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?

@happydandy so sorry to hear that. Not had a chain collapsed but had two offers withdrawn within a couple of days. Feel like I have to take each day as it comes.

Oh what a nightmare for you. Ours was first listed in June and been sold twice and collapsed at last minute on both. Losing hope it will ever sell and our new mortgage offer runs out end of January !!!

@KimmySchmitt sounds like the viewing went well fingers crossed they make an offer

@thunderouslug welcome! I too suffer from anxiety. I overthink everything. This whole process has been hard as it’s the stuff that’s out of my control that o get frustrated with.

@happydandy hooe you get some viewings. We had a buyer pull out but were fortunate that it was only a couple of weeks after offer and we managed to find a new buyer within 24hrs. Have you seen any properties you like?

@happydandy same we went on the market end of June. Had first offer end of July and found our house we are buying mid aug. Our buyer pulled out a couple of weeks. They put house back in market but we sold again within a day so re submitted our offer. Stressful!!

We actually want to buy the house we are currently living in as it’s family owned but our mortgage offer runs out end of January !!! House we are selling is currently empty as we cleared it in anticipation of the sale going through. Complicated I know !! Just don’t feel like our estate agents are pushing it and we are in fixed contract with them..

Hi everyone, I posted on the last thread so very happy to find this one again and catch up on everyone’s progress. Congratulations to those who have successfully sold/bought and commiserations to all those still working on it 💐

I originally put my house on the market in April, had hopeless EAs who seemed to do their best not to sell my home, so re-listed with new ones in July and they have been great. First viewing came up with an offer which came through formally at the beginning of August and which I accepted immediately. We were supposed to exchange 3 weeks ago but today I found out that the buyer has pulled out.

I’m absolutely gutted (not helped by the fact that I handed in my notice at work at the beginning of last week), so now need to unpack some of the boxes I’d already packed, and try and get rid of all the packing chaos so that my house will be ready for viewings again asap. Can’t believe I got so close before it all fell apart, and just feel so beaten by it all right now.

@Melminiani so sorry to hear your buyer pulled out. Had you found another house you wanted to buy? Hope another buyer comes along soon

@RM2013 thanks, that’s really kind.
Luckily we aren’t at that stage yet, we’d just started looking. My partner is also in the process of trying to sell his home before we could buy together, so we we’ve been waiting for his sale to progress a bit further before a more urgent need to buy. So that’s the only silver lining right now, as I can see that for others, the sale falling through has such a disastrous knock-on effect…

I totally get what you mean about the anxiety due to the total lack of control… it can start to eat you up so I’m trying to not engage with it (failing obvs 🙄).

@CoffeeWithCheese our viewers all commented on parking and so we put a parking space back in the garden. There's is literally no work to do on our house so hopefully it all goes through now.

@happydandy we sold twice at our previous house and it finally went through and we moved into rental. Exchange was imminent. Then a week later lockdown happened so everything stopped. 7 months of paying our mortgage and all bills at our house plus the rental . It finally went through and our final buyer kept reassuring us throughout. So it can happen, it's just a tricky process in this country.

@Melminiani so sorry it's collapsed. What's the buyers reason for pulling out? Any chance they will reconsider?

@RM2013 yours sounds similar to us. We sold at the beginning of July. They pulled out really quickly though. Which DH was really annoyed about but I would rather know at that stage than the almost to exchange point which has happened to us twice before. Our second buyer hadn't actually sold and so I left the house on the market. They still aren't sold unfortunately.

I've had notice from the solicitors today to pop our draft contracts and transfers back. Buyers have applied for searches and their full mortgage application. Really hope it goes smoothly for us this time. We've had such bad luck before and a pretty shit year, like most of the country. I was upset at the reduction but now I just want to go. We just need to decide where

I really hope people see their sales go through. We’ve been on the verge of exchange for weeks and weeks now - someone else’s solicitors playing absolute silly buggers. But our purchase may be off - no building regs for the loft conversion (which the agent is being a twat about and saying it happens all the time - which it does but doesn’t mean it’s a risk we want to take) and a builder looked today and reckons we’d need to totally redo it all for it to be safe. So we’ll decide tonight whether to ask for a reduction for the cost or pull out. I suspect we’d get the reduction as they’re desperate to sell, but it’s a lot of bother.

