Ok, So house has been on the market 3 months and only one ridiculous offer. OH needs to be in Sydney by the 16th of August. It has now been decided that he will fly out and start work and we (myself and two boys 8 and 5) will stay put until the house sells. We HAVE to sell and renting is not an option. I am not too worried about staying behind and have a close family around me, but what if we are still here at christmas? My 8 year old is already upset at the thought of daddy not being around and although my husband jokes about having having no wife and kids about for a few months I know he is going to find it so difficult. Obviously we could sell in the next few weeks then there wouldnt be a problem, Its just not knowing and the uncertainty of it. Anyone else been in a similar situation? How did things work out for you?
Emma x

Hi emma,

It must be very frustrating for you. Someone may fall in love with your house tomorrow or it could still be on the market in December and there is no real way to tell. However you need to be really honest with yourself on how much the house is worth in the current market - not what you paid for it, worked on it or a similar one sold for two years ago. Ask your agent what it would need to be priced at to sell in a couple of weeks. It may then be the case that you can't afford to sell it for that price. That is a different issue and not one that is easily solved.
In a "normal" market, if a house has not had an offer in three months, either it is not priced correctly or there is a problem with the house. Its normally the former.
Are there other houses in your area selling, are you getting viewings and what is the feedback?
We had to think carefully about the fact that our house was being valued at £50k less than our neighbours bought theirs for 2 years prior. It was not comfortable facing up to it, but we had to make a decision on that basis. We priced it to sell and it sold in 8 weeks. If we had put it on at the neighbours selling price we might have sold it but probably not in the timescale we wanted and we may well still be in the uk.
You are also about to hit August when house viewing grinds to a halt. It will pick up in September but realistically you may not get it sold (as opposed to offered) before X-mas.
Is it not an option to pack up and move to Oz and leave the house with the agents to sell? Not ideal but then you just have an unsold house, rather than an unsold house and family separation
Sorry not to be more positive but you may be putting the family under lots more stress and not get much further forward
However you may also get someone who loves your house tomorrow! Hope it works out for you
Scotty

Hi Emma sorry to put a dampner on it but do you think this is really meant to be. The first six weeks for a house is vital and it must be priced correctly otherwise you miss the bus. This does not sound like a great way to start your new life!

Hi Emma,
We were in a similar position and out of the blue a friend of ours decided to rent it. Although we needed the money to buy in Aus we have decided to rent over there and hope that one day we can have enough saved up to put down a deposit or our friend becomes in a position to buy from us. I know you say that you can't rent it but at least it's something.
We did consider an auction and would have probably lost quite a bit but at least we would have been able to start planning our future.
Our difficulty now is leaving our F&F who have all been fantastic. We have had party after party and the amount of presents / well wishes our kids have received have been unbelievable and very emotional for the family.
Keep thinking and trying and the very best of luck.

WE've had our house on the market for 8 weeks or so now, initially sold it within days then the buyer pulled out. Then we had a ridiculous offer which was then upped but still on the very low side, eventually we opted to accept the offer provided the buyer would complete in 4 weeks (house empty and was a buy to let buyer) we heard nothing for 10 days then the agent told us he'd changed his mind. We've given our current agents notice to be honest and going to market with another agent having looked through rightmove to see which agents have sold similar properties in our area. We need to be leaving mid September so we've got fingers crossed.
Good luck with selling up, might be worth getting a few more quotes from other agents.

I would be interested to hear the logic behind a house not selling means they have made the wrong decision to emigrate ? What about if they have a car they can't sell does that mean they should go by sea instead of flying?

A house will always sell if it is priced low enough. However at the moment many of us cannot afford to take the hit that might involve. We would probably lose about £80k if we sold now and are not prepared to do that. So we are going to rent it out, because the market will improve in the end.

You say renting is not an option, but I cannot really think of any circumstance that would make renting absolutely not even an option. I expect many of us would really rather not rent but it doesn't mean it is not an option.

I think you should decide what is worse, selling for less than you would like or renting in Australia. Some people have had their house on the market for over a year, do you really want to split your family up for a year?

I wouldn't split my family up, as you're proposing. I've known five couples who broke-up or (if they remained together afterwards) were never the same, due to a supposedly 'temporary and enforced separation'. In each instance, the wives in particular believed their marriage was as solid as the bank and believed their husbands would never, under any circumstance, be unfaithful. In one instance it was the wife who was unfaithful. A couple who were my 'ideal' shocked everyone to the core when it was learned the really great husband who travelled ahead to New Zealand to start a new job, entered an affair with a 17 year old kid in the same office almost immediately, apparently. When his heavily pregnant wife and other children arrived in New Zealand only 3 weeks later, the wife had NO idea he'd strayed. She was too busy setting up a new house, having a new baby and getting the older children settled in new schools to even notice. The husband continue the affair for two years. His wife didn't find out until they moved back to Oz and caught her husband phoning his girlfriend in NZ. Ten years of bitter recriminations and disruption later, they divorced. Of all the men I've known, he's the last one I would ever have expected to stray. But opportunity, a new place, etc. and he did.

