About to go on the market!

[whatsthatnow74]

Question is, are there any buyers out there?

We have a lovely house in a popular location (we’re selling for school catchment reasons, long story). Under normal circumstances I’d expect it to sell pretty quickly, but not sure about now.

I’d be interested to hear how others are faring at this time.

@GrumpySausage, thanks for your reply, that's useful. I would expect that masks and gloves should also be used in empty properties, if they have viewings back to back there's potential to transfer virus from hard surfaces. Also my cleaner could potentially go in after a viewing.

Any potential viewer will have to demonstrate that they are either cash buyers or have a sale agreed on their existing property with evidence of exchange before they can arrange a viewing.

The agent said any other position is now considered time wasting.

By that FTBers are time wasters? Really?

We were going to move this year, but we will put it off til next year now. If I can do some sprucing up during lockdown, maybe at the end of the year.

Really looking forward to the property market getting up and running again in Scotland. We are ready to proceed but just need to find a house! It al dried up as soon as we accepted the offer in our house! Lately all that’s been going onto Rightmove etc is one and ten bed flats, previously used for Airbnb (obvious from the photos with folded towels on the beds etc 🙄). We’re looking for a family home - hopefully people will still have the confidence and be in a position to go to market 🤞🏼

Omg so many typos! That should say “one and TWO bed flats” not ten

Which county are you based in @whatsthatnow74 we’re in herts and also pondering selling as we’ve foolishly set our hearts on one we’ve seen, but we’d need to sell first of course. I’ve seen 56 new properties have been listed in the last 3 days on rightmove , In our town, which i think Is quite a lot considering the market has just re opened. We popped into an estate agent to see if we could get a feel for the market currently and he didn’t think there was lots of demand but that “viewings we’re still taking place on all types of properties”.

We just put our house back on the market and 1 day later had an offer at 5k less than our pre-Covid offer.

We sold ours on Tuesday at only just under asking, the EA said it had been crazy and they’d had several calls about ours.
Hopefully everything will go through easily (FTB) as we offered on our new house just before lockdown, mortgage is fully in place and conveyancing well under way, hoping to be in by summer!

@Bigoldwimp we’re in North Yorkshire 😊

I had a person come to view today after being held in stasis because of Covid. The house across from me is up for sale as a doer-upper and I've seen loads of people eyeing it up. Prospective buyers are definitely out there.

Our flat went on the market 2 days before lockdown so obviously only a couple of viewings then everything stopped.

Our estate agents have been back for maybe a week or so now and we've had 8 viewings and more booked for next week.

This is encouraging. Good luck to all who are on the market

with evidence of exchange before they can arrange a viewing

that's hardly fair! It takes a few months to exchange, and if you need to buy as well, you won't exchange to coincide with your purchase exchange - not wait till one and only then start viewing houses - it takes tme to find one!
Being under offer should be enough unless the vendor has dozens of people wanting to view, all cash buyers.

I guess the nature of the market will decide, and I think that is hugely variable depending where you are and what you are selling. Agents can try excluding FTBers and those forming an onward chain as “time wasting” and see if the demand for their vendors’ properties is still there. Sounds a silly idea to me to exclude the majority of your potential buyers but what do I know 🤷🏻‍♀️

We're in the 1M bracket and our EA is very clear that they will have to see evidence that a potential purchaser is in a position to buy, rather than looking for a house before putting theirs on the market. We also have no onward chain.

When we were looking for our next house we had to demonstrate that we had funds available before they would entertain our offer. We had to supply banks statements and proof of funds, which is fair enough.

Obviously viewers need to be in a position to buy! But to not allow a viewing unless you are a cash buyer or already exchanged on current property is unnecessarily restrictive IMO - plenty of people who don’t fit that narrow criteria are in a decent position to proceed.

We have just sold out house and are looking for a new one and the 5 estate agents I've talked to have said they currently have more people looking than they expected.

I think if you want to sell it now, put it up andd see what happens. Two agents I spoke with have changed their terms to allow for one remarketing as they know people are nervous.

