cantwait

We too are in exactly the same position,

If we've not sold the house by Nov/Dec then its a validation trip for us also.

At this point we've already reduced the house by £11,000 but no joy, so last night we both decided that today we call the estate agent and drop it another £6,000.

It's been up for sale since 1st March so we are keeping our fingers crossed that this reduction works and saves us a validation trip.

Good luck, the housing market's a real bummer at the moment

Paula.
Warrington, Cheshire.

spottydog

As far as I'm aware the validation date can only be extended by sending in new medicals/Police Checks prior to the visa grant and once the visa has been granted it can't be extended

bridiej

I agree, better to knock if off the price and sell the house (even if it is for less than you would have liked) than have the hassle and expense of validation trip and having to come back to the UK and still havent sold house....

chaleyscott

We are in exactly the same boat - have to validate by 2 december. We have had no offer yet and the DIMIA have said our options are to go on a validation trip or redo our meds and police checks. the latter is obviously the cheapest route so may go for that. I really don't relish going on such a long flight with a 3 and a 5 year old only to do it all again a little while later! I am just crossing my fingers that we aren't put in that position and we get a buyer - not going to think about it until October and then make a decision .

Pauline

We are also in the same boat but have also booked our flights for the 14th August had to validate by 8th Oct. So now is a good time what with kids being on holiday here. Have paid just over £4,000 for flights only... There is 7 of us, one child!!!!!!

Have had no luck with the house have now got 3 agents.... Have dropped 50k since 0ct. Getting fed up of hearing your house is wonderful, immaculate, modern, comtempory, we have fell in love with your house etc etc etc.
Well someone buy it then. For the last 9 mths agents have said no it is not the price you have got it priced right it is just the market at the moment blah blah blah... It is now 329,995 and they are telling us to drop it again to get more interest.They are just not doing there job properly do they want us to give it away or what.

What is wrong with our house has someone put an advert in the paper without our knowledge saying please do not buy Mr & Mrs Sharratts house because they so desperatly want to leave the country so do not let them...

No actually I think immigration has blacklisted us all trying to emigrate, so be aware.....

chris n

We were in the same boat (2 adults / 2 kids) in the early part of the year - our house had been on the market since July 04 and we had to validate by April 05. We spent the best part of £10k taking into account getting there and living but if we had planned a bit earlier I reckon we could have done it for around £7k (had to go over Easter holiday for Kids and could only get hotel accomodation - oh, and decided to fly from Perth to visit my cousin in Sydney!).

My lessons would be :-

(1) Get a credit card with a long interest free period on!

(2) Hire the car in Australia - we could see four companies within three hundred yards of our hotel from out of the window (then knock them down)

(3) There are lots of holiday lets and houses for short rent - $500 pw should be ample (search on the internet will bring up loads)

(4) Don't worry if you are 10-20 kms outside the CBD - the roads are trouble free

(5) Don't penny pinch if the kids have never been to Australia - ours hadn't and we wanted to make sure that they would see as much of their new country as we had seen previously

(6) If you fly internally try booking direct (unless the airline out has done a deal on internal flights) - Virgin Blue was fine

(7) Get used to a slower pace in life!

Now back in the UK we have sold last week and hope to be back in Perth by the end of the year.

Chris

barnettaj

Try this place
http://www.fremantlevillage.com.au/

They have fully furnished chalets available double bed downstairs two singles upstairs


I stayed there about 2 months ago.
Leaving my two older lads in perth after driving acro
ss australia from Queensland

Im back in Uk midlands for a while

If you have them for 4 weeks the price comes down to around Au $250 week

Freemantle and perth ok but its winter there now.
Boys emailing me to say how bloody cold it is compared to Qld

Best of luck

Tony

JAJ

On the other hand, if you validate your visas then you may have a little more bargaining power when it comes to selling the house.


Jeremy

Blueboy

Decisions, decisions!! Its funny really, we all sit at our P.Cs in our own little bubble`s so to speak, and yet there are so many of us in a similar circumstance.

