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?

@superdupernova that's brilliant news, congratulations! He sounds like a solid buyer too, he's definitely given plenty of time and thought.

I've had two more new viewings booked, and the lady who has viewed twice already is also viewing again tonight. I've not heard anything from the fella who said he was going to offer.

Why does my whole day revolve around just one or two twenty minute viewings?! Time to put some clutter back in my car...

My house purchase it going well, the survey has come back with a gleaming report. Well, as gleaming as surveys can be! Nothing structurally unsound. Looks like we can set exchange and completion dates now!

Welcome and good luck to the new joiners!

Great news, @superdupernova - fingers crossed your offer is accepted.

We are also finally approaching exchange I think (but like you @Karmatime definitely not counting any chickens). Yesterday we heard that our sellers agreed to the £8k reduction we asked for, based on issues thrown up by the survey that need addressing quite urgently. We were so relieved as on one hand we have no more appetite or energy for drawn out negotiations, on the other hand we really need the money to do the work! Also would have felt awful if they'd refused when we have been bullied into agreed to a big reduction for our buyers. Said buyers came round for their final visit on Monday -- we made sure to be out but EA said they were measuring up like mad. So now we just have to wait for our revised mortgage offer, which broker says will be 5 working days, and then we hope we can exchange, possibly next Friday.

We've had 4 removals companies round to quote which also makes it seem more real. I'm feeling a mixture of excitement and anxiety. We will be trying to move the DC to a school nearer the new house and I'm starting to focus on that and realising what a big wrench it will be, even if better in the long run.

@Melminiani Just out of interest, what kind of offer would you deem serious in this market? Generally curious, as someone wanting to buy! 15k off the asking price doesn't seem too bad to me?

I have a feeling most people are selling well more expensive house than I do🙈
15k would be about 12% on mine!

Good luck to all and congrats on offer @superdupernova !

@RubyPip my whole day revolves around viewings when they're booked in. The worst was when we had a 9am viewing and a 6pm viewing on the same day. The back of my car has been filled up with suitcases and a big cat carrier since before we had the photos done. They're usually in my DH's "office" but it's a tiny box room and we wanted people to know there is some floor space 

@superdupernova yayy, congrats! That's great news.

Our sale seems to be progressing well. I think the solicitors are just going back and forth about indemnity. Our purchase however....I'm having a wobble. We knew the house was in a former mining area and I'm still waiting on the actual coal mining report, but I did some digging online and found a map. According to that the house sits right on top of a shallow surface mine. Only a small part of the town is above the mine and of course it just had to be where "our" house is. Ugh. I'm not even all that worried about subsidence (building survey didn't note anything) but more about sellability. We don't need a mortgage, so I'm doubly worried that maybe a lender wouldn't lend on it and we would struggle to sell in the future. We had such a hard time finding a buyer for our current home because of a similar negative (flooding) and we swore the next house we buy will be a standard, easy-to-sell house. Not sure what I'll do when the mining report comes back...we really don't want to drop out. We can't afford to lose our buyer, so would have to move in with relatives until we find somewhere else to buy, which will be very hard for our requirements/budget.

@superdupernova thats great news!

@RubyPip I was doing this at the beginning too, as time has gone on, i've cared less about hiding the blanket for instance, i'm like its winter they would understand. however my home office now has permanent residence in the boot, no longer have the will to empty and set up each time.

anyone else in Scotland selling apart from @InTheCludgie not sure i picked that up from the thread. Curious if anyone has had any offers up here? I had an offer immediately after it was listed at the end of November, but it was exactly at HR value. I know prices and demand has gone down, but even pre covid properties were always over HR value, the percentage varied, but still always over. I'm not being greedy, I did not believe for a second that we'd get the ridiculous inflated summer prices, but thought we'd still get over HR. If we don't get over HR value, for us there is no point in moving as the house we bid on, we had to go over HR on that. We couldn't afford without the extra over HR money.

Any further interest we've had has been from people that can't actually afford it and want a bargain. i.e. most recent viewer, "I love it, but its a bit out of my price range, I can't get a mortgage to HR value".

Banging my head on the wall in despair

Could be the time you're selling @rosesposess. We bough in Scotland 6 years ago and got our place at HR value bidding at the start of Dec (They actually got back in touch having rejected our offer). All the other places we bid on earlier in the year went over HR. Could be just coincidence, but I noticed a big slow down for places in Edinburgh over the winter months when I was looking.

That's brilliant news @superdupernova 😊😊

Our buyer is still being a massive Twat. He just does not respond to the estate agent or solicitor. 4 families are hanging on his mortgage offer, despite everyone and everything else being ready to exchange apart from this, and he's just non-responsive. When he said 2 days ago that his mortgage lender needs something else from him before they offer, the estate agent and solicitor replied asking for an urgent timescale for everyone in the chain - and he still hasn't replied. This has been going on since November.

@superdupernova that’s brilliant news fingers crossed all goes smoothy

@rosesposess we're selling in Scotland. Went on mid-October (right when shit was hitting the fan), got one low ball offer about a week later which we rejected immediately, and got another offer two weeks later 2k under HR which we accepted. I don't believe we'd have got over HR if we'd held out for longer. I've noticed lots of reductions on Rightmove, very little coming on the market, and more going on at a fixed price.

It depends on location and house probably, we're selling a starter home in an okay area. If you're selling a 4/5 bed detached in Newlands or Jordanhill you can likely hold out for over HR as there will always be someone desperate to live there. We also thought our HR valuation was generous, the offer we accepted was approx 10% over what I expected HR to be so we still felt it was a reasonable offer.

thanks @Callisto1 that's good to know, we bought our house 7 years ago but had to go over HR.
We didn't actually plan on selling in November, the house we bid on we didn't actually get, and then a couple of months later we got a phone call that the original bidders pulled out and whether we were still interested. Obviously we jumped at the chance thinking it was meant to be!

