Anyone else selling?

[Hibernatalie]

We are about to be listed - photographer coming this week. Obsessively checking Rightmove but think we’ve already found the one (could easily go before we can put an offer in but that’s the one we are hoping for).

Anyone else? What position are you in?

@lemonyellows great news, good luck with your move.

The survey on our current house is due to happen today. They said sometimes between 9-3, so you know it'll happen around school run or when we are about to have lunch...

Been a crap morning here - had a call at 9.30 to say our offer has been accepted on the house we want - yay!
BUT 15min later, had a call from our agent to say the survey is back on my house, they’ve down valued it by £40k under what was offered, and reckon new roof and windows needed.
my buyer has obv asked for a reduction, which I’m not open to, as we wouldn’t then be able to get the onward purchase.

Am not happy with the agent - we specifically asked them to give the surveyor comparables, including next door, which sold for £720k 2 months ago. They didn’t give them it, for some reason!
ours been valued at 650k, and the houses are exactly same size and condition.

Feeling really down now!

Yay to hearing some great stories on here after the ups and downs, you keep me going!

We switched agents, ‘rested’ the listing for a couple of weeks, and going live tomorrow. I’m fluttering with positivity because it’s been so many let downs to this point that may as well put the energy into being cheerful that we’re trying again!!

i had no idea anyone could down value so much compared to neighbours, that’s mad! Do you think they’ll walk or just enter into protracted negotiations?

@Moosiemoo14 its crazy - the neighbours house is end of terrace so I guess that adds a bit to the value, but no way is there £70k difference in the properties.
After saying a hard no to any decrease, we’ve now said we can go down to £675k (instead of 690).
one of the reasons being that we’ve decided to withdraw from the house our offer was accepted on, due to the vendors not being able to actually be out until at least end October.

So now the search continues for a slightly cheaper house!

@tigerbear if your house was valued at 650, why do you think someone will pay more?
Especially as the roof/windows need replacement?
Won’t you just get the same issue next time?

I think that’s sensible to counter offer at 675k, hope your buyers accept that.

Unless you think another surveyor is going to have a different view, it's likely you'll end up in the same position with the next buyer.

Could you get a valuation report yourself and see what it comes up with, I think that would be my next step.

Well if you need a new roof and windows I would guess that could be getting on for 20k. Subtract 20k for not being on the end (it is worth more to have one side free) and that gets you 40K of the 70k accounted for. The remaining 30K is less than 5% in a falling market where IRs are increasing on a month by month basis and the pricing for your neighbour sales might have been set over 1% down in rates and 6 months ago.

IMO you're going about this the wrong way. Rather than trying to bump up your own sale price against the headwinds of the market, you should be trying to push down the cost of your onward purchase.

Our buyer has now agreed to £675k and agent says he’s happy with that.
Now going to contact all the estate agents to say we’re proceedable, and see if there’s anything coming onto the market, as there’s nothing on Rightmove we want to view.

Anyone else finding their buyers incredibly slow? Been waiting 3 days for our buyers to send an AIP over... Honestly, how hard is it? Literally took us 10 mins online.

@tigerbear The market is insanely slow. Where we are buying, nothing new has come up for 2 weeks, so if it doesn't work out on the place we're buying we are screwed.

@Flubadubba same. Anything decent that comes on that we’ve offered on in the last few months has multiple viewings, and several good offers.

There is no reason why what you spent on the property has any relevance to the buyer.

There is no rule that says someone must pay you more than you put in.

At the end of the day they will offer what it is worth to them, and you will accept what it is worth to you to do the deal.

An extra £2100 doesn't sound a lot to me on a purchase price of £250k.

OTOH if you have already discounted heavily then maybe even that relatively small amount feels like a step too far.

Depends on how badly you want to do the deal really.

@tigerbear Thankfully we found a house in the slim pickings. Doesn't help with the anxiety though...

Joining as miffed agreed sale and buy on 10/3. Our buying is at completion. But our sale is hell. They only put searches in 3/5 back today. They have had two mortgage surveys done so far and have said today they are now sending are surveyor around for a two survey Friday morning! We thought when searches back we could start looking at dates for completion.

Is there something we’ve missed. is this a usual process. We started searches and survey the minute we agreed to buy and they were sorted weeks ago. I know they have been unhappy with their solicitor but I was gutted this evening.

@MegCleary we agreed a sale/purchase around the same time and have only just put in for a survey. We’ve had a lot of trouble trying to get a survey company to respond to us. We’ve also been happy to wait until our sale had progressed a bit so we didn’t spend the money if our sale fell through. We have also changed our mortgage provider during the time because we could get a better deal in that time. Searches are only one part of the conveyancing. For our sale, the searches have come back ages ago but there are a lot of queries we need to deal with. They might just be going slow or there might things their end holding it up which they don’t have much control over. It would be a fast completion to agree a sale in mid-March and be done now. The good news is that all the survey companies I have spoken to have had a report return of 5-10 days. So I would give it until next Friday and then start pushing for exchange.

@PurpleBananaSmoothie thanks for replying. If they had explained that, that would be grand but it’s the horrific communication I’m upset with. Their solicitor has “lost” the contract pack twice. Asked questions that offended our conveyancers. It feels they are up to something but not saying it. I have answered any query within about an hour if it arriving.

@MegCleary you’ve got to remember not all conveyancers are great. The ones when we bought this house were particularly shit and we’ve only just realised how bad they were when we’re trying to answer the queries for our buyers. Queries our solicitors should have asked when we bought it. I don’t understand how your conveyancers got offended but the solicitors for our buyers have asked some really stupid questions and our conveyancers have just responded factually or asking them to rephrase their question as it makes no sense. This is normal, bizarrely for people who do this day in, day out.

They might be up to something but that could equally just be the process. I didn’t want to pay for the surveyors last week because it felt like our sale was shaky because of the number of queries we’re getting. But actually this is just the conveyancers, our conveyancers for our purchase have asked for some things we wouldn’t have even thought of. A conveyancers job is to get the risk of buying a house as close to zero as possible. Could it be just the general anxious feeling that comes with selling a house?

What position are your buyers in? Our purchase has overtaken our sale, despite the sale being agreed two weeks before the purchase. There are just more queries with our sale and we are probably the bottle neck in the middle. It’s not possible for us to respond to all the queries within an hour. I have one from last week and I’ve contacted 3 different people to get a service done and none have come back to me. I’m not up to anything I’m actually trying to get a service, which isn’t a legal requirement, to keep our buyers happy and try to prevent the sale falling through.

@PurpleBananaSmoothie our solicitors worded their response in a factual manor and referred them to points of the code of practice. I interpreted it as our solicitors saying this is not a question asked any more. They have appeared to have sent a word doc with ten questions compiled and pasted from somewhere. Our buyers are selling too so maybe an issue there. Just miffed and venting. I know there is nothing I can do.

Over a month after accepting an offer, my FTB has finally arranged a level 3 survey for a £130K house priced to sell. FTB always make me nervous as surveys will always find something to fix on a Victorian property, and from experience, they scare easily.

@Mercurial123

We also have a FTB and a Victorian house. If 1906 is Victorian?! Same concerns! Fingers crossed for his both!

I had to Google yours is Edwardian (1901-1914). Good luck with your sale, FTB always seem to get nervous. Level 3 seems a bit over cautious it's just a regular terraced house.