reducing in price before your eyes, yet still EA & vendors try their luck at unattainable asking prices. A few of my neighbours have sold & moved up north, which has brought down the asking prices in our street because they weren't fussy on price given you get so much more up north. If you can bear it & want to move quickly I bet if you pull out all the stops & remarket it at 400k you'll get loads of interest & hopefully a quick sale. One thing I'd suggest presentation wise is to lose the massive sofas in your sitting room if you can. We have exactly the same in ours & the EA told us that when they showed people houses the same as ours they were convinced our sitting room was smaller because of our massive sofas.

Nice flat Ramsey. I don't really know the area, but no viewings is almost always down to the price I'm afraid. Plus the online EA doesn't help & having it look like its been on since 1st August is really shit. If you haven't altered the price at all it will be showing a long way down the listings & nobody will of been notified of it coming back on the market. I'd look to binning off Yopa & starting afresh with a new EA who will market it properly. Be guided by them as to price. Its such a shit market in the south at the moment. You do have my sympathies!

@MovingThisYearHopefully

Thanks :)

We had viewings and an offer after 4 days in August so i don't think the price is an issue; i have checked houses for sale/ under offer/ sold in Ferndown and there are properties priced overs ours which arent as nice, and as its ready to move into with all built in appliances and 2 years left on its LABC guarantee its a good buy.

I have spoken to a few EA (high street ones) and they have said the market has just gone quiet from start of October so i guess its just bad luck really :(

Fully expecting to be here at Christmas now; although our agent doesnt think so, im just really impatient as i dont want to lose our onward purchase.

We have also spent over £1,000 on this EA and dont have enough money for anothet.

I completely understand not wanting to spend more money Ramsey. You may find that certain high street EA are willing to deduct the cost you shelled out on Yopa from their fees. We got that agreed with our EA, we're paying 1%, but £1200 that we wasted on Purplebricks is being deducted from the total. They don't advertise this but its worth asking.