The 'We want to buy a house' support group

[fruitstick]

For like minded souls who are having trouble buying a house even though the property market is supposed to be on its knees.

We've had a vendor pull our, been gazumped and are horrified by the complete lack of any houses for sale at all.

So come share your woes here.

We have also just had an offer on a house accepted. Solicitor appointed, waiting for a mortgage decision (should have heard today but no phone call). No chain - will we be in by Xmas? Oh I hope so [fingers crossed smiley]

Congratulations on your offers being accepted!

How much under the asking price are people offering? (I know, I know, it will all depend on all sorts of factors). Am wondering how far above our actual budget we can look.

Wigeon: We accepted an offer around 5% below asking when we sold our house in July/August this year. We also had an offer accepted around 5% below asking in Sept.

Congratulations to all those with accepted offers.

I have my house on with an internet only estate agent called www.housenetwork.co.uk they charge £400 total to put your details onto Rightmove, Primelocation, findaproperty.com and 147 other websites.

We chose them because estate agents wanted to charge 1.25%. Our house is a family home, 3 double bedrooms, en-suite, utility, conservatory etc

If it had been a bungalow where some of our potential viewers might be elderly and not on the internet then we would have paid an EA.

Housenetwork take huge number of pictures, do a floor plan and virtual tours of main rooms.

It is on their website where I can see how many people have looked at my house.

I know my house is competitively priced as I know what houses actually sold for including one identical to ours in the last few months.

We are very realistic. We bought ours in 2004, gutted it from top to bottom including new boiler, new bathroom, new en-suite (they were pink and caramel respectively with gold taps) new fireplace, new flooring etc and we are only asking for £10k more than we bought it for.

We are even willing to take a drop on the price if and when we ever get a viewing!

I don't want to do another Christmas here

Ooh, we've had our offer accepted.

We had to go up to the asking price (which as discussed previously is about 25k over our budget) but we were the first people to see it (went on rightmove on Saturday, viewed it on Monday morning) and they had 10 other viewings scheduled so the fact they have accepted our offer is great.

The fact that they want a 28 day exchange is a bit nerve racking.

Will have to start ringing childminders tomorrow argh.

The house we offered on was advertised as in excess of 240,000. We had our offer of 230 accepted.

Meeting went well today and fingers crossed we should hear back within the week whether we have been approved or not.

I don't sleep when I feel under pressue so this is a long process!

Fizzylemonade - we are using housenetwork too and have been on the market for just over 2 years. I check our stats everyday and it just depresses me, we are up to 3000 hits and have only had 10 viewings. People keep telling me to put it on with a more traditional EA, but as far as I'm concerned everyone looks on rightmove anyway. I just don't know why we're not getting viewings. I'm considering looking at some new builds that might offer a part exchange, even though it's not really the sort of house we're looking for this time around.

we've just been to see our house again as ds1 hadn't seen it. We still love it so really hope nothing goes wrong.

The EA told us that when he got to work on Monday morning he had to make 18 phone calls to people who'd phoned over the weekend asking to view it! It is now marked as sold stc online and the sold board is up.

jenniepanda - ours has been on about 5 weeks.

The only way a traditional EA differs is they may have some people on their books so they would ring them to tell them about your property, but once they have made those phone calls what else do they do?????

My friend had her house up for sale and every single viewer had seen it on the internet on Rightmove or another general website. Nobody had been on the specific website for the EA her house was on with.

I know what you mean about looking at a new build but there are none near me

Have you had any feedback? Is there something that keeps coming up?

How often have you dropped your price in those 2 years?

Sorry lots of questions, just trying to help

I have just had a viewing. It was going absolutely brilliantly. Lots of banter, much enthusiasm over the area etc. Then, as I was saying goodbye at the door, my lovely neighbour started the drum solo from 'Live And Let Die'. Oh, bumholes.

Oh Chickenshavenolips that is awful! Is it one of the reasons you are moving?

Maybe the viewer thought it was just music rather than band practice.

To everyone asking about Rightmove stats, I know that the EA does know them because it was part of my conversation with the lovely chap at Housenetwork. He was basically saying that if we didn't get much interest then we could look at why.

Worth asking your agents methinks.

Congratulations to everyone who has sold and had offers accepted. We are (hopefully) just about to reach the end of this slow, stressful process and should be exchanging tomorrow for completion next week.

I just wanted to defend estate agents as I know it has been asked a few times on this thread what they actually do. We also considered marketing our house ourselves but I have to say that our estate agent has been worth her weight in gold. She has chased our solicitors, our buyers and our buyers' solicitor, she has kept us updated far more than our solicitor and really helped when it looked liked everything was about to fall apart.

I promise I am not an estate agent in disguise and I know there are some terrible ones out there (we've had dealings with those too!) but I just wanted to give my agent the thumbs up!

