About to put our house up for sale.. anyone else?

[DomusAurea]

We are taking the plunge and it's happening - we are selling our house (and relocating 200 miles away but that's another thread I guess) - anyone else? I could do with a collective handhold!

This is where we are now:

• finishing the last small jobs such as painting a ceiling
• having meets with estate agents for valuation
• nervously searching rightmove for possible houses in our relocation area (there isn't a lot!)

Are you going for sale soon? Tell me how it's going!

(we are in the South East)

Thanks, @DazzlePaintedBattlePants - that sounds like good advice. We didn't go with the estate agent who came up with the highest valuation, but with the one who is highly recommended by three local friends whose houses this agent recently sold.

We haven't even started viewing things seriously yet as want to be at least on the market first and preferably, as you say, with a proceedable offer accepted.

@manateeandcake We haven't even started viewing places because we haven't sold yet. I have never sold and bought in one go (only ever broken the chain to go into rented), so not quite sure when the right time is to start looking. I have seen one on RM that looks extremely promising, but I don't want to fall in love and then lose out. It's nice to feel like we're selling without any time pressure right now.

Welcome @manateeandcake and @Positivelypatient , good luck to both of you for selling your houses. Agree re EAs overpricing, one particular EA was very bad for that and their houses definitely sat for longer, though they appear to have toned it down a bit recently.

So that's us now on at fixed price! Our viewer from last week likes our house but wanted a few days to think about it...

Thanks @InTheCludgie good to have some company/handhold as I'm doing it all on my own which is a bit daunting.

Good luck @manateeandcake hope you get lots of interest, Please keep us updated!

@DazzlePaintedBattlePants is there any quick way to check who has the best sell thru rate or are you looking at solds on zoopla/rightmove? We have one in our area that does that, i think it's a national chain (connells). I'm inviting 2 locals and 2 mid size chain EAs.

@Positivelypatient One estate agent was quite vocal about how good their stats were, but it was mostly local knowledge through stalking Rightmove. Some “posher” or larger chains tend to price higher - Savilles seemed particularly bad for it. Once you got a feel for the market after watching Rightmove for a few weeks it was clear which agents were pricing correctly.

A good estate agent has a little black book of buyers ready to go- the house we are buying didn’t even get as far as Rightmove because as soon as the sellers wanted to sell, our agent had us looking round before he’d had the pictures taken for the listing.

@Positivelypatient One thing we did, other than stalk rightmove obsessively for weeks, was to put in our area and sort by oldest to see if there was a pattern, i.e. which estate agent's properties were hanging around the longest. We then turned on the 'sold stc' filter and sorted by new to see which estate agent's properties sold the quickest after going on the market. There was a definite pattern. You can also install a Chrome browser addin like Property Log or Property Tracker to see details about reductions (when? by how much?). That way we could see if houses were reduced a lot before selling, which also points towards initially overpriced.

We ended up inviting multiple agents, including the one who came out 'worst' in our research (houses hanging around, lots of reductions etc). Just because we wanted to see how they compare. He massively overpriced it in my opinion. 40% higher than what we had bought it for 3 years ago - and no, we haven't changed/added much.

Brochure went out yesterday lunchtime, listing was on Rightmove late afternoon and we have two viewings booked in so far. I’m happy with that given holidays etc. We are actually away ourselves for a couple of days and it’s my birthday so I’m trying not to obsess about the house stuff TOO much 😬

@DazzlePaintedBattlePants @ecochiroptera yes that's pretty much what I've been doing, a combination of local knowledge and stalking Rightmove

Good luck for your viewings @manateeandcake and happy birthday!

Well I've now had 4 different estate agents to value the property and have 2 on my shortlist. Valuations were all within the ballpark of what I estimated from watching rightmove like a hawk these past 8 months. One was 10k under and one 10k over.

One EA was very very pushy and wanted a decision there and then and was also a bit patronising calling me a lady who hasn't sold for 20 years like I don't know what I'm doing and needed the mans to show me the way. So he is a no go.. even though i think the actual agency has good results, there's no way I could work with that.

The last agent I saw that I really only arranged to make up the numbers actually impressed me the most. He seemed to grasp the USPs of the house which others hardly touched on.

I'll make a decision once I've got all the follow up emails with their fee details etc.

Happy birthday @manateeandcake
@Positivelypatient I would Trust your instinct.

There’s an agent near to us who always overprices by 50k, just in case someone decides to bite at the higher price.

I am really enjoying new house though not the number of boxes I have still to deal with . Contract came yesterday and really hoping it does go through end of next month.

The cat escaped this morning whilst I was letting the dog out. Luckily the idea of food was enough to tempt her back in from the backdoor stel which was as far as she got.

