Has anyone sold recently? What % price drop did you accept?

[likessleep]

Apologies for nosy questions We are thinking of selling, to move to a cheaper area, so we can reduce our mortgage.

DH is very keen to move, but I just don't know whether it is even worth trying, with all of the doom and gloom, credit crunch etc etc. Am I being a pessimist?

Apart from the estate agents saying to my DH that the low interest rates are prompting an increase in offers, what are your experiences?

Thanks!

well to give you an idea, we recently accepted an offer which was 15% lower than the asking price, but the asking price had already been lowered twice in 8 months. Effectively the price we accepted is 30% lower than our original asking price back in May 08...
In 8 months we had a fair few viewings, but not loads, and 3 offers - one was too low at the time (which in hindsight we should have accepted..), one fell through, and the one we just accepted. There was definitely a spurt of more people viewing in January.
Good luck whatever you decide

thanks migola. i guess though that if we accept a much lower price, then we should offer a much lower price, IYSWIM?
but then there is still a bit of work to do on our house, like painting and decorating and the kitchen needs a bit of tarting up. difficult to know whether it is worth 'investing' in this at the moment.
thanks for responding.

you should definitely offer a much lower price on wherever you buy, everyone is anyway regardless of whether they've had somewhere to sell themselves. Whether the sellers will accept all depends on how realistic they are and how desperate they are to move, but I don't think that many sellers expect to get the asking price anyway in these climates. We have sold ours and will rent so that it leaves us in a better position to have a low offer accepted bec. we won't be in a chain.

With regard to doing some work on your place, my personal advice would be not to spend too much. If you have some paint then definitely give it a new coat or just buy a big tub of white paint (boring I know but cheap and neutral), but I wouldn't start investing loads of money in doing it up. Just give it a bit of a clean, a lick of paint if you can, clean the windows (makes a big difference), and declutter as much as you can.

My friend made an offer which was accepted on a house 15% below the asking price (some £45k)last week. The house had been on the market for quite a while though and she has a first time buyer for her house so a very favourable position to bargain with.

But on the house she was selling she was made an offer of only £5k below asking price.