Why no offers on our house?

[RobEmily]

We’ve been on the market for a month, which I know isn’t long on today’s market, but we’ve had 15 viewings and no offers.

Our property was originally valued at £850-£875k by 3 agents. We put it on for £850k. We dropped it to offers in excess of £800k on Monday. We have told the agent from the outset that we are very open to offers.

Our house has 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, open plan kitchen/diner, 2-3 reception rooms, utility, garden and large drive plus small garage. Very well located for excellent schools, high street and train station. The house could probably do with decorating / new carpets but kitchen and bathrooms all done in last four years.

There have been quite a few similar properties to ours on the market but all sold, one a three bed on a much busier road which is 400 sq st smaller than ours, but much better finish, which was on for £850k and sold.

Another very similar decorative order to ours, went on same day, slightly smaller and I think a worse location sold when it was on for offers over £875k.

Everything else up our road sells very quickly, the 2 most recent sales were on for £750k but they were 3 beds and 600-700 sq ft smaller than ours as we have done big extensions.

We are getting very little meaningful feedback from the agent - they just say the people liked it but want to keep looking.

One person has mentioned they wanted it to be in a better decorative order, but we are open to negotiation / offers so I figured people would just want to decorate to their taste… should we be taking it off the market and decorating ourselves?

For recent viewings I’ve also tried to declutter more, we have 2 small children so I’ve now started removing some of the toys from their rooms and downstairs to do this.

The viewings by the agent typically take 10-15mins (I can see on the ring doorbell). They always book them one after another, 15 mins apart. Some viewings are under 10 mins. I don’t even think you could look around the whole house never mind go in the garden and garage in under 10mins!

We are viewing lots of properties currently and typically take 20-30mins in all of them. The only one an agent rushed us round in 15mins because they had another viewing booked we left hating.

Am I being impatient or should I be considering changing agents?

Local agents are now advising sellers to offer to pay the buyers stamp duty if they want to sell before April

Agree wholeheartedly with this comment. I recently downsized and after one 30 minute viewing. I was being pestered by the estate agent the next day. I had to ask for a 2nd viewing, and then I requested a 3rd-the sellers weren’t pleased but the garden backs north with a fabulous open view - I just wanted to see how the light and sun affected the property. I was moving from a south backing home that I was 99.9% happy with, but wanted something smaller and more rural if the right property came along. It was only after the 3rd viewing (and I requested that the vendors weren’t in) that I could sit quietly in the darkest room and decide whether I could live with it. I’m in now and 100% love it, but there no way I could have made a lifetime decision on a 30 minute viewing. I need to get the ‘feel’ of the place. The autumn budget will without doubt be affecting the market at the moment OP.

Equity gains came from cheap borrowing and full employment, the world is different now.

Estate agents usually know what price properties have sold for locally, long before the Land Registry figures are released. Presumably they use this information to inform their pricing of current properties for sale, but of course vendors are more influtenced by the highest prices achieved locally for similar properties in the past.
I agree that the world is different now. Perhaps, at last, people can start to view property as primarily a place to live and not as a way to make money, though I can appreciate that people want a safe investment.

Good point on EA"s. Property isn"t really a safe investment , it is the most illiquid of investments and you can get caught out badly in a market panic if you need to sell. Savings account, money market fund or even index funds are safer I think ( not index funds if you may need the money sooner than five or ten years)

I agree about the illiquidity of property investment, we've always known that and never over-stretched ourselves to buy as it is risky. Hopefully we can get back to the more traditional idea of buying a house to live in, not as an investment to trade up to try to make more profit.

Whilst I appreciate that people often have to start with a fairly basic home and will need to trade up for space or because they need to move area, many move up the housing ladder purely in an attempt to make more capital. You can always put any "spare" income into safer and more liquid investments rather than move house which is an expensive business in itself. Paying your mortgage off early is very satisfying if you can do it.

I posted the link for my DM’s house (with her permission) - she wasn’t selling in the middle of the red-hot market phase.

We changed EA but also made the changes suggested by people on here. The new EA saw it pre and post-changes and said it was much better (one of the changes was to put up a stud wall). It sold immediately to buyers who definitely weren’t the type to do any work themselves. I don’t think it would have sold without the work because they couldn’t have used it for what they wanted (main bedroom and adjacent nursery).

I think seeing your property through an independent - and even critical - eye can be really illuminating.

We can all tell OP it’s the price and/or the imminent Budget but without the link we’re only guessing. If she wants an accurate answer rather than generic guesses that she could get anywhere, she’ll need to post the link.

We put our house up for sale a month ago.
Five bed, four bath. Less than an hour from London.
No viewings but loads of agents desparate to market it. Letters through the door.
It does need a new kitchen and we have a new estate within a mile or so. They are paying stamp duty.
I've been asked to cut the price twice within a month. Fine if anyone walked through the door but they haven't.
I couldn't get a builder even if I wanted one. Booked up around here for at least six months. We have to move for disability reasons.

If there are scuffs on the paintwork, the new bathroom undecorated, garden untidy/scruffy there is your answer. White paint on ceilings, walls, woodwork well done won't put people off. If your doors are wood finished give them a good wipe down. Finger marks anywhere are a no no. Might be some smell in the hallway you don't notice or lots of coats/shoes/everyday clutter. Change dining room and playroom around. Last of all flush all toilets and put nice smelling cleaner down the pan and clean towels before all viewings.