I heard a mention of the (hardly dare mention it) C word last week. No mention of the E word though which I found odd. Anyway, still no confirmation that E has taken place though I have been assured that C is still on for Friday this week.
Went back to the house yesterday ( it's now been empty for seven months and I can tell, houses need living in ) did a mini reclean and freshen up ready for 'you know what' that might happen on Friday? DH has kept on top of the garden, it really does look lovely. I hope the Buyers will be pleased when they see it.
Oh, to be a conveyancing Solicitor and know what is going on. I am just the Seller who hasn't got the foggiest but lives in hope and will of course pay the bill.

@Positivelypatient That pushy EA sounds awful! The last one sounds really good though -- I definitely agree with trusting your instincts.

Congratulations on your move, @Volterra

First viewing was yesterday and I haven't had the feedback yet. Another booked for tomorrow and one for Saturday so far. We are away for the bank holiday weekend so I'm really hoping the cats don't leave any presents. Can you imagine anything worse when you show up to view a property? 😂The EAs have been warned to pop in and check.

We had a few more viewings. No helpful feedback so far. Just things I can't do anything about like the size. The sqft/sqm are on the floorplan and the photos are taken with a normal camera, not wide angle or otherwise deceptive. I'm a bit fed up with the EA. I chose him because, amongst other things, he's highly regarded in the community and everyone told me that he is the best. But he actually hasn't handled any of the viewings or communication so far. It's all just done by his assistant and I worry he's
just not experienced enough to sell a more unusual house like ours. Like he keeps emphasising all the negatives about the house, e.g. he told me he asked the couple multiple times if they were really okay living close to the road "and they weren't bothered so that's a positive, right?". No. It's not because it sounds like you're trying to put them off. I'm a very non-confrontational person, so I have no idea how/if I should bring this up. We've got another viewing next week, sigh.

Currently in the hell that is being at the mercy of conveyancing solicitor, lots of false dates and inaccurate info but seem to be at the stage where all is done except searches, although apparently ‘some’ are back…..hoping to E soon 🙏🙏🙏🙏

Don't take the feedback too much to heart. We got frustrated with all the 'downstairs too small' type comments when we were selling ours, then discovered when we were doing viewings to buy that it's very hard to give feedback - often the house just isn't 'right' for you but it's not something you could put a finger on. Sometimes you think the space might work out on paper but then it doesn't in reality. We also viewed five that were too small whilst we got a feeling for how accurate the EAs are in this area and whether to believe them!

Well, its done. We've Completed.
Went to the wire though, 4pm on the Friday of a Bank Holiday weekend. Should've known.
Good Luck to all still tangled up in the mess that is the housing market. Hope all
your hoped for outcomes aren't too far away.

Congratulations @LadyDP !
We’re off to drop off contract to solicitors later and hope second time lucky.

Congratulations @LadyDP!

Congratulations LadyDP, enjoy your new home.

Congrats @LadyDP ! It's always nice to hear of people actually completing. 😃

Almost seven months on we're still here. We really should exchange next week because people have suggested completion for the following week but there are still a few hiccups and I honestly can't believe we will ever get there. Annoyingly it's yet another bank holiday weekend so we'll just be thinking about it for three days. It's torture!

@LadyDP congratulations, gives us all some hope!

I've chosen the EA so got them coming next week to do paperwork etc. Hopefully will be on by next weekend.

Congrats @LadyDP ! Hope you exchsnge soon @SpaceyCake , there really is too much hanging around in this process isn't there?

Had a viewer yesterday and received a call earlier this morning but it wasn't about feedback, it was about someone else who's thinking about viewing but want to know our 'position' first. When I advised her and then asked 'and what's their position'? she seemed a bit taken aback and admitted she didn't know 🤔 you would think this is a buyers market instead of a sellers!

Our buyer pulled put yesterday because the interest rate rises has made the mortgage unaffordable now. Our seller has agreed to wait for us which is decent of them. We're back on the market and will only sell to cash buyers and 1st time buyers only. We want to ensure our chain doesn't collapse as it's only a short one; our buyers are buying a probate property.

Thefruitbatdancer exactly the same thing happened to me a few weeks ago. I lost a buyer before that too. I've now managed to get another buyer literally days before my onward purchase was going back on market and for a bit more money than previous buyer. Take heart you will find another buyer

So yesterday's viewer said they want a bigger kitchen. Fair enough, but if they want this area it'll cost them. The house we're buying is a at least a third more expensive than this one and the kitchen isnt hugely bigger. But then, it's not so much the space you pay for as the schools around here.

Has anyone had any of these 'we buy any house' type letters through their door? Got one today, kindly offering to buy our house off us for well under HR value. Err no, we're not that desperate yet!

Yes, Cludgie we got loads of letters saying we could have it sold in 7 days.........
The only one we acted on was the other local estate agent, who basically said "i cant believe it hasn't sold, it's really competitively priced, neutral interior, on a good plot.

Under offer for the third time right now 🤞