How to move forwards selling..

[Bol87]

Our house has been on the market for coming up 4 weeks. Initially, we had 4 viewings within a couple days & nothing at all since.

However, we have had an offer at almost asking price. The catch being the buyers haven’t yet sold their house. It’s on the market, very reasonably priced I think but not that well presented & in a mediocre location. Not awful, not brilliant.

I fully acknowledge they are not proceedable, as do they, and so we’ve left the house up. The buyer is someone I vaguely know & she’s desperate to live on our estate as her parents live across the road & she’s always at their house! She’s said to me a few times in passing that she longed for a house to come up in her budget so she could live nearby.. her parents came knocking with budget questions within 10 mins of our board going up 😂🙈

Anyway, all well & good but she’s not yet sold & we’ve had no other interest. We’d happily drop the price a bit but feel a bit torn given her good offer. We are using an online agent, so don’t have an actual estate agent with a list of clients etc :-/ we are on all the websites & I continue to push on social media & local community groups.

Any thoughts? Do we switch to a traditional agent? Do we drop the price regardless & accept we’ll get less from our interested party should her house sell?

We’ve not found anywhere yet, a few we’ve ear marked but we’ve not yet viewed any as we thought we should sell ours first? :-/

How strange. We are in the very same situation except we don’t know the buyer who has made an offer, and if we were to sell to them we would hope to get a bit more (the offer is 5% below asking but we didn’t start negotiating with them - simply told them to come back when they had sold). Also on with an online agent because we thought our house would sell very quickly as we are very close to a highly sought after school. The only explanation we can come up with would be that we’ve been over optimistic on price since we have had viewings and, of course, the offer but the house is not sold. We too have considered whether we should reduce the price given that it went on 10/07 so it has now been six weeks, yet we have this offer....

Hi OP, if I were you I'd start looking. It can't hurt - knowledge is power etc. Then if you immediately find somewhere you love that you can still afford if you drop the price, that makes sense to do; or if you feel that there's not much out there for you then there's no harm in waiting a month to see what unfolds with the offer??
I think there's no real reason to decide either way until you've started looking at your onward move which will give you more context as to how to go forward. Best of luck!

Thank you @WoolyMammoth55 - good advice! We have been to view a few today & really loved one. We’ve explained our position & expressed our interest should the house still be available.

We’ve had another viewing request on ours next weekend, so I guess we’ll see what happens with that & debate our options.

Quite an annoying limbo isn’t it @Sweetmelody72 .. we are also in a very desirable school catchment & village but our estate falls foul to being the older of the two very similar new build developments. Houses do sell but just not as quickly as they are reaching the point of needing a bit of updating bathroom & possibly carpet wise compared to the houses 8 years younger..

Hi @Bol87, well I think that's great news - not always easy to find something you like so well done!

One thing that did occur to me is that you mentioned your (potential) buyer's house is "not well presented". Since you want to accept her good offer and she is highly motivated to buy your home - which makes her a very attractive buyer indeed! - you could perhaps get a list together of simple things she might be able to do to improve presentation of her property.

Is that possible? Does it need better photos, a coat of white paint or less garish curtains? Or does it need a new bathroom and kitchen, which obviously might be harder to implement...? Because I think if you can offer any helpful advice at this point it's to both your benefits. Maybe you could think about chatting to the parents or give some advice via her EA?

I just say that as someone who is always happy to get constructive advice on my own property listings! It's not completely without risk - they might think you're being nosy or bossy - but if they take your advice and get an offer then that's a considerable upside... Just a thought! Best of luck