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?

Well that's a surprise
We had a call from ea
The person who viewed at the weekend has come back and made an offer
£17.5k under what we paid for the house
Not a chance

Good you got an offer @Comps83! Do you think they would negotiate up to something acceptable?

@Clettercletterthatsbetter no I don't think they will
They offered £125k and I said that I would absolutely not budge on £135k and that is £7.5k less than we paid which is painful enough .

I don’t blame you @Comps83, we’re also looking to sell an almost new house and really don’t want to accept less than we paid for it.

@Clettercletterthatsbetter especially now that we will be paying stamp duty again

We tried to sell last year but what with the March lockdown and the November lockdown and no other house that looks like ours on the road of houses where only 2 have been sold in the last 25 years, one of which was when we bought we found the estate agents valuing at differences of £600,00 from lowest to highest and viewers who were completely flummoxed when it came to trying to value the place so it has stuck. Mind you even if you look at a mile radius of our postcode the nearest sale was in late 2018. It is an area where no one ever leaves. They usually have to carry people out in wooden boxes before the house is sold.
We had a lot of viewers. Our agent though was terrible and I think put a lot of people off.

We have now put it on for much less with a different agent and have been inundated with offers but it is all subject to them selling their own place. Found one guy but this agent doesn’t seem willing to get the sale underway and are dragging their feet as they think they can get a better offer and have told me to have an open house to get everyone through the doors. I just want to move and I have my next place lined up which I am making up for the hit I am taking on my own so I am not exactly losing out,
So pissed off with it all. I don’t think I will ever use an agent again.
If I was just dealing with things I think we would have exchanged by now and had a moving date instead of fending off people who are bidding sight unseen and need to sell their own house and get a mortgage first.

@Comps83 I know. For us stamp duty, estate agents fees and moving costs, is around £30k! It’s almost worth just staying put... (except we don’t like the area and have outgrown the house)

@Bythemillpond wow, £600k difference in valuations is massive! Whereabouts in the country are you (assuming you’re in the UK)?

[quote Clettercletterthatsbetter]@Comps83 I know. For us stamp duty, estate agents fees and moving costs, is around £30k! It’s almost worth just staying put... (except we don’t like the area and have outgrown the house)[/quote]
This our issue now - we want to move and the stamp duty thing would really help but now I feel like it's pointless. Not sure if we should sell ours still and go into rented and hope for price drops?

In the UK. In the south east.

They have gone away to consider our offer but I won't hold my breath

I feel your pain, millpond, ours is an unusual house for the town, so not much to go on for valuation - only one in our cul-de-sac has changed hands since we moved here twenty years ago.

Decluttering has taken a bit of a backward step at the moment - both DC are currently home from uni, for the forseeable future, so all their stuff is cluttering up the rooms we'd tidied beautifully before Christmas! At least the photos were taken back in November, so they look good.

It's also not helped by the fact that we can't get rid of most of the stuff we declutter until lockdown ends and the charity shops open up (if they'll take anything at all and aren't still full!). We're not even supposed to go to the tip unless it's a health hazard, either.

@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

I think I might have to resort to Facebook, user - I've been using Freegle (pre lockdown), but have a few things that didn't go. I don't think we've got a book bank nearby, though .

I'm consoling myself with the fact that the cosmetic/superficial decluttering is done, so the house looks tidy (apart from aforementioned uni stuff). There's plenty of time yet for the "clear out all the crap we don't want to pay to take with us" phase .

Managed to do a bit of wallpaper patching in my bedroom that's been needing sorting for ages (there was a bit of staining and unsticking along the top of the wall from where there had been a minor roof issue years ago). In a perfect world I would have redone the entire wall but a) I didn't have enough paper to do that b) I'm pretty crap at wallpapering and c) tbh the whole room could probably do with an update and that's not really a practical option right now. (The baby was fairly unimpressed with even that much time spent with my attention elsewhere!) So the goal really was just to get it looking even and not alarming, and that's done.

Well I've decline the guys final offer on the house which was £15.5k less than paid
I'll see what comes back from my mortgage enquiry about renting it out

We've painted the family bathroom from crappy magnolia that comes off when you wipe it to Dulux Natural Hessian Bathroom paint. The difference in colour isn't much, slightly darker, but will be much easier to clean & not offensive to potential buyers.
(Before & After)

@APurpleSquirrel love the window!!

Thank you @user1471462428 - it's standard on our style of house - The Letchworth by Redrow.

We have had 3 viewings so far but no offers yet. We have one viewing booked so far for the weekend so fingers crossed. H is taking the rejections of our house rather personally 🤣

Photographer booked for Monday, so will hopefully go on on the market by Thursday at the latest! Yikes!
Trying to find out new home, but nothing I like within our budget. So hard. Plus I can’t even look anywhere even if I did fall in love with somewhere as I haven’t got an offer on my house yet.

We are hoping to put on the market by spring. We have a little 3 bed cottage in a nice village but now we are a family of 6 it is just too small. We'd like to move to a 4 bed detached with a bit of character but unfortunately in a much more expensive area. We he house has sold twice in the last 10 years even though it only has a back yard rather then back garden. We'll hope to buy but if it doesn't work out we are prepared to go into rented while we find a house. I'm hoping if that happens at least we will be in a good position not being in a chain.

I'm excited but also really nervous. We've been talking about it for ages and this year we are taking the plunge

We too are moving from an area we aren't too keen on

@ConcreteUnderpants snap on both counts - photographer booked for Monday! Also nothing coming on the market where we want to move to, but that’s probably for the best as we’re not in a position to pounce yet! Need a buyer for ours...