Handhold? our buyers just pulled out on exchange day :-(

[MissCherryCakeyBun]

just had a call from the agents and our buyers have pulled out.... I feel sick 😥
we were due to exchange today and we have already moved into our new house so have been playing a juggling act to cover everything and now this.
7 months since we went on the market and everything was fine and this just out of the blue. The female buyer (Married couple) has decided she isn't sure about the neighbors.

if I put up a link could you have a look and see what we could do to make it more appealing?

Worth noting its now totally empty of furniture in the house so those photos are a bit different and we have asked for new Garden photos to be taken showing it in the summer

We don't have the funds to dress the house with furniture and we had all the walls repainted and the carpets cleaned after we moved so its all fresh....Its also more expensive than others locally due to new wiring/heating floors etc. in the last 5 years and the very large home office/studio in the garden

I have some nice pots with plants and flowers to go by the front door for more curb appeal too.

sorry for the rambling post just needed to vent
Original Listing.... check notes above about changes :-)

You do not need furniture in a property to sell it

I'm really sorry for you. Some people are just selfish thoughtless unkind people. At a time of heart break they have just made it so much worse for you. Sorry about that. Make your peace you will never know why they really did pull out.

My FiL passed away in April. We are waiting for IHT and then probate 🙄 so we haven't put the house on the market yet. However it is a 3 bed semi house in Yeovil, in a cul de sac, so similar to you. Currently we are expecting to market for £250k. The house is liveable for a first time buyer however with time it would need a new bathroom and a new kitchen. So maybe your price isnt quite right? We had three estate agents to value and they all gave the same price. However I appreciate it's a changing market and we may need to drop the price when the time comes and we can market the property.
Fingers crossed for you.

God what a crappy thing to do.

Idon't think there's much that could be improved inside but I would take the lounge curtains down, they look a little scruffy (sorry).

The kitchen pictures could be angled better the first picture makes it looks a really awkward shape, but I don't think it is.

The utility picture looks likes it's been taken at a low angle, I would retake at a higher angle, it will look bigger, and tidy up the cat flap (even just less obvious white card if it is broken and can't be fixed).

The blue bedroom with the large wardrobe, the wardrobe looks like it is stood away from the wall? Or is it really deep,or just the angle? Maybe it's been removed now anyway, could retake that image.

Outside I think could be worked on. Pressure wash the patio and it will look lovely and big and bright, get the crass cut and the stuff tidied away, garden and drive look huge selling points.

Wish you the best of luck.

Oh op what a horrible thing to happen. Your house is lovely and hopefully a new buyer will come along shortly. Is it worth asking the estate agent if there is any wiggle room with the buyers if you offered a price reduction for a
Regarding a new listing apart from the cat flap and wardrobe position already mentioned I think there should be a floor plan of the office building as I got confused with the office set up in the second bedroom (probably just me). Good luck!

Do they have chains like we do? I was recently kind of following an American guy selling his place and in the state he was in it was perfectly normal to buy, move into your new place, then sell the old empty place. Which seemed very logical to me. If it hasn’t sold within a month or two then it’s the wrong price.

Op I suspect they are worried their dogs would jump the wall/fence. The description of the garden as "fully enclosed" pulled them in and not they are not too sure. When a garden slopes the fence can be 2 metres plus half the difference in height between the gardens. It's possible a higher fence could be erected and if so your agent should have pointed that out to them. Offer the cost of a higher fence.

Your house would not be to my taste. The main things would be the carpets looking so dirty I'd think I had to replace them all and concern that one ceiling looks like aertex so might be asbestos. If the carpets are not actually in need of replacing then the photos certainly are!

Then I dislike the decor. The dark green would have to go and the mismatch between dining room floor and the kitchen tiles ,means I'd want to replace one of them. The office papered with OS maps means that would need to be redecorated as that amount of detail would be too distracting. I'd wonder what was under the maps too and how insulated it really is. I dont like the bathroom floor either. Looks of parking is a plus in a road where many people seem to have several cars.

Put dimensions on the floor plan and include the dimensions of the home office. I'd be mentioning room to extend subject to planning permission because adding value to a house is a plus point for me.

The "video" is just still photos. If they cant do a proper walk through (which can clear up crap photos then there is really no point in having it there.

I could work out which your house was on google street view and you've improved the front but a few tubs of flowers there would help.

I suspect people think you’d have to spend a lot of money, so just too expensive. It all looks very dated. The kitchen, bathroom and the floors. The floors are not modern or classic wooden floors and all so mismatched. The colours of the walls are just messy and it doesn’t look put together. The garden looks tired and very uncared for. Messy. All expensive things and hard work, which adds up.

Am I seeing it wrong or is there a toilet opening directly off the dining room? That’s a bit odd!
Whoever said “ put it on at 2% more than it was, then reduce it” GOD please don’t do that! Buyers are on rightmove daily.. we’re not stupid and we will remember the original price!
I am also finding that so many sellers have owned a house for 5 or so years, Done basic maintenance and somehow expect over 100k profit.. maybe they get it, I don’t know, but when I see that I just walk away as it’s so damn greedy!
Sorry, but it’s always always the price.

