No viewings - should we reduce at the end of the month or wait until after summer hols?

[OCM19]

Our house has been on the market for just over a week. I know that’s not a long time and I’m very aware of the factors affecting the property market, like interest rates, COL etc. Our house is also in the price range where houses aren’t moving. We priced it a bit higher as we wanted to test the water as it’s in a very desirable location and I thought if my budget was £650k, I would view a £675k house with the view of offering below asking price.

We’ve found a house we love, which is still available but we know there are other interested parties who are also trying to sell their houses before offering. The sellers won’t take any offers from people who haven’t had an offer of theirs, understandably.

I know the summer hols can be slow for selling houses. We can only reduce by 25k (to £650k) as we won’t be able to afford the other house if we go lower.

I have 2 questions:

1. If your budget was £650k, would you view a £675k house and offer below that?
2. if you were selling at that price, would you reduce after a few weeks or wait until September?

any advice welcome :-) happy to share the link if that helps.

I'm not sure over pricing puts people off. Mils, south London was on for 675. She has just accepted 600. People were offering 500! I think most people look at everything and they offer what they want to pay.

I think it really depends locally. At the moment I am inclined to think that in our case it WAS the price, well at least we get some viewings now.
At my price point we are getting mostly first time buyers, who seem a bit unsure of what they can do when buying a house, so perhaps they are more easily put off by initial price than people who've already done it before?
So you might well find that dropping the price will create more interest, but people will still think they can go much lower than that.
It is quite difficult right now.
The house we like has dropped in price as well, so I am hoping nobody else will snatch it up before we can.

Last time there were similar issues with the property market we were selling a six bed Victorian detached (also in Hampshire) and initially put it on in the Feb for £695k. We had a handful of viewings but no offers and eventually (in the September) we changed EA and at their suggestion based on recent sales of similar properties, we dropped the price to £595k.

Within a month we'd accepted an offer of £585k from cash buyers and our sale (and onward purchase - we were also cash buyers, purchasing a vacant house) went through in six weeks.

Not saying you should make such a dramatic reduction, but just giving my own experience. Good luck with your sale/purchase!

Yes, drop. And if you get offers think about talking to the owners of the house you love to see if they can help towards the difference and pull a chain together.

By the time you sell you may find they've had to drop themselves or if it's keenly priced it may be gone anyway.

@OCM19 just to comment on this point - DONT move if there is only one school you would be happy with 😱

We've just been though this and I viewed three local schools that had spaces but you can't accept (or even apply for) a space until you actually exchange contracts. By the time I applied two out of three of the schools were full again.

1 yes but I’d speak to the agent first to see if it was realistic
2 I’d wait before lowering if possible as a week is nothing. That said is not that straightforward as there is a house you are very keen on. You def can’t assume nobody else will snap that house up in the meantime

Have you already offered on the place you like? Might be worth a cheeky offer

I would view houses a bit over my budget in the current housing market, yes.

If you now realise that you have over priced the house and have had not viewings at all in the first week (usually the busiest period), then I would reduce it now rather than wait. It does seem that it is likely to be significantly over priced if you have had no interest at all.

You said that you need 650k in order to be able to buy the house that you have seen. It seems unlikely that you will achieve this price whether you reduce or not, unfortunately.

To be honest if my budget was 650 I would also be looking at houses up to 700 in the current climate. Maybe that's just me though 🤷

If my budget was £650 I'd view up to £660 definitely not £675.

Interesting point, we are in a similar situation , 6 bed,longer on market and live in the north east so much lower property value, our estate agent has told us our price is too high for where it is and people won’t look, funny given that they advised marketing for the price it’s on, not us. Anyway, we would definitely look at houses we think are overvalued and offer what we thought it was worth, buyers choice to accept or not, as to leaving it over the holidays, after just one week wouldn’t rush to do anything

The house we like has sold today, so we will just stay as we are and see if anything else comes up. 😞 slightly disappointed but it could fall through

Honestly? That was 5 months and how many interest rate rises ago? It’s another world now. That price may (or may not) have been achievable then. Now?

If you really need to sell then better to drop hard and early than chase the market down. Otherwise, wait for the market to recover, which could take a few years.

Something we're seeing here (in the South West) is that houses go under offer and then two or three months later come back to the market. It's as though as prices drop the person who made the offer starts to think they've overpaid and reduces their offer price. The one you want to buy may well come back on.

To answer your questions.

If my budget was £650k I would view a £675k house and offer well below that in this market.
If I was selling at that price, I would reduce now because if things continue as they are a house that was £675k in Feb and £650k in July will be £625k in September.

We're in the south and the market has definitely seen the same drops here - houses on for £600k are now on for £550k, £525k or even less. But we're currently in the process of selling a smaller and much cheaper house belonging to a deceased relative in Lancashire, and the market there doesn't seem to be seeing the same kind of downward movement yet.

I've been watching a few areas for a while and most reductions from first asking price are coming through now at 7 - 15% .

Some now fall into my watched price range and were clearly very overpriced originally as they are no better (sometimes worse!) than those that have been listed in my price range and sold .