I know another couple whose seemingly rock-solid marriage bit the dust when the husband said he'd remain in Sydney 'just for a month' to earn extra cash, after which he was supposed to join his wife and young children in their new house and life on the Gold Coast. Two years later, the husband was still claiming he needed to stay in Sydney, because 'there's no suitable work on the Gold Coast'. Or he claimed he needed to stay in Sydney to earn extra money to pay tax, and then to pay costly car repairs, etc. etc. In between, every couple of months, he'd spend a weekend on the Coast with his wife and children. Needless to add, he was deeply involved and living with, another woman in Sydney the whole time. It finally came out. Divorce and much suffering followed

It might not happen in your case, if you and the children remain behind. But there are equal odds that it might. Are you prepared to risk it ? Life isn't a movie. There are some very attractive women in Australia. And lots of men claim they're unmarried. Many women don't care if they are, anyway.

The family which stays together has a better chance of remaining together

Thats the spirit! Just when the poor lady has more than enough to think about. You are giving her worse case scenarios! Its Like someone going on their hols of a life time and you tell them how many areoplanes crashed over the last few years.
Lets all hope she gets lucky and sells the house!

I can tell you of a scenario where renting is not an option. When your house is worth say £300,000 and rents for say £840.00 per month which is 3.5% and your mortgage repayments are over 5% on a 90% Mortgage.

Hi Emma

Over a year ago we were in the exact same space as you were - we needed to sell the house to come over here. We went against the advice of our estate agent and put our house on at the price we felt was right - no viewings - as soon as we dropped it to the price the estate agent said we had quite a few viewings and were counting our blessings as it was when the market was at it's lowest! I would say to you and you have probably already thought of this but what is the lowest you can go to so when you receive an offer you know what you can accept. Our offer was below the asking price and below our minimum but we negotiated up and got a price we were comfortable with However we have come here with less money than we had ever wanted to and don't have enough for a deposit on a house and will be renting for years but that is a decision we were happy with in order to have a new life!

As for your OH leaving before you to start work - we done this as well. OH came over 6 weeks before us and I am not going to lie to you it is tough being the one stuck in the UK and especially with the kids (I have one) however it proved a good decision for us. OH was able to spend time concentrating on his new job without worrying about how we were settling in, finding schools and work etc It also meant that he built a strong network of friends before we came out as he could go out when he wanted as no children!!! This meant when we came over the foundations so to speak were already there - if your marriage is strong it will survive the distance and he will be building the network before you get out!

I hope this helps - I am not trying to put a shiny picture on this just letting you know that it can work it depends what attitude you approach it with - all the way through this process I have approached it without a rose tinted prospective. We always knew it was going to be tough and somedays it can be but if you are practical and accept that it still life, you have bills to pay, work to do and the normal day to day life still goes on you will be fine!

Mmm right, so running two households, one for husband in Australia and one for rest of family in UK is better than making up a difference in mortgage payments versus rental income on UK property?

There are sometimes ways to reduce mortgage payments temporarily if need be too. Even if husband lived in a YMCA in Australia and somehow managed to live more cheaply than the difference between Uk mortgage and rental, there is an emotional price that needs to be factored in.

Hey Emma ....

Really feel for you at the moment - so much to go through and decisions to make! I certainly won't judge you, or your decisions one way or another. The one thing I will say is that house selling can put a terrible strain on things. I think you may remember my situation with house-selling - initially on the market in February - we are now under offer for the third (!!!) time. Things have shifted and changed so much for us... The only advice I would dare to give ... is think things through very carefully, conjure up those worse-case scenarios and work out how you would deal with them. Only you can know whether you can cope if your OH goes ahead without you. If you haven't already, definitely think about changing estate agents if you are in a position to do so, this has helped many people I know. Good luck, think hard and keep me in touch with how you go??

Who said anything about running two houses?
You said you could not think of a scenario and i gave you one! Simple as.
I said nothing about running two houses. All houses sell if they are priced correctly for the market. As we all know houses are only worth what someone is willing and able to pay for it.
When people go on saying thier houses wont sell it is just a fact that they wont sell for the price they were before the crash or a figure the vendor has decided upon. The market place dictates the price of anything.

Err Emma did? And my comments were in the context of Emma's situation, I assumed yours were too. Emma has said she needs to stay behind until their house is sold as renting is not an option, thus they would be running two houses.