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?

We completed today too and are now in an AirB&B on Dartmoor with a very grumpy cat!
Our new-build has been further delayed so we have no idea when we’ll actually be moving in..
SO stressful.

@mycarsnores i completed on my sale on Friday too, and similarly to you, we’re in limbo land staying in temp accommodation (with family) with our very unsettled dog.
We’re buying a probate house, and probate not even granted yet, so not a clue when we’ll be in! 😱
feeling like I’ve made a huge mistake!!

Toying with whether we should lower our price down- we started looking at houses to buy when we thought we had an offer and are now all set and excited. Plus we’ve had a single viewing in three weeks :/. Anyone who lowered their price did you wait for the EA to suggest or did you suggest yourself? We don’t really hear from ours other than when booking for viewings so think it might have to be the later

Hi @Coconutlittlebee it really pays to communicate with your EA at least once a week to ask how things are going and what they think of the current housing market in your area, what’s selling etc. we’ve built up a good relationship with ours, and when we lost our buyer in early July they pulled out all the stops to get us viewings.
We went into the office to talk to them 2 weeks ago (also a good idea) and they gave us new tactics including delisting online and relisting mid-September to get back on the front page. We also talked about pricing and a price reduction and it was actually really encouraging to know they’re rooting for us and want to sell the house.
Email, call, or go in and see the EA to ask what you think you should do next - you’re paying them for their service so it makes sense to use their knowledge.

Thank you for your reply- I know it sounds stupid but having a bit of a rough time generally and our flat sale has also made us feel a little despondent and lost so really nice to have some advice.

Bit of a silly question but did you instigate the weekly communication with your EA? And did you agree to talk weekly or did it just sort of happen?

I think my initial thought was this is just something that an Estate agent would automatically do, so when ours didn’t I just resolved that I must of been wrong and that calling them every week would came across as impatient. We’ve called them pretty much every week anyway but it’s normally for a specific reason and though I have hoped it would naturally then fall into these other conversations they’ve been quite keen to cut the conversation short. And annoyingly we keep getting stuck talking to one specific member of staff of seems quite junior and takes everything we say the wrong way and starts explaining irrelevant things to us. Thinking maybe we’ll give one of the other members of staff an email and set something up.

I know we’re not their only client (and admittedly we’re selling a flat not a more expensive house so I get from their perspective there is less to gain from our sale) but I think I just assumed given we will still be paying them a lot of money for their service they’d be more of a push to get us sold, but we just seem to be doing a lot of chasing with them on everything.

Hi in answer to your questions…
there are some good EAs and some not so good ones.
sounds like yours isn’t very proactive?
This is our seventh house sale and we’ve built a good relationship with the EA. They generally call or email us with updates every week. But I will also call or email to talk about where we are with things, even to share disappointments after a viewing. I always speak to the manager at the branch (or the one handling our sale).
I’m sorry to hear it sounds like they’ve stuck you with someone who doesn’t seem to be very helpful. Go in and talk to them? and if you are still unhappy with their service in a few weeks maybe think about changing EA?

@Coconutlittlebee if you feel like the estate agents aren’t being proactive and make you feel like you’re being impatient, I would switch when you’re out of the exclusivity period with your existing estate agent. Our estate agents make me feel like I’m being impatient and I’m bothering, their lack of communication at this critical stage is shocking. If they’re bad at this stage, they aren’t going to be better when the shit is hitting the fan further down the line.

Thanks @Jacquel666 sounds like you’ve got the ideal relationship with yours! First sale for us so all very new to this and yeah unfortunately not proactive at all- we’re going to try and talk to one of the main agents next week to discuss the situation (our work hours and sharing a car make it hard to go in person unfortunately) and then we’ll see if anything changes.

I have a horrible feeling I’ve signed into quite a long exclusivity contract this time which I’m really annoyed at myself for. It’s a bit of a long story but the owner who did our appraisal just sold it so well and we were relatively fresh off a bad experience from our last estate agent (we took it off earlier this year after a number of issues with our then EAs but the chopping point for us was when they let themselves into our flat for a viewing that hadn’t booked in or told us about 😤) so I was sort of easily led. We’re fortunately not in a massive rush so in a worst case scenario could just wait it out but just more frustrated because we started looking at houses because we thought we had an offer.

Yeah @PurpleBananaSmoothie that’s my real concern that we’re having to chase them now and this is meant to be the bit that has the most potential benefit for them. We’ve also had a bit of a situation with them around an offer that we had but for almost two weeks they were financially vetting the buyer for him to then pull out to put an offer on a more expensive property (totally happens which we accept but we starting to wonder if they’d known the whole time he was considering doing this and just kept presenting to us that it was fine) so it’s not just the lack of proactively.

I have a horrible feeling I signed into quite a long exclusivity contract so need to ask them about that really and then we can decide what we want to do. This is the second estate agent we’ve had and not got on with either so was starting to wonder if we were the problem so it’s nice to know this isn’t the norm and other EAs are more proactive.

Isn't that pretty standard? Sounds like they have a mortgage in principle but the lender needs to do their valuation.

@Milkkbottles you have a mortgage in principle, which says you can afford the amount being offered for the house. You then get a mortgage offer tied to that particular house. To issue the mortgage offer, the mortgage lender will then decide if they want to do a desktop valuation or an in person one. Most mortgage lenders are doing in person valuations at the minute because of the market. If you had been on holiday, the estate agents would have had to facilitate the valuation.

House sales to slump to lowest in over a decade https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66652415

the market really is difficult at the moment. I am not sure if it’s how good an estate agent is or how well priced your house is, everything just seems to have ground to a halt!

We completed 2 weeks ago tomorrow and so glad we got through it all now when we did as in those few months since we put our house on the market everything has changed so much

When prices go back to normal as rates normalise everything will start up again, it may take time for the market to clear though as people cling to old notions of how much their property is worth.

For sellers under offer- how often is everyone checking in with the estate agent/ solicitors?

We have offer accepted, MOS sent out and solicitors appointed. That was last week.

Comparing the availability in my city from when I was looking this time last year and now there are two thirds more properties available so lots are trying to sell. Often at pandemic prices.

But if your homes are priced well they should still sell. The market when I was sold was more stable and I still had to reduce considerably.

Are they AirBnB/BTL or residential sales? Trying for Pandemic Prices now is really just wasting everyones time isnt it, you would think that EA`s would crack down on this?

From what we see on the buyer side I would assume EAs encourage inflated prices as they know that they will be negotiated down or have to reduce down the line. Feels like they think they can anker the price that way.

Had an interesting house that was bought in 2021 for 700k listed a few months back for 900k without any changes.

Did it sell?

No, they just took it off the market on Friday.
I expect it to come back in a few weeks at least 100k cheaper if they want to sell it.

Thats what I expected, but I dont think there is any way they will get the 2021 price now, certainly not 100k over, but as I have not seen it this is just speculation based on interest rates.