Chickenshavenolips - that's really funny (in an awful way). We've had a couple of those:

Viewing takes place - DH shows them round. They love the house. As they are leaving, man in a suit and hi-viz jacket , standing opposite our house starts shouting in very blue language at the top of his voice at someone on our side of the street. DH pretends he can't hear. We don't hear back from them.

Viewing booked. Viewing gets cancelled as viewer "drove round the area on a Friday night and saw something kicking off outside McDonalds" (which is about 45 seconds walk away). Hmm.

However...........we have SOLD!!! Accepted an offer 4% under the asking price today. Very excited. Slightly terrified. We have been on the market two weeks today and were not expecting to sell so soon as we are basically in one of the worst streets in our town. But the house is nice indoors .

Congratulations mooki and theprettieststar! Great news!

Hm, Fizzylemonade, sounds like a great property, sorry about the lack of viewings.

Fizzylemonade - we were originally on at 239, accepted an offer at 236 after a few months, but the sale fell through, then dropped to 235, now on at 229 and would accept 220. The feedback is usually that they love the house, but...some have said they just can't afford it, others that there is not enough bedrooms (how many did they expect in a 4 bed house!?) Our main problem is that we are moving south and we need to maximise our money on this house to be able to get a similar property down there. I'm begining to think that we'll never move

We're not moving because of our drumming neighbour, surprisingly. We are in a detatched house, and can't hear him at all unless we're outside. Also, he never drums early or late (past about 7) Double bumholes.

The financial advisor that our EA recommended has just spent 2hours of his evening at our house sorting out our mortgage. I was very impressed with that service.
And even better, it's going to be about £100 a month less than we thought

Still nervous about it all going wrong though. The bit that I can't helping worrying about is our buyers, not knowing what's going on in their heads or what might happen in their lives that could affect things.

Oh shtting sht I knew this was going too smoothly.

I've just met someone who knows a previous occupier of the house we have had the offer accepted on.

They have told us that their friend was forced out by awful neighbours. They don't know the people selling it, it was the person before, but the people who are selling it are selling it after only 3 months.

The EA told us that it was because the sellers had changed their mind and wanted a new build instead.

We are mugs. Can we pull out now?

What a shame Mooki. You can pull out at any time up to the point you exchange contracts. It sounds like you have had a narrow escape!

Mooki, find out which house the awful neighbours were in and see if it has sold recently. They may have gone.

3 months occupation should ring warning bells to anyone though.

I would be very direct and ask them outright if they have problem neighbours, they are not allowed to lie if asked the direct question.

If in doubt pull out.

Jenniepanda Make sure Housenetwork know what you will drop down to so that any person ringing up knows that they may be able to afford it.

Maybe some new photos would help.

Lubyloo both myself and Jenniepanada are with an on-line EA so they still do all that just not for thousands of pounds of commission, and let's face it all the chasing they do isn't out the goodness of their hearts, they hear that cash register a ringing

Wigeon well done.

Jenniepanda would second Fizzy's suggestion of new photos. We discounted a house because they only had photos of the outside and no floorplan. It went off the market for a week, came back on with the same agent, at the same price but now with lots of photos of the inside and a floorplan. Having seen the photos and (very importantly) the floorplan we are now seriously considering the house.

spiralqueen - on rightmove we have 33 photos inside and out, floor plans, a downloadable brochure and a virtual tour of the lounge, kitchen, master bedroom and garden! I think we're just destined not to sell!

We left a holding deposit for a rented property not far from hospital in Cambridge. Fingers crossed we get it, although I'd have preferred to buy as we have been in rental for over a year now.
We live in Warks so it has been a pain to househunt, even if we are not that far away.
The house for sale we also viewed was good on paper but really run down (no gas in the property, no central heating, the roof was bowing, tricky to extend...). That's why it was cheap but if the location had been better we'd have gone for it.
There is very little offer in Cambridge. Mooki, which house it is? Let's swap notes, email me at [email protected]. My DP watches every day and does a lot of research on houses, so we might have info, you never know. Sometimes he even buys titles from land register to check on owners.
Beggars cannot be chooser so it will be rental. I'm not looking forward to move my potted plants again and my heaps of seeds and cuttings for the garden I was going to have.

I've seen some of the online agents with many many photos and it actually puts me off. If I've seen 33 photos there is no point me visiting the house because I've seen every room from every angle and lets face it not every room will sell the house.
Would it be worth reducing the number of photos so you just have the best photos?

jenniepanda, I didn't realise you had 33 photos, we have 25.

Do you think it would be worth EA's coming back and re-valuing? Or do you think you are competively priced

2 years must feel like 8. Why are you moving down south?

goldenpeach, that is an awful compromise. People are too scared to put their house on the market so properties are scarce.

I've seen some of the online agents with many many photos and it actually puts me off. If I've seen 33 photos there is no point me visiting the house because I've seen every room from every angle and lets face it not every room will sell the house.
Would it be worth reducing the number of photos so you just have the best photos?