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

[InTheCludgie]

Hi everyone here is the new thread for those of us who are about to, or are currently trying to, sell our homes!

So we are now back on the market and have a viewing tomorrow morning, plus one for early next week. This week is a bit tricky as it's DS's birthday so have had to say no to a couple of suggested times for viewings.

How is everyone else getting on?

Thanks @FigandHoney , still no word from him on his decision - nothing like leaving us in limbo is there?

@KimmySchmitt I guess if you market now then you're catching the autumn crowd before everyone starts focusing on Xmas? But get what you mean about viewings, we've been doing our own and had over 20 of them through the door so far. Getting fed up tbh.

Am currently sat MNing with a cuppa, I'm between viewers and enjoying the quiet as DH has taken the kids out. First lot were a young couple but I think they are going to say no due to the stairs.

We got feedback from the guy who was here for two hours. Apparently he doesn't like the location after all. The EA couldn't give me any more info. She is not proactive at all, just seems to shrug her shoulders and hope the magical unicorn buyer is just round the corner. I think that's it then, we're taking the house off and will relist with a different agent in the new year. Too much has gone wrong with this lot. @InTheCludgie just like you, we've had loads of viewings now and are just fed up. We are motivated to move but ultimately don't have to.

@InTheCludgie Well DP called the agent today so we're officially on the market. They say they've had interest already but we'll see. We're in very much a starter home so I guess this is the type of house people will always be looking for.

@ecochiroptera How infuriating! What a waste of everyone's time. People can be really strange

Sorry to hear that @ecochiroptera I really can't imagine how anyone could spend two hours viewing a house, but that's neither here nor there. Maybe the economic outlook will be a bit less febrile in the new year.

Good luck @KimmySchmitt , hope that interest turns into plenty of viewings for you.
@ecochiroptera sorry to hear you've decided to come off the market but I'm not surprised you're feeling pretty dejected after a two hour viewing came to nothing. What a massive waste of time!

@ecochiroptera what is it with epic length viewings only for the feedback to be they aren't interested. I had one that went on for nearly that long (we were waiting outside in the car after getting back from our clear-off period) only to be told they weren't sure whether to rent or buy but have decided to rent. Really pissed me off, nosing about my house with no real intention to buy.

Got my buyer returning with a builder following their homebuyers and asbestos survey on Wednesday. No idea what the asbestos survey results were. I'm not getting my hopes up as I'm sure the quotes for whatever they think is wrong won't be cheap.

The only way you will get buyers interested now is by dropping the price by large amounts.

I am looking at a 3 bed flat where an identical flat in the same development sold for £525k last year. Thenseller is extending the lease to 999 years (while the other flat was a share of freehold but the lease was unextended) but as its share of freehold, its going to cost her £1500 max in legal fees. The flat is valued by an estate agent for 600k. I think its really overpriced even though its my ideal flat! But the seller isn't that interested in budging by too much...

How do we explain this.

The mortgage valuer came today. He took photos and measurements and gave the fuse box and boiler a quick look. My buyers have asked to come and take measurements a week on Saturday. I always assume that means ‘make sure we still like it’. No date for a full survey yet but I’d be surprised if they don’t get one, it’s an old property. I hope things are progressing for everyone else?

Our buyers got their mortgage offer on Monday, so that's one hurdle cleared! Their lender did a desktop valuation. Now they are arranging a survey so fingers crossed for that. Some small things are bound to come up but we can't afford to reduce by a significant amount and complete our onward purchase.

i know my survey will bring things up, I remember being worried when I bought it as there seemed to be so much wrong. However it’s an old house and the surveyor said that nothing was of major concern even though from the actual report you would think it was a money pit. We’ve had some work done and regular maintenance so I just have to hope that my buyers who are moving from a modern flat are realistic.

My buyer had a builder around today for quotes... for what I'm not sure, since had a call from EA asking about gas & elec tests. The gas is already done but I've said I'd do an elec report once I know they are serious about buying the place. Right now I'm expecting them to want to negotiate the price down so until I know what amount I'm looking at I'm not throwing more money at the house. Oh and EA said after elec report would i be willing to do rewire. LOL 😆 luckily my EA was just as incredulous. The house was only built in the 60s.

Hope your survey goes ok @Karmatime and they don't pick up too much.

Had two viewers on Monday, one was a young couple who said no because of the stairs 🙄 and a buy to let investor who also said no. Am slowly losing the will to live here tbh.

Internal or external stairs? I guess one of the couple could have a non visible ailment eg MS but it's odd they would see a floor plan with stairs and still want to view?

It's a pain though

@buyingandsellingwithmn external stairs. A lot of our viewers have been put off by the stairs but come on, if you can't be bothered climbing stairs or have a condition which means you can't, then why bother wasting everyone's time coming to view? We've now had 20 viewings and about a third have said no as there's too many steps.

Am currently working on DH to try and drop the price a bit, but he says it'll put potential viewers off as they'll think there's something wrong with the property.

@InTheCludgie I had to drop the price of my London flat when I sold it. It didn’t put anyone off, I just got renewed interest and eventually sold it to someone who had viewed it twice at the original price but couldn’t quite afford it.

Completety agree, 3 Bed semis in my area sold for £200k just under 2 years ago are now being listed for £325k+, a 50% increase in a couple of years is just ludicrous! Coupled with mortgage costs almost trippleing, home owners who wish to sell need to have a think, stuff being reduced and "unexpectedly back on the market" left, right and centre when I look at new listings on rightmove

Our house officially hit the market on Monday afternoon. Got two viewings booked in one for Friday and one for Saturday.