Can I join, kept getting outbid on everything we saw (glad now in hingsight with the reductions).
Finally had an offer accepted on something I didn't think I wanted (were chainfree) & offer was less then I had gone to on other properties. This was April & after 3 attempts finally exchanged this morning!!

Our mortgage offer was up next month and we had a ok deal (2.4% for 5 yrs) so I was convinced it would fall through!

@finallydones yay! Must be a great feeling to have it all sorted 👌

Thank you!

Just had one viewing this morning which was a pair of lads in a very Homes under the Hammer-esque fan club type meeting (down to the work trousers but minus the tenuously linked musical soundtrack) - only wanted to know the age of the boiler really. Got another lined up for later in the week so the market seems to be slowly creaking back into some form of life I hope.

@CoffeeWithCheese Good luck. Hopefully you start to get some good offers coming in.

I keep waking up at night thinking are we crazy with such a reduction in price. But then I see the same houses every day sat on right move not budging and hugely overpriced. I'm thinking maybe I've accepted that there's been a big shift where others are holding on thinking it's March. I am very worried about getting a rental though. Most are overpriced and with dreadful EPC ratings. I don't want all our equity to be spent on gas & electric

Thanks @BeauticianNotMagician81 my buyer isn’t in a great place in their life and a late-occurring issue with their mortgage was the final straw for them I think. Very disappointing as we were supposed to exchange 3 weeks ago before the mortgage lenders decided to mess it up (bitter?! moi?!). I was so hoping to get the sale across the line before the market really starts to shift, but it obviously wasn’t meant to be.

I’ve put my house back on the market at the original asking price, but like you, I’m wondering if March’s valuation is still going to be relevant in this newer more cautious market, and think I need to prepare myself for reducing the price…

@Melminiani oh no. Fingers crossed for you. Hopefully it gets snapped up. My house is a bit marmite. Victorian villa, 4 floors, parking space in garden with a right of way over neighbouring properties. It was always going to be a bit of a tricky one to sell. We love it and if I could pick it up and take it with me I would. We just don't love the area.

Yes @BeauticianNotMagician81 my neighbour thought we were crazy to drop our price again slightly, saying that whoever eventually buys will be getting an absolute bargain. But are they really - yes this is a sought after area but it's definitely more of a buyers market regardless of that and we need to be proactive, not just sit and hope someone will give us that higher offer.

@InTheCludgie one of our neighbours said the same. He bought the same house pretty much, on our row. His needs a lot of work doing. But he completed in June. We started off at £25,000 under agent valuations in June. Now we've sold at £33,000 under that. I'm hoping we get some good vibes and our next house purchase is a bit of a bargain. Previously we've always ended up having to increase substantially for onward purchases as we always bought in a sellers market.

@BeauticianNotMagician81 Wow, sounds like we were/are in similar situations. Our house is also very marmite for similar reasons. If we didn't want to relocate, we'd probably stay here forever - wish we could take it with us. We have also taken on a big reduction and can only hope this carries forward.

I've been looking at rightmove all week and have booked one viewing for the weekend in an area we didn't originally want to move to. But it looks like we need to be ready to make some big compromises. Not even because of the budget but because there's just nothing out there aside from houses where it is pretty obvious from the decor that the owner has passed away/gone into care. We really don't want to take on any major refurbishing - our lives are too busy as is. Wish we could just go into rented and take some time but it's just not possible with multiple pets.

@thunderouslug we had originally wanted to move 35 minutes away back to where we were previously. I'm not sure I can convince the DCs now though as they love their school. I feel bad as one of the children has been in quite a few different primaries. I feel like we found our forever area previously and left. Now we've found the forever home but it's in the wrong place.

It's so tricky isn't it. We only have a cat at the moment so that is a consideration when we get a rental. Most around here just charge a bit extra for pets.

Same here house wise. There is nothing to buy unless we want to downsize (which we don't). There are houses similar to ours about but they are still at silly prices, plus need work done. Like you we would like to go into a house where there isn't much to do. We are getting older now and don't feel like we have anymore projects left in us.

saying that whoever eventually buys will be getting an absolute bargain.

not really though when you factor in the extra interest

Indeed @finallydones especially considering our target audience is mostly FTBs who likely won't have a massive deposit to help offset the big interest rates. Our neighbours paid off their mortgage years ago so aren't exactly on the same wavelength as us lot who are trying to secure mortgage deals!

How long did people wait before a reduction in price?