Is anyone else preparing to put their house on the market?

[Clettercletterthatsbetter]

I know, I know...we should have done it last year when the market was crazy busy but finances, family circumstances and whatnot meant that wasn’t possible and so we’re looking to sell our house and move this year.

Is there anyone else in the same boat who fancies a support thread to get us through?

We’ve had our place valued by 4 agents, have chosen one to go with and are currently doing a few minor bits to the house to get it in tip-top condition (filling old screw holes, a bit of touch-up painting and a good declutter) before we have photos taken.

Who else is looking to move in 2021?

[quote user1471462428]@oneofthegiantsisme I was struggling with the lack of charity shops but have been giving things away on Facebook, I leave them outside for people to collect and also have been using oxfam book banks and BHF bins for household things. Our local air ambulance has a bin for linens.

Another tips is to vacuum pack your spare clothes to make more space in your cupboard so you can shove other things in.

If you are brave put your photos up on the thread. I’m going to when I’ve done enough/ am brave enough[/quote]
We had this problem, even our local gifting sites I struggled to get rid of things that would normally be snapped up. In the end I put stuff in the garden and on the street with a big free sign and posted on my Facebook page. What didn’t go was put in a skip which was a shame as a lot of stuff could have been reused.

@Housebuyer2021

Does anyone else get frustrated when people basically tell you no to bother doing X Y Z to the house before selling because it’s not worth it?

There’s stuff we absolutely will leave but some things I do think you need to do not even just from a value perspective but just to make it more appealing for selling!

I’m sick of people telling me to leave stuff when I know my house and I know what will help it sell! Argh.

Yes I have had this. Our dining/playroom walls were horrible, lots of scratches, footprints, food marks from the kids, “lovely artwork” each of the kids did with crayons/pens on the walls at one time or another. We also used it as the main party room so marks everywhere from birthday posters from over the years. It was fine when we lived there we would have eventually done it up when the kids got older, and although a new owner would redecorate, there was no way I was leaving it like that, 2 coats of fresh paint made a huge difference.

The only thing I never got to do before we moved (moved out just over a week ago and out on the market after we left) was paint the larger kids room, the colour was chosen by our 3 yo daughter at the time and looked like someone had vomited pink all over the room, pink walls, pink curtains, pink beds, pink rugs 🤦‍♀️ We managed to tone it down with white wardrobes, changing the curtains to mainly white with a little pink in them and replaced the beds to white bunk beds so it didn’t look too “bad” but now the rooms empty the pink really stands out. The estate agent thinks it fine but I think it would look so much better if we could have redecorated it before we left.

@Persipan that's what I've done. It's why I felt it was easier doing everything after we left, now we've gone it's not quite out of sight out of mind but I definitely think it's easier, especially for the DCs too. They think everyone in the uk is still in lockdown, we haven't told them their friends have gone back to school yet, we are waiting until they start their new schools to make it easier for them.

[quote Clettercletterthatsbetter]@ConcreteUnderpants I’m sure your photos are lovely!

And....no. I won’t be putting a link on here (too afraid!). Unless it doesn’t sell too easily and then I’ll need advice on where I’ve gone wrong! The agents were very prescriptive about what we couldn’t have on show in the photos (bins, toiletries, cleaning products) that I’m worried I went a bit far. I even folded the loo roll ends into points... [/quote]
Haha that’s funny 🧻

I accidentally left one of my DDs OMG LOL dolls in our bathroom which can be seen in the photo, I’m hoping someone with daughters sees it and the kids want to view the house just because of that, or to see if there is any more, which I’m sure there are, especially hidden in the garden as my 3yo likes to bury her sisters toys 😆

[quote spaghettiwest]@Snoopy10 Sorry to hijack, but have a question about brackets.

Our agent wants us to price our house at either £325k or £350k. He wants to discourage us from pricing somewhere in the middle (£340k), as we "won't show up in a search for £325k".

Is that right? I feel like most people put in a range — say £325-350k — in which case it would be fine?[/quote]
When ever I search I always search way under what I’m looking for, if I’m looking around £200,000 I will search anywhere from £90,000 upwards, but that could just be me, always looking for a bargain 🤷🏼‍♀️😂

@Handsoffstrikesagain

Hi everyone, I’m not looking to sell but I am a home stager so if anyone would like any advice or tips on getting their homes ready please let me know! I’m on mat leave now and missing my day job 😩 so would love to help out on here! X

I've done all my decluttering, taken down personal effects and family photos, and almost completed staging, but my walls look really bare! Do you know any companies who might rent me some neutral artwork? I'd probably want about 6-8 framed pieces for about a month.

