I know where Rawtenstall is. Used to date a guy who lived there...........briefly, v.briefly.

Hi Susan we are in the same boat as you. We have our PR and a formal job offer soon. Our house went on the market late July and had an initial rush of viewings but since the summer hols it appears to have gone stone dead since that nasty sneaky little interest rate rise by the BoE. Apparently all houses in our price range are not selling in our area. I think the fear the BoE will raise rates further has put a lot of people off buying at present. The market gets back to normal levels in the spring and the bank panics and kills the market dead. All the current hype that house sales are booming at the moment are absolute rubbish the e-mails on this group give you a good indication of current market conditions. Spring they were selling well but not at the moment. If you have got a deadline like us then the wait is hell and we may have to resort to other actions.

Paul

Hi, Rawenstall is nice little Lancastrian village, so I'd have thought that housing would go well.

I agree with earlier postings. Take things into your own hands and use the internet estate agents. Try to sell without an agent and lower the price by the percentage the agent would take. Your house will be more competitive on the marketplace and you'll have the same amount of cash in your pocket.

I was reading about a phenomenon where people try to hold on to their house for a higher sum when the market's turned downwards - rather than cutting a small loss they take a bigger one.

Decide at which point you want to reduce the price and make a time line. Don't keep reducing the price often as you'll send out signals that your house is a lemon. Reduce two to three times over 6 months, say (but I'm no housing expert!)

Its a bloody town!!!!

My husband's family live in Rawtenstall so we are there every weekend. When I have been discussing our house sale, they were saying that houses weren't selling too well there. We're in Leigh near Wigan and Bolton BTW.

Not all areas are stale with regard to house sales. We are finding anything up to £125K sells fairly quickly here and anything over the stamp duty threshold seems to hang around a bit longer. September has definitely seen an increase of houses under offer here compared to 2-3 months ago.

I know how you are feeling as we had no interest for weeks on end and we thought that something was wrong with the house, but by lowering a small amount it did the trick.

Don't give up hope it only takes one person to buy.

Mel

Know how you feel. OH landed in December on Chrismas visit and the only thing we are waiting on now is selling the home and I am finding it so depressing. You just feel like you are in limbo, cannt replace any broken items at home, not worth the expense for what might just be a few months of use. Desparately need a new settee, holding back on that until we get to Canada and feeling desperately embarrassed every time someone sits on it and hits the floor

I know they tell you not to sell your house until you have got the green light, but bearing in mind how long it takes it may just be worth selling and renting until all the paperwork is complete.

A bottle of red wine helps for a while, then its two, not quite onto the third A friend of mind was selling her house and moving just along the road. the house had been on the market forever and she was getting desperate so at church one Sunday she said a good prayer and lo and behold the next week they had an offer and moved soon after - perhaps its worth thinking about for tomorrow?

Good Luck.

I remember the last few months before we left, SO MANY things started to pack up on us. The toaster 'popped', so we grilled toast. The hoover gave up the ghost, so borrowed Mum's cronky old spare, The video recorder appeared to lose all knowledge of sound, hubs car started playing up (again) and we ended up paying out on the damn thing, only to flog it 6 weeks later, and I had a good buyer for my washing machine that I didn't want to lose, so we ended up making frequent trips to parents with basketfuls.

So lovely to splash out on brand new stuff when we got here............phew !!!