CanadaJimmy

Sounds like you have plenty of people interested in the house and the price if you are having so many viewings, but once they see it they are not interested?

My suggestion would be to redecorate, maybe get an interior designer in? Though usually it's not rocket science, paint it all magnolia and neutral colours, remove clutter, minimize the amount of furniture etc.

dbd33

Ha! Last evening an agent came and looked at our house with a view to selling it. "You don't have much furniture, rent some. Hang some pictures." he said.

agr

What feedback have your agents relayed from the 100 viewers? One thing that living in North America has taught me is that in UK you pay less and get less. Realtors here ask only " how high?" when you tell them to jump, because they operate as individuals for fat commissions. A good one will do a great job for you.

Hold your agent's feet to the fire. You're paying them to get your house off your hands.

Edited to add: you also have to take their advice on price if you want them to feel the heat.

feelbritish

I feel for you. We rented our house out in UK. We were lucky enough to have another one we sold previously. We chose 2 agencies which were recommended. One finds the tenants (they do bank checks, lease etc) and take 10% of annual rent then the other they recommended as a managing agent. Are great they take 5% of monthly rent. They arrange money to be deposited into our UK bank account, they send docs to accountants, do an inspection every 3 months, arrange insurance renewal, get an inventory done at beginning and end of lease (we each pay for an invetory) and generally we have peace of mind. Why not do this for a year or two and lease something in Canada?

Or as others say, perhaps you are marketing it too high and drop price to sell.

I do think that agencies in UK do stuff all for their money!

Lisahjah

To sell our house we had to part exchange for a cheaper house that we now rent out. The interested buyers couldn't sell their house. We ended up with two interested parties, and we went with the best offer.

ravman007

I check out the housing market in the UK from time to time and I'm shocked at how expensive everything is. How does anyone afford to buy property in the UK these days? First time buyers are truly having a hard time.

A friend of mine had to wait until her grandfather died and she inherited 60,000 pounds, before she could even think about putting a deposit down on a house. She bought a one bedroom house (500 square feet) for 180,000 pounds (in Kent). And that was cheap.

I bought my two houses back in 1994 and paid 33,000 pounds for one and 75,000 pounds for the other. Their prices have sky rocketed since then and I rent them out. Had my 33,000 pound house valued at 210,000 the other month.

Scary.

Good luck and I hope your house sells so you can start your new life.

pacepeter

We were tha same could not sell ours was valued at £180k what we had to do is ask the Halifax to put mortage on hold and reduce it by £10000 per month it sold for £130k in the end my mum an dad have had theirs on sale for 2 yrs lots of viewings their neighbor has had 3 back out of. Here in Calgary it's the opposite a friend offered the asking price the day the house came on the market with no inspection the sellers offered them $10,000 to break the contract as they had an offer $15,000 over the asking price

Hawk13

+2

bats

So what to these viewers say when they see the house, what feedback have you had?

Is the decoration to individual? Too cluttered? Do you have animals?? (cat litter, doggie smells?) Do the agents details describe your house accurately? Are the photos good? Something doesn't fit between the details and the house.

hutchy100

I rent mine out I use a managing agent no.problems at all maybe use one of them, I have insurance against no rent been paid etc

robert_masters

Hi All

Yes we've been in the same boat, tried only for a few months to test the waters and see how the other houses in my area were doing. (had tried previously too).

It was a waste of time, I saw other houses struggling to sell, reducing their prices and nothing moves. I to have just taken the house of the market.

Hubby has been in Edmonton for six months now. So we have decided to keep the house and privately rent to our daughter; once we have our little debts paid off and 5% deposit saved to buy another house in Edmonton. I'm not moving over for antoher 10 months now because of this

It's been hard running two places and to save the $'s but we're so close. I may consider given it one more bash at selling it after Xmas using an internet based company. If not it's not a worry, we're still moving!

It's been a long road!

Could you possibly do the same?

Angela

Zen10

I sympathize. We were kept in the UK for about that length of time because of a house sale and the bottom line is we were asking too much. We slashed the price by a good percentage and sold within a few weeks. Houses are massively over-valued in the UK and most buyers know it by now, so have you looked at cutting the price? Is that possible? At the time we slashed the price we spent a very long time thinking about it but it was the right thing to do, as we can see in retrospect because since we sold it has lost about 35% of its value.

gjack

We landed in Toronto in August 2010 and had our house on the market within weeks of getting back, now two years later we're a week away from exchanging after having signficantly dropped our price and lowering our expectation about immediately being able to buy in Toronto - that's helped us to realise how much we do actually want to make the move - changing Agents is what did it for us in the end, they made it their personal mission to sell our house - Good Luck!