@KimmySchmitt thanks for sharing your experience!
I think we just end up staying put! We're actually listed as the cheapest in our area, with a HR value that I actually thought would have been higher when comparing to others on the market, very naïve of me indeed!
We put in a new kitchen and bathroom in 2018/19 and completely gutted the garden, just feels a bit sore to let it go for less when we've done so much. Have slowly started to wean myself of the dream house idea lol

@Kaleandcake I live in the south east where £15k under is still quite a lot/low offer, and it feels even more so bearing in mind I’ve recently reduced my price so this offer is £20k under my original asking price. Houses locally are still pretty much holding their own - in fact I did a little market research of comparable properties in my area the other day and I’m still the largest size wise bar 1 (which is on for my original asking price) and my EA still feels that we’re asking for a decent price and that any buyer is getting a good deal. I’ve been really pleased generally with my EA, and so do listen to/take on his guidance.

Can I ask where in the south east you are? We are in the southeast and most things we have been watching are selling at a minimum of that under on starter homes.

We put ours on the week of the Truss Bloodbath. West end of Glasgow, all 1’s on the home report. Once we’d sorted our asking price (offers over was too high) we got 10% over HR quite quickly. Unfortunately our buyer pulled out a month later, likely having found something cheaper as the market changed. Who knows?

We went back on straightaway, with about 10 viewers over Christmas and we had 6 offers. Some were below HR (between 20k - 5k under) but we had a few at HR and the eventual buyer was 5% over. Interestingly he was a BtL landlord with an understanding of the area and the market.

I think most of the viewers had heard the headlines of market crashing and assumed that there were huge bargains to be had, rather than a correction of the huge inflated 15-20% over of the summer. The Scottish market is very different to the English IMHO. We had a couple of viewers from below the border who offered extremely low despite the estate agent advising of current HR offers.

Good luck!

Can I ask if your agent pressured you to take the HR offer?

We are just about to sell, but a little bit put off by the terms which state that someone offers HR value but we withdraw from the sale, they are entitled to their fee. I checked a few it seems they all have this clause?

I’m not as close to exchange as hoped. Transpires there is still a local search outstanding on my buyer’s sale. The authority where they are selling has one of the worst response times in the country. My buyer is using different solicitors for sale and purchase and they don’t communicate so there are mixed messages. I don’t know when the search was applied for but their offer has been in since early October.

@lassingd Oh I've never heard of that in T&C's, we sold two properties last year and didn't have that clause. What does 'withdraw from the sale' mean though, that wording doesn't sound like it means you have to accept a HR offer? More like if you accept then back out you need to pay the fees?

We used Clyde Property and Allen & Harris so might be worth checking them. Could be a new clause though I guess.

@PointHorror sorry to hear your original offer fell through, but glad you got a good offer in the end. I think you're right that there are people looking for bargains, we had someone view who seemed positive but then gave feedback that the living area was too small and he'd want another bedroom. Like... It was very obvious from the photos and floorplan what we're selling. He's presumably wanting a 3 bed semi at 2 bed terraced prices.

It's been interesting to hear about the Scottish market. I had no idea how it all worked. I've heard it's faster than England but that's about it.

We put an offer in for a property we liked but it was rejected. We've gone back with 5k more as our final offer and said we're happy to leave it open while we continue looking. It's 15k under an asking price of 450k. I doubt we'll ever hear from the estate agent again. She really didn't like us and the feeling has become mutual. It's been a bit of a saga. I think we've offered a bit over value anyway (agents didn't know about some issues like the mould and dodgy sealant on the floor in the wet room- you can see the leak on the living room ceiling) but DH was really in love with it. I think he would have gone even higher if the agent hadn't been so rude and uninterested throughout our attempt to view and then offer on the house.

We have a viewing booked on another house tomorrow. It has more bedrooms but less ground floor living space (we're childless so prefer more living space). It's still lovely but not as rural. I'm hoping DH has let the other property go in his head and can look at it as an option. I'm itching to move and start again in a new house.

We're in North Leeds.

The highest offer in the end was 5% over asking so we're more than chuffed with that, as we were worried we might not sell at all and maybe have to come back on the market in spring.

We loved the house we viewed and offered asking price, but as I feared, it's competitive and they're also going to best and finals.

Some things seem do seem be stuck sitting on the market around here but I think these are the ones that are trying their luck with the price compared to the quality of the property.

@superdupernova Also just seen your latest post! Fingers crossed your final offer is accepted... you never know!

Hopefully the viewing goes well today too, let us know how you get on

Viewer this morning. No show 😡😡😡😡

@Goingundergroundagain sorry to hear that, why are people so rude?!

So frustrating, onwards and upwards …..

I am currently using spare time to "declutter" aka move things from one shelf to another😂
I took the feedback here and on another thread on and will lost at the beginning of February rather than wait till March. Already booked a day off to sort last bits before valuation and pics.
I will still try to do it myself via Strike. There seem to be lots around advertised with them. If it prooves a flop, I will list with other. I would love to complete by end of May, bit if that doesn't happen, it will not hinder our plans anyway. I am sure it can be done online... Positive thinking...
I hugged my fave wallpapered wall a little (quite own taste, but everyone "normal" around said to leave it that it looks great).
Decorators for 2 rooms and hallway coming end of month so it will be very busy week.

Mentally preparing myself for the circus. So sorry to hear about no shows. It's properly rude! When we were buying one of the agents was a no show and I don't think this was the only time considering how long it sat on market (6 years ago).

All the best luck to everyone.