The EA call them "comps". They compare the size, type of property etc which has sold to estimate a fair(?) price.

Good advice.

If you think it's looking a bit shabby, it's probably worse than you imagine.

Also, if there are toys and shoes lying everywhere, people won't overlook that.

It's always worth really having a ruthless tidy-up and declutter before you put a house on the market.

Please post the link to your house listing so that we can give better advice.

Those few weeks potential buyer will be looking around still. It takes time to decide so hang on in there, it's been no time at all. We waited for several months and then had 3 interested for second viewings. Xx

Everything else up our road sells very quickly, the 2 most recent sales were on for £750k but they were 3 beds and 600-700 sq ft smaller than ours as we have done big extensions.

This is the issue I think - obviously not knowing what your house is actually like!

Does this mean that the houses generally on your road are 3-beds but you've turned yours into 4-beds with the 'big' extensions. IMO other peoples extensions are not always to everyone's taste, and they can sometimes result in quirky layouts that don't 'flow'.

My sons have recently sold their late father's house - from start to finish in four months. It was a 3-bed suburban London semi - the average house that the average family is looking for. Adding big extensions and redeveloping a traditional house doesn't guarantee that you'll get the bigger money that an original 4-bed would achieve.

Dropping the price so quickly was a mistake - buyers will notice and think it's overpriced.

I wish you luck.

"Dropping the price so quickly was a mistake - buyers will notice and think it's overpriced."

Depends if it was overpriced to begin with, many buyers are using apps that track price changes now, a good thing to do is price just below similar houses, if they dropped their price 15k you drop 20k, that way you catch the interest of buyers. PropertyLog was the app everyone used to use but I think there are quite a few now.

We put ours on the market at the end of Covid (very hot market). Nothing comparable to ours was available in the local area (price, type or size). EA put it on Monday at 9am on Rightmove and local area. We had three bookings by 12 noon, plus more during that week. Tuesday am we had three offers at asking price and moved 6 weeks later. We were really lucky.

So the two grammar schools near us released their first round results on Thursday. We got 8 bookings that afternoon and an offer from someone who had already looked around.

We live right between the two schools and all but two of the 16 people who have already looked round had year 6 kids, so I think we now know why so many viewings and no offers.

The grammar schools have no catchment so the kids can get in from anywhere in the UK but I guess once they’re in they want to move to the area. It’s even been known to have overseas parents buying something small in the UK to get their kids able to do the test and then buying a house in the area when they get in and moving to the UK then.

So I’m assuming as there is another round of exams at one of the schools and they won’t know if they’ve got a space until March we might not get many more offers until then…

@RobEmily I do hope that you will get a quick offer that's enough to enable you to move, if the agent tells other interested parties that you've had an offer you should get more. Obviously it's likely that most will be in chains, but I'm guessing that they'll keen to move quickly to avoid losing their sales.
Like @Wrenjay we sold in one of the gaps between lock-downs during Covid and our buyer's sale was well advanced so he pushed us to move very quickly. The whole thing took around eight weeks which suited us as a property came up immediately which was ideal for us. We lived a long way away but had previously viewed identical properties and bought it without viewing it ourselves, though we did send our daughter round to make sure that it didn't smell or have very obvious problems! As it was a probate sale we knew we'd have to do the basics, and as they were keen to sell we got a good price. No regrets.

It’s not your house. Its the market

its a dreadful time. I moved house this year. It took over a year from start to end. Keep going. Hopefully 2026 will be a better house market

Those are short viewings, are your agents rushing? Viewings organically stagger in lengths, so it sounds like your agents. I've been on 8 weeks and had one viewing, so at least you are getting people in the door. Do de-clutter, and remove family photos etc so people can imagine their own families in there (I just shove mine in a drawer until they have gone.) Fresh flowers, and invest in a good quality aromatherapy candle that you can light in the entrance a bit before they arrive. Go seasonal too... if you have a Woodburner light it, etc. blankets placed over arm of sofa, a book on the table. Make one bathroom kid-free, nice candles and towels, etc. set a scene so people can imagine relaxing in your home, not just raising kids in it. There are some great flowering autumnal plants in garden centres at the moment, put something pretty by the front door.

Have the big extensions made a significant reduction in the garden? That might put some people off.

I've been on 8 weeks and had one viewing, so at least you are getting people in the door

One viewing in eight weeks - have you queried this with the estate agents?

Hate to be obvious, but it sounds like the property is overpriced.

So you’ve had an offer on your house now - are you accepting it?

If, as you say, almost all of the viewings have been prompted solely by the grammar school releasing results then that means your house isn’t attracting any regular viewings? Because you’d expect those looking to buy because of the release of the grammar school results to be over and above regular interest?

If that is the case it suggests there’s a general lack of interest in your house, which means there’s either an issue or it’s overpriced.

You might get more offers in March but it’s a gamble.

If you’re definitely set on buying I wouldn’t sit back and wait til March. What was the offer you received?

Yes I’ve reduced it and it’s now under the price of everything else on the street and below the price of the last one to sell recently. Made no difference! The agent is blaming it on pre-budget 🤷‍♀️

The thing that jumped out at me was 15 minute viewings back to back. It’s not enough time for a house the size of yours. If I like a house I would want more time. And I would not want to enter a bidding war so knowing people had looked before and after me would make me concerned about that.

i would change that before anything else. Yes it might be a pain but if it gets you an offer it would be worth it