@d1157959543599b000178 I was reading your posts about moving to a smaller house. I’d highly recommend it for financial purposes. The only reason we were in a position to buy in the first place is because we did this for a couple of years. We were paying big rents for big houses in the “right” areas but never able to save so we decided sod it and moved into a small mid terrace house in a very dull backwater village were rent was really cheap. We had a few raised eyebrows and comments made but we didn’t care it meant we could live comfortably and start saving a decent deposit.

There is nothing worse than financial stress so we did what we had to. We did the same when we bought, we bought in a nice area, but not an “exclusive” area, we bought a cheaper house , we could have bought a more expensive house but choose a smaller mortgage that we could manage easier.

I hope things go well with your sale x

@Handsoffstrikesagain

Hi starseeking where abouts you? Tbh art for walls is so cheap now you may as well buy it for the price of renting. Have you got mirrors up?

We are North West Surrey/London borders.

Mirrors in every room except the kitchen and dining room (separate rooms). The 3 bedroom mirrors are on the wardrobe doors so walls are bare.

Dining room has 3 bare walls, and a patio door on the remaining wall, plus a home office in one corner, so art will make it more homely.

House is Edwardian, so high ceilings (12 feet), and the beige walls everywhere look so bare!

The reason we are staging is that our house is on a main road, so feel we need to do a bit extra to get it gone.

I've got to get one last job done (leaking chimney stack) before we can put it on the market at the end of this month. So bored of the prep now!

Those look perfect @Handsoffstrikesagain! Hopefully putting a few up will help "sell a lifestyle", and get this house sold so we can move on.

Thanks for your help!

@Bid876 Thank you for your kind words. Photos tomorrow, plus EPC thingy man who will also do the floor plan. So will be up for sale I guess middle of next week.Sounds as though you have been very busy with your move.Good luck with the house sale.

@Persipan good luck with your offer, is the house in a chain?

I have been flat out trying to sort the house for tomorrow and de cluttering . When I started I was dithering about throwing chipped cups away, one week on I am glad to say I have passed that. I have another tip trip booked for today, another 30 ish bags to go, not sure if I will fit it into my car. I want all this stuff, clutter gone.
Estate Agent rang to say tiny house mid terraced house now vacant, tenant has left. So viewing it tomorrow afternoon, unfortunately so are a lot of other people. I am not in a position to offer yet either.
Other tiny house I liked, although really bit expensive for me has signed up a new tenant so that one is out.
Any top tips @Handsoffstrikesagain for selling houses?
I really want to sell ASAP and I cannot wait to move.
Good luck everybody.

Hi all, I think I posted on this thread a while back. Our house went on the market at 5pm last Tuesday. We had 8 viewings on the Thursday and accepted an offer at full asking price. That side of things was as straightforward as we could have hoped for, however, finding a house to move to in the current market is proving a much more difficult task! I seem to spend my life refreshing right move! We went to view one last Saturday which was no good, and going to view another this Saturday, so fingers crossed.

I'll join. We will be putting ours on the market later this year. It used to be our family home but is currently tenanted as we're overseas at the moment. I'm hoping the tenant has nice furniture and is tidy!

Do we think that there will be the usual pre-pandemic Easter bump of properties ?

I'm less worried about selling my own property and more concerned there just won't be anything much to buy and end up having to make major compromises.

That’s the problem @readytosell. Where we live anything decent is getting snapped up really quickly so we had to get an offer on ours to be in with a chance of getting anywhere but there is just so little coming up, and house prices have gone up loads round here too. We have a baby due in august so praying we find somewhere to move to soon or we’ll have to pull out of our sale I think. Not what we want but we don’t want to buy a house for the sake of it either!

We have just reduced our price after being on the market for a month and in doing so it has generated 3 viewings. (We only had 3 viewings in 4 weeks, located S. London) I'm hoping we will be able to get an offer in the next week or so to take advantage of the stamp duty holiday extension.

@catwithwhiskers
Please could you let me know how much price and % you dropped? Mine (£600k) is getting about 3 viewings a week and after 6 weeks we've only had 1 low offer. Not sure what % drop might make a difference. Thank you.