I just wanted to say,to cheer you up,that we had buyers back out after completion date! Not only that,they didn't tell us!! Long story short,big company were demolishing some Victorian properties in the town near where we lived, they were buying our property for an elderly couple who owned a small shop,marked for demolition. THEN, I read in the local paper, the company had pulled out. I contacted the couple,who wouldn't speak to me,then the company,same response! Once before that,we had a big building society take back the mortgage offer,at. Exchange!! It says in the small print the reserve the right to do that. I had filled in the application forms in my tiny handwriting, some one, presumably had crossed out some of my replies and ticks, and altered ,must have been someone in the BS, who then said we had lied on the application forms. I lost a stone in a week!

Gosh, what is it with people comparing bought price against current price? They are nothing to do with each other! If 2 or 3 estate agents value a house within 5/10k of each other then I think they probably know the ball park selling price.

I understand how you will be feeling, it was such a shock for me when our buyers pulled out on exchange date. We were selling my Mums house after she died, it had been rented out for two years so empty of furniture like yours but probably needed more updating than yours although still liveable in.

We had quite a lot of interest in an area where houses were still in demand and I think we had pitched the house at the right price - based on others recently sold and those also on sale. There were some delays in the legal process but they had been sorted out.

We heard afterwards that the buyers moved into another house just three weeks later, they had been going through the process of buying that one while stringing us along!

However, we did not do anything to try to improve the house, just put it back on the market at the same price, fully expected to accept a lower offer. It was a pleasant surprise to get a new buyer within a week who offered the full price - they really wanted to buy in that location.

So in the end all was well and this time the legal issues had been sorted and we were able to complete in about six or eight weeks. One of the selling points for the new buyers was the very large garden which we had maintained fully while the tenant lived there, it was a lovey garden full of plants and we did not want to see it get overgrown and look unloved.

If you are confident about the price, then I suggest you just look at the house and garden through buyers eyes, are there any areas which could look better at little cost, ie clean carpets, tidying up the garden office, jet washing patio etc? Certainly get the garden office included in the floor plans and get better photos of the garden to emphasise its large plot. Get it back on the market asap and good luck!

Well, it’s probably that buyers will likely see that the seller hasn’t really improved the house, take the fact that interests rates are much higher into account, factor in a cost of living crisis and the fact that the market is MUCH slower and not pay the price asked?
But for me it just shows the buyer is a bit unrealistic and won’t understand that they might need to reduce.
Estate agents are actively asking sellers to market at 10-15% over the price they think it can fetch at the moment.

There’s no indication that it’s a price problem though. Everyone is acting like the OP said that there had been no offers. She had a seller! I don’t even know why she posted the link to the property to be honest. If the seller thought the price was a problem wouldn’t they have tried gazundering instead (reducing price before exchange)?

All of this!

Not really, because people don't move house every few years. For one thing, the French equivalent of stamp duty is between 9 and 12%, with cheaper properties attracting the higher rates because some of the various taxes are on sliding scales. (I always PMSL when I see discussions about how stamp duty of 1 or 2% is "killing the housing market" in the UK.)

Also there is not really any such thing as a "starter home" that you own for 3 or 4 years until DCs come along.

It's a whole different attitude to life and wealth accumulation. A house is first and foremost somewhere to live, rather than somewhere that it's OK to be a bit dissatisfied with until you can upgrade (and then be a bit dissatisfied with the new one), which seems to be the model for some people in the UK.

How does it work where you are? Does the seller get all the bits done in advance the solicitor does so it’s available for the potential buyer to see before they offer?

Quite often issues that might impact the sale of the house only come to light when the solicitors carry out their searches and that is quite often late into the process. On what grounds are you allowed to pull out without forfeiture of the deposit?

Where's the link?! How is everyone else seeing it and I can't?

Show us yours first 😂😂

What I'm saying, which others have agreed with, is that the kitchen needs updating, the cardboard doesn't give a good impression (and is VERY easily remedied) and the photos are terrible.

If you're selling a house, you present it well. Accepting the photos that are on that listing was a rookie error.

OP I don't want to be negative when you're already having a difficult day, but maybe try and get tenants in asap, as you've advertised on a public website where there's a house sitting empty. İf you still want a quick sale, maybe put some cheapish furniture in and rent it on air BnB for the summer, so you don't have the issue of asking anyone to leave when it sells. Some of those photos of the concrete parts of the outside make it look a bit messy and a bit of work, so maybe you could work on those. I'd also brighten up the office spaces.

So people own a house for a lot longer? What sort of time is ‘normal’?

It’s in op’s post, the blue link down the bottom.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/146760779?utm_campaign=property-details&utm_content=buying&utm_medium=sharing&utm_source=copytoclipboard#/&channel=RES_BUY

Also why are all the curtains closed in the first photo? Makes it look uninviting.

Most of your life, typically. If you buy a house at all -- tenants have rock-solid rights in France, with rent rises limited by a government-published index. In principle the house owner is not even allowed to keep a key to the property.

Sometimes people move because they get a job at the other end of the country, but it's always been a bit unusual to buy before you're 30. Of course, that's becoming the norm in the UK now due to availability.

Why though? She got an offer (albeit that it fell through). You’re acting like it was on the market for a year with no interest.

And the kitchen isn’t to everyone’s taste but it does look fairly recently done - definitely not the sort of thing that needs gutting. You could probably make it totally fine by replacing the tiles and sanding and painting the unit doors. Nothing looks like it “needs” ripping out - saying it needs gutting because you don’t like the decor is a big overreaction.

Genuinely curious, why does it seem quite common to get buyer and seller round the wrong way?

I see it quite frequently.

Seller = the person selling

Buyer = the person buying