Anyone just listing and want to join a support thread?

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We are going onto the market over the next few days, photos taken yesterday. We’re in a new build which we reserved in 2020 (completed 2021). Valuations were slightly disappointing but have gone with agents’ advice and listed at £375k.

Our motivation for moving is to apply for DD’s school next September so we are on a 12 month countdown.

Feeling a huge mix of nerves, excitement and impatience.

That's a different matter though. Interest rates are high, simple as.

prices arent going to drop overnight, and not by hundreds of thousands (there is the supply and demand factor that has been there increasingly over the decades),

it means the market either has to completely grind to a halt, causing the economy to tank, waiting for the unicorn time when property prices are lower, or people will individually and gradually realise their property isnt getting any serious viewings and realise it's the price.

EAs never want to admit it's a falling market they will always try to talk things up, that's the business they're in.

Historically they are low, I think 5% is the base rate average over 300 years and mortgage rates hit 17% under Thatcher, the bond market doesn"t care how much your mortgage debt is or how much someone wants the house they have fallen in love with, it is just a money pricing machine based on global economic events and the price of oil basically.

Sorry I’ve been away for ages. Our cheeky offer was rejected, but we managed to come to an agreement with the developer and now have a complete chain.

We found out this week that the developer have agreed to sell some land from “our” new garden to a neighbour! It’s huge and we’re not particularly thrilled about it, so there’s been a lot of back and forth over it. Photo of the offending tree for interest.

@theluckiest welcome! We were going to use Premier Property Lawyers as they were around £1100 cheaper than the firm I used last time. After the tree issue we have changed our minds and paid more to go with the local firm. We will be dealing with a proper solicitor rather than call centre staff and decided it’s worth the extra given the issues!

Forgot the photo. This thing has been causing an inordinate amount of drama this week. I’m now worried about their newly-planted row of Leylandii too…

I'd like to join. We have been trying to sell since before Christmas last year. Took ages and had little viewings, we reduced our price. EA's were not good at communicating which made us questiom how they communicated with people interested in the house so we ended up changing agents. Had a handful of viewings with new EA and had one offer which we accepted under our asking price as by this stage we just wanted to move forward.. 5 weeks later the buyer pulled out and we are back on the market again. Little interest again.

It's honestly awful. I don't understand why our house isn't selling. We're told it's modern and high spec but we're not getting any viewings. Of the viewings we have had the feedback is not helpful such as it's not for them.

The last few weeks several other houses on our road have gone up for sale, all with different prices! A different of around £50k. I rang the EA to discuss and he said he still believes our price is right as we're extended and more modern than the other houses and to hold out until mid September when the market picks up but I'm not sure.

Inflation and interest rates are being pushed up, mortgages are heading up in price, house prices have to drop by a lot to match interest rates.

Well, our Friday viewing was postponed, and is now happening tomorrow (Monday) afternoon - and another one has also booked for tomorrow morning. I shall be at work, but fingers crossed there might be a flicker of interest from at least one of them. Not holding my breath....

Are you actually on the market with a property @KeepPumping or do you just like to keep being a broken record that property prices need to fall. That's all you ever say on these threads.

Yes I've noticed this. Seems to be on almost all the house selling threads just to tell people they need to drop their house price by massive chunks, doesn't offer any other advice. It's meant to be a support thread, not everyone should sell their house for 50p and be grateful thread

I’m sorry that you’ve been on such a long journey with this :( we haven’t been on the market as long as you but we’re also finding it just so horrible.

Our buyer also pulled out and it was just as the solicitors were about to discuss an exchange date. We still don’t have a new buyer and we’ve switched to a new EA as well. They’re doing a much better job with the marketing but we’ve still only had 1 viewing in a week and nothing seems to be happening now.

Our house is also considered high spec with its new kitchen, bathroom and we’ve also extended, so we’re hoping someone will love it and see that it’s a good deal compared to what you can get locally. We did drop the price from 290 to 275 with the new EA though and after looking at the recent sold prices on zoopla, I can now see that 290 was way too much. that previous EA was a complete waste of time.

have you looked at what similar properties have recently sold for in your area? I’m just asking since you’ve said you can’t work out why it’s not selling. What’s your current competition like?

KeepPumping has been insistent that prices must plummet for several years!

Thank you for pointing this out. It was boring me and I agree that it isn’t helpful.

