House on market a long time... too good to be true?

[TheShades]

There's a house on Righmove that seems to tick all our boxes. It's in an area that we haven't actually visited yet but has everything we need and is very sought after and highly regarded on MN.

But it's been on the market since January. This is an area when houses are usually snapped up in weeks or even days. On the face of it I can't see anything wrong with it and the price seems realistic.

I'll ask the estate agent but I can't imagine they will volunteer the information. Is there anything obvious I can check before viewing? If we do view it, what should we be looking out for?

Can you post a link? It’s impossible to even guess what could be wrong with it without knowing anything at all about the house or the area.

I would speak to the agent. It could be that a sale was agreed and fell through. It could be overpriced (the house opposite is identical to ours is on the market for far too much money, surprise surprise it hasn’t sold).
Personally I think it’s in agents best interest to tell you if there is a potential physical “show stopper” as it could be a waste of everyone’s time.

Has it just come back on the market having had a sale fall through?

I think good houses can slip through the net sometimes. If it doesn't go within the first couple of weeks then ppl assume there is something wrong with it and ignore it.

I'd ask the agent why it is still on the market, whether it was previously under offer, why it had fallen through etc. If you like it, go for it, but crack on with searches and survey quickly to see if there are any issues.

Always worth looking at location via satellite pics (through Google maps) - it might be next door to a factory or something?

Could be anything- we just offered and was accepted on a property that has been on the market a year- it's just right for us and not sure why it's been on for so long. There are things we are willing to compromise on that others might not? Also, they did accept an offer which eventually pulled out as they took too long to find somewhere new so that also happened in that year but shows as being on the market for a year still.

Another house we looked at had to give access to 3 cottages once a year to empty their cess pit- doesn't really affect the house but may put people off, had been on the market longer than I would expect.

Can you post a link?

I felt similar about our current house. It was put on the market in the summer, reduced a few weeks later. We only saw it on RM in the November and we both wondered why it hadn't sold.
It was realistically priced too.

We viewed it and loved it. The only slight issue might have been that it's about 150m from a secondary school (academy if that matters).
Still nobody was interested! It was a total steal! Huge garden, amazing location and the houses on the road now which are smaller and in need of doing up are going for about 40k more.

It's not always bad news, I think we were extremely lucky nobody else wanted it.

When I bought my house it had been on the market for 9 months. I ignored it because it'd been on for too long - assumed there was something wrong with it. There wasn't. The people selling it had originally wildly overpriced it, so by the time it showed up in my searches it had been on the market for ages. However, in the meantime they'd become forced sellers and had to accept a draft offer.

Things you can look into remotely:

Planning permission for nearby/next door etc
Grizzly murder etc
Aerial view to see if it backs onto a path/railway etc
Ask agents if it's been surveyed and found wanting (they're not obliged to tell you but it can be useful).
Flight path search (goodbye Richmond!)

My house took a while to sell in a hot market. The main reason was it was considerably bigger than most in the neighbourhood and therefore had a smaller pool of potential purchasers, and it was on a busy road, which was what initially put me off viewing it. Of course after I bought it, the road tuned out to be a non issue as the main rooms were at the back of the house and the traffic died right down at night.
But it was still enough to put people off, and the family I eventually sold to had very particular needs which the house matched (a wheelchair user who needed wide doorways and easy access to the garden but still enough bedrooms for four kids).
Go view, check out the area carefully (there are frequently bad streets in good areas), and don't let the time on the market put you off.

It doesn't necessarily mean anything. When we were looking, I kept coming across the same shitty looking house over and over. Unloved, looked like a crap hole. We viewed 12 houses and kept ignoring this one. One day we said sod it, nothing else on the market, may as well have a look at it. Ended up buying it! The vendors weren't accepting less than the asking price, there was lots of interest apparently but nobody to truly fall in love. We fell in love, bought it and actually managed to get 2k knocked off because the boiler needed replacing.

We've lived here 10 years now and done it up over the years. We often muse about how it was the "worst" house on our list. It was on the market for ages.

It might not mean anything. We recently put our house on the market and it sold within 48 hours - several offers, and we accepted one from a FTB. However, the FTB then dicked us around for months and eventually pulled out because she'd "changed her mind" for no real reason. The survey, searches, etc were all fine.

The problem we then had was that when we went back on Rightmove, it looked at if the house had been on the market for months. I'm sure a lot of people were wondering what was wrong with it, and I'm also sure people didn't believe the EA when they explained what had really happened. We sold again but it took longer - probably because the listing looked a bit fishy. Even though it wasn't. I'm still pretty angry with our original buyer, who lost us months..

Ours was badly listed by our useless EA when it came on three months ago - they put it up without getting our approval on the description or photos, then took three weeks and repeated nagging to fix only some of the multiple, quite serious issues. It's meant to be a "hot" market round here, and we barely had any viewers, plus the agents couldn't be less interested in trying to sell it if they tried. The longer it was on, the more people would - and I don't blame them - think something was wrong with it.

We reduced the price and that only attracted people with a lower budget - the people with the higher budgets who had been looking disappeared, and now we were top of our viewer's budgets instead. Although the house is in good order and fairly neutral decoration, it is "lived in" and doesn't have a brand new kitchen, bathroom etc, so people must be deciding to go for something smaller and shinier that won't require any outlay in the next few years.

Fast forward three months, the house opposite (20% smaller, tiny garden, no view, not massively immaculate either) comes on for £10K more and sells within a week.

Agent is now fired and we're leaving it a few weeks before very, very carefully choosing another, in the hopes the more casual RightMove browsers won't recognise it with a gap in between. I know with a new agent the RM history doesn't carry over, but you can't erase a house from people's memories!

Three months doesn't sound like a lot, but in this market it is an eternity! And an EA won't tell you the reason it hasn't sold is because they're disinterested, lazy, arrogant arsefaces

We've just been accepted on a house that has been on the market a while - because the photos on RM are bloody awful! The house needs a bit of tarting up, cosmetically, but honestly - they didn't even put on the lights to photograph it, so it looked much more dingy and old fashioned than it is. It isn't super modern - no bifold doors or fashion-y lanterns, but it's a great, solid house. I'd def view!

Maybe check out if there is going to be some sort of building on land nearby? River nearby so flood risk? Petrol station nearby? (DD couldn't get a mortgage on a house fairly close to a petrol station).

I'd be looking out for things like damp, old electrics (look at the fuse board), subsidence, near something undesirable, something unusual about the way it's constructed (eg single skin walls), japanese knotweed etc. If you decide to offer on it make sure you get a proper survey done.

The house I’m buying has been on since jan. no idea why as I loved it.

I was outbid on a lovely house which then came back on the market as the sale fell through and I have just had my new offer accepted. It therefore looks as if it has been online for months. Also the pictures on RM do not do it justice at all. I’d actually be annoyed if I was the vendor as I think the EA has done a terrible job at marketing it. The rooms look quite dark and small and the listing cover picture is one of the bedrooms so I’m certain lots of potential buyers will have just skipped it.

In reality the property has some amazing original features, the rooms are large with high ceilings (pictures were clearly taken at a weird angle) and a stunning garden which is mentioned but there is only a partial picture of it online.

Ask the HA.
Our current place, it had been for sale for well over a year, more like 2, was on its second HA, and the current HA was reluctant to even let us view because of a problem nothing to do with the actual property itself- they practically warned us not to bother viewing. But it was buyable, because in the end we did buy it.