My house isn`t selling at the moment and i need to validate visa. I think to myself, should i drop my price say 5K, 10K even 20K?? My emotions begin to run away with me to the point whereby i actually believe that this will make a real difference. But then reading posts on this newsgroup i realise that other people have tried, and failed, with such a tactic. So desparation begins to kick in, along with all of the stress and anxiety that made the whole RPL/Visa application look like a doddle.
After all of the emotion surrounding the "lack of control" of our house sale building up and building up on daily basis i then suddenly had a reality check. This move is`nt about giving my house away at such a ridiculous price that i have to litterally start again in a new country. This move isn`t about trying to rush out there at all costs. This move is about giving my family the best i can in life, and to do that i shouldn`t even think of "giving away" 20k+ of my equity, only to be bargained down further by a potential buyer.
Nope. My house is worth what its worth, and who am i to argue. Yes it will sell in time and i will have to remain patient. I`m fortunate enought to be able to afford the Validation trip as an option, so i shouldn`t take that for granted, as for many people this would not be financially possible.

I guess what i`m saying is that if some people in a similar boat take a step back and look at their situation in a logical/unemotional way, they may see, like me, that there are options open to them to make their dream move a reality. Unfortuately it may take a little longer than you`d like - hey but thats life :-)

ROBnCAZ

Just my two penneth worth.....

I was told by a girl who works in 'The Flight Centre' in Guildford, that flight costs are based on the season of your departure country....soooooo, flights during the UK summer (ie, now) will cost more than a UK winter flight.

Don't know how accurate this is, kinda makes sense though...

bridiej

Not really, the people buying the house probably dont know how visas work so we're going to tell our prospective buyers we've got five years to use the visa so in no rush to sell in the hope of preventing last minute price drop offers - worked for my friend Sasha.

movetoperth

Rob n Caz are right, flights in the UK summer tend to be equally as expensive if not more so than later in the year. The cheapest time to come would be september or early october, low season for flights (i think singapore have some specials for that time) and also the accommodation is low season too. The fully furnished homes we feature start from $465 per week in September, that gets you 4 beds 2 baths fully furnished and equipped including all bills for $67 per night. You can view them via this link http://movetoperth.com/rental/rentalbrowse.html

Hope this is some help to all you guys stuck in this predicament, it must be very hard to decide whats best to do, the last thing you want to do is pay for a volidation trip and still have to drop your price .

Lynn

Seriously

Here in my bubble - things are different. You said "My house is worth what its worth, and who am i to argue." In my bubble my house is worth what anyone is prepared to pay me for it. If I put it on the market and it does not sell, then, at that point in time it effectively has no value - I cannot sell it. Unless of course I drop the price. Surely with the market as it is at the moment you drop the price gradually until you find a buyer. Change Estate Agents once or twice to make sure you are getting full market coverage but surely, at some point in time, you have to accept your house does not have some sort of fixed worth. You need to find out what someone is prepared to pay. I'd consider an auction if I were you. People often pay over the odds at auction, the deal is definite and you can set a reserve.

bridiej

Your house is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it. Our neighbours have been on the market for over a year trying to sell, they stupidly took the highest valuation and are still sitting here 12 months on, having dropped £10K - but STILL the house is too expensive.

The market has changed a lot in the last 18 months and you can no longer expect to put your house on at any price and it will sell - despite what your agent may have told you the house is worth the fact it hasnt sold after so long should tell you something..................


....remind me of this post when I am writing next May on how we have to validate our visas cos our house hasnt sold!

MarkG

Out of interest, what do you expect the estate agents to do? Go out armed to the teeth and press-gang buyers into taking out a mortgage for a house they're not willing to pay for?

The simple fact is that Britain has gone through a huge housing bubble in the last seven years, and now it's burst. People who'd have borrowed vast sums of money two years ago to buy an overpriced house to 'get on the ladder' are now sitting back and waiting for prices to drop to sensible levels.

To give a simple example, on my street we've seen numerous new blocks of 'executive apartments' built, at an asking price of 350k+ (a street where, five years ago, you could buy a three-bed house for under 200k). The two blocks I've been tracking were finished about a year ago and about six months ago, respectively: as far as I can tell, not a single one of the flats has anyone living in it. Is that because the agent 'isn't doing their job', or because they're at least 300k overpriced?

Even most of the houses I know of which have 'sold' in the last six months are back on the market right now because they couldn't complete because there are almost no first-time-buyers left to prop up the bottom of the chain. Most people are simply not buying houses now unless they get a big discount, and there's little to nothing that estate agents can do about that.

Absent a major economic change, prices are only going down from here for the next few years... if my emigration plans relied on selling a house to fund the trip, I'd drop the price as far as I had to to shift it now, before it's worth 50% less at the bottom of the crash. But if you prefer to sit and hope that someone will pay over the odds for your house when they can get better deals elsewhere, that's your choice.