I’ve got a lodge on a holiday park I’ve been trying to get rid of the last couple years, on and off. The first agents way overvalued it and I put it on just under what a couple others were on at, was two days from completion (you don’t exchange these are cash only without need for a lawyer) when the buyer’s mother had a stroke so she pulled out. She’d passed the Park’s vetting process and had proof of funds so I think it was genuine. Very frustrating. Anyway the most recent sale was at £83,500 I put mine on for £8k less (these lodges sell for under £100k) but no bites. They do tend to take ages to sell. I Airbnb it and do well over the summer but it really just covers my service fee, which is high (but not high for a holiday park). Now I just really want it gone and thinking of slashing the price to well below others (it’s on for £75k, thinking of going as low as £60-65k). Brand new ones sell for £120k, and then they need to add a deck which I already have. I just want it gone now. The park will get 5% and the agent operates on a fixed fee as it’s below £100k so a relatively high percentage too. Argh. Not sure what to do.

What price breaks you even? Aren't they a bit like cars, they'll only depreciate? I'd get rid, but don't price too 'desperate' or people will think there's a problem IMHO. :)

Can I join? Actually listed 7 weeks ago, only one viewing and an insultingly low offer (rejected!) but EA not being very communicative from my limited experience so not sure whether to change agents at the end of the initial contract?

I've asked for the price to be dropped slightly which still gives me enough to buy somewhere but don't want to give the place away just for the sake of it.

It's depressing, isn't it @CatsRuleMyLife . At least one can hope that any reductions in the sale price can be matched by reductions in the next purchase price.

Just reflecting on this - the last time we sold a house was in 2008 - also in a falling market. We had to accept a really low offer, but then we managed to pick up our current house at a bargain price, as the market continued to slide.

I really must get better at timing my house sales....

We have another viewing booked for Friday, and one of the families who came yesterday want to come back for a second viewing tomorrow. It seems like the price reduction certainly kickstarted some interest.

A long way to go, but a few green shoots of interest, at last...

Nobody in their right mind would ever sell for 50p, but many people will need to knock off 50k or 100k to sell, telling would be sellers that it is all buyers fault and the market is "bad" when their price is obviously too high for the market isn"t support it is just encouraging bad decisions.

Sitting on the market unsold for years is helpful?

@sbplanetselling at £75k I’d be losing so there’s no break even. I knew it was a depreciating asset. I do monitor the market, and I had ‘sold’ at £75k, and another (in a slightly better position) sold recently for just over £80k, but it had been on for a while. The issue is the service charge which I only just cover by letting it out. I have another property I stay at so don’t use it at all, but would be great for someone who wants to do both.

Well in that case the longer you wait the more you lose.

Yes, that is possible.

Knocking £50-£75k off a house just for a quicker sale isn't going to be possible. In loads of cases people would be unable to purchase anywhere else or end up in negative equity. Especially when houses are below the national average. If you have a £225k house and drop to £175k or £150k as you suggest then their 3 bed semi will be cheaper than most 2 bedroom flats. Noone is going to do that
Yes people need to be realistic with pricing but that doesn't mean they should be dropping their prices to stupidly cheap prices and causing themselves financial problems

I guess the flipside of this is that when you come to buy you have to hope there will also be some major price reductions.... well, that's what we're counting on.

In order to make our sums work, for example, we need a gap of around £200k between the house we're selling and what we buy (downsized). If we get less for our current house it means we have to work harder to find something to buy. But we are counting on there being other desperate sellers out there prepared to take a hit. But as long as we achieve that gap it will be OK.

Meaningless to look at what your house was worth in the past, or what you bought it for (unless there's a negative equity situation). The market doesn't care about that, but some people are hanging on because they can't quite believe that prices are going down.

Again I'm not saying realistic prices are bad, you have to accept that you're not necessarily going to make loads of money from your property each year. Sometimes house prices will drop also. But there's no point in selling a house for £50k-£100k less than it's worth just to get an offer on it a few weeks earlier especially when the property isn't a high enough value to take that large a hit and land some people in negative equity and then they still need to buy another property. For lots of people it would be better to just not sell
If I dropped house price by £100k on my below national average house value. I could pay the mortgage company back their money and then struggle to buy anything else. I would be selling it for less than a 2 bed property that needs renovating. Very different to dropping £100k on a £2million property that you've owned for 40 years and you're looking to downsize