Those of you who say "it has sold" - what do you mean by that?

I am both a buyer and a seller and holding off for the moment, (for many reasons). The EA says "houses like yours will sell in a flash" but I am not seeing it, and certainly not at asking price. To be fair I am not on the market yet though but having an offer accepted to completion can be a long and bumpy road.

Re Excluding viewings - I think that in the "old days" if you saw something that took your fancy you viewed it. EAs encouraged people to view. When you asked to see property A they would frequently suggest fitting in properties B and C because they were "just down the road" and "might be just what you are looking for". EAs used the number of viewings as a benchmark of the success or otherwise of their marketing. They could also say that "You have had 34 viewings and no offers therefore the price is too high". All a waste of time.

Now with floorplans, video tours, EPCs, comparison data, area walkabouts etc you could almost be in a position to say yes or no before the viewing. (Time for a revival of the Home Reports perhaps?)

I admit I was so sick of viewings when I sold my lasy house. All those gawpers tramping through my home with their kids when I knew they weren't really keen. And then the charade of "feedback" !!

So I think if EAs are even more restrictive that can only be a good thing. (And FTB very unlikely to be looking in the £1m ++ bracket)

We’re definitely considering very carefully which properties to request to view, and doing a LOT of groundwork prior to viewings. As opposed to viewing everything that ticks say 80% of our wish-list in order to compare etc.

@MrSheenandMe sums it up well. There is so much more information available online now. People can check out the area, satellite and street views, school reports, facilities pinned on google maps. Anyone looking for a property in a particular area can answer most of their questions via the internet. So the decision is that it ticks lots of boxes before viewing.

And with floor plans, lots of photographs, the only reason to view a house is because you think it's definitely on the right track, pending viewing of course. People can do a drive by, take a look at the outside, check out the area.

I remember a couple of tyre-kickers who viewed our previous house. Clearly just going for a day out and to have a nose around. Not even on the market, "just looking".

@whatsthatnow74 how’s your house selling going?

I'm in Scotland - DP and I both selling our respective flats so we can buy a house together. Hoping to get mine on the market as soon as restrictions ease (surveyor can't get out to see it at the moment). EA said she has similar properties with 30 viewings booked for as soon as restrictions are lifted. I imagine some of these people have maybe been bored during lockdown and might not materialise but still sounds positive.

Meantime, we've found a house we absolutely love. EA said they might not entertain us for viewing because we've got two properties to sell. Both our flats are in high demand areas where properties sell for well over asking price at closing dates so not expecting any issues selling either. We also only need to sell one to be able to afford the house so seems unfair they might not let us view unless we've had an offer accepted on both, albeit I understand why they'd want to avoid time wasters. Will just need to wait and see what happens.

If we miss out, EA seems positive there will be a lot of properties coming to the market in the next few months based on recent activity and enquiries.

The other good news is that we've been told banks aren't asking for pre-lockdown valuations to be redone so hopefully not a bad time to sell.

Mine went on the market last week (London). Half a dozen viewings and one offer, £20k below what would like so will see what happens. The chap who has offered (offered on Friday) has said it has to be accepted on Monday or he will walk - estate agent is pressuring to accept as I guess it’s easy for them as it’s only a couple of hundred less in commission (reduces it to ‘only’ £8k!), whereas for me a £20k reduction in budget for new house is quite significant!

Actually, has anyone who is buying had problems with estate agents? I put in an offer on an overpriced wreck (seriously, it pretty much needs tearing down and starting again!) Offer is well below asking price, but actually a very reasonable offer given that the asking price for a post-war wreck was 15% more than beautifully refurbished and extended Victorian properties on the same road sold for 6 months ago! It showed on the estate agent’s website as ‘offer pending’ for a few days, and now it is saying ‘offer retracted’, which seems odd given that I haven’t retracted it and the agent hasn’t got back to me about it! It’s a well known high street estate agent that lets you make offers on their website, so it was effectively in writing, which I thought meant that by law they had to pass the offer on?