The estate agent said they would have expected more viewings to have been booked in by now. So trying not to feel dissapointed. They did say though that it is on the top ten properties, in terms of traffic to their website. So here is hoping. I guess it only takes one offer. Still worried it's priced too high though.

Also can't help but feel a bit miffed with our estate agent. The reason my husband picked them is because they were going to do a 3D photographic model of our house . They were planning to do a big open viewing days with viewings booked in at 15 minutes slots to create some competition between buyers. They didn't do the 3d model yet because the machine is broke. And the big open door style day doesn't seem to be in the cards either. Plus they said we would be a premium listing on rightmove for the first 10 days, which I don't believe is the case. And I have asked them to make it clear we are chain free which they haven't done either.

Already starting to feel a bit miffed with our estate agent and it's just the start.

@InTheCludgie Aww. Frustrating about the viewings you would expect them to have looked at the pictures on the listing. Although in the case of external stairs I might go to view the property anyway to personally experience the stairs and see if I can fall in love with the place regardless. That being said I am never sure if the feedback is completely honest. I think we often tried not to hurt feelings when we were viewing places.

@Positivelypatient I am surprised you are even being asked to do an electric report. Or are you located in Scotland. Also wouldn't do a Rewire kn a house your selling. At most I would offer to go half on the cost of it. And reduce the asking price by that amount.

@manateeandcake Hurray for the mortgage approval and fingers crossed the survey won't bring up any skeletons that are too big.

@Karmatime We asked to view our new house for measuring, mainly for the purpose of showing it to my mum who was super excited to see it. Also to check whether our huge sofa would fir.

@FigandHoney have you complained? They should be round to do that 3D model ASAP if it was promised/in the contract or I'd be looking for a discount. We went on the market on Monday too and also have three viewings booked (two this Friday, one the following Friday). What context did they say about expecting more viewings? Tbh given the state of mortgages etc I'm amazed we have anyone interested in viewing. Sounds like your agents might not be keeping up.

@InTheCludgie Sorry to hear that. Are the stairs obvious from the listing?

We dropped our price by £5k to what we originally wanted it go on on the market for. It was offers over, the estate agent insisted on putting it offers over what it had been valued at which made me feel we looked greedy. We had 3 viewings. In 6 weeks.

They dropped it to £5k below the valuation eventually and we had 2 more viewings and got an offer for the valuation which is what we needed. If we had gone on the market a few weeks before maybe we could have got more. But the estate agent was full of patter and not that great.

@FigandHoney I would hit the estate agen hard and ask them to fulfil the promises. If their machine is broken, get the premium listing to start. And ask them to amend the listing to include the chain free info. And ask for updates. Be the squeaky wheel.

I never want to go through house selling again, I really hope our sale and purchase goes through so I can ignore it all in the future. Our estate agents were full of guff. I've found it ridiculously stressful.

We haven’t had any viewings booked in so far for this week and we haven’t heard anymore from the people who really liked it last week.

I think we’ve been on the market for a month now, not as long as some but I think everyone expects us to sell quite quickly, it’s a great first home in a nice area, good schools, good transport links. New kitchen, neutral modernish decor.

Feeling a bit sad about it all. I think I’d be ready to pull this off the market and convert the garage to give us some more space and have another baby here but financially I know it doesn’t make sense. Our incomes are very different now to when we bought the house so the mortgage feels tiny and I worry with inflation that our cash savings are going to devalue very quickly.

On the plus side the house that we want is still on the market, has been since August, I keen telling the estate agent that we still really like it, just waiting until we are proceedable. But every time I look I expect it to be gone.

So we've only just started and I'm already fed up. We had two viewings booked in for today. This was despite us telling the agent Friday didn't work for us this week (just Wednesday and the weekend), then when they booked them in for today deciding we couldn't cancel and muck the viewers around. So we changed all our plans for today, spent yesterday getting the house immaculate again, and I got up at 6am to make sure it was tidy by the time we all had to leave. Turns out the agent told us the wrong date and they're booked for next Friday... I'm livid. How hard is it to do your job properly? We had even said to the agent we weren't happy that our dates hadn't been adhered to and they apologised then. That would have been their opportunity to check.

That's really bad @KimmySchmitt , hopefully this is the only mistake they make and its not a sign that they're really inept.

I've looked more closely at our pictures etc and while I'd say it's obvious the house is elevated, I think we would maybe have benefitted from a photo taken upwards towards the house as it would give a better idea of how many stairs exactly there are. I'm going to arrange for an extra pic to be taken and added, hopefully it'll weed out the stair-haters a bit better.

@InTheCludgie that sounds like a good idea :)

Have had two surprise offers today, one slightly higher than the other. Both significantly under what we were originally hoping, but at this point feeling like I would like to move on with my life and feel settled again.

@InTheCludgie That sounds like a good idea, will hopefully save you wasting your time on people who aren't going to make an offer.

@Stayingstrongish That's not bad, two offers! Not sure how long you've been on the market for but I think we'll all be looking at significantly under what we'd hoped for. It's just whether it's still worth it or not.

I'm thinking of pulling out. Our onward purchase is a new build and we reserved months ago. They've now dropped the price of similar plots to 10k less than we paid, plus are paying LBTT and for turf and carpets etc. It means we're overpaying by a ridiculous amount. But if we pull out we lose our excellent mortgage rate and might not be able to move for years. It's such a tough one!