Robin (The Gadget family)

We've had one viewing in 3 weeks and I wonder how the market is in other areas.

We need to sell to realise the capital for a house in Canada so can't afford to rent it out.

We are in Tolworth, (nr Surbiton-but-not!) Surrey.

Where are you selling your house? - What county?

How have your viewings been? - How many?

Have you dropped your price?

How long before you sold?

How long before you dropped your asking price?

......And any other info you'd like to share about selling

Allie73

We haven't put our house up for sale, but I wanted to wish you luck. We've had 4 valuations done and are hoping to put it up for sale after the landing trip later this month. I'm dreading it but it's a necessary evil. We've decided on an asking price and that we'll lower it after 4 weeks if there hasn't been much interest. Fingers crossed it doesn't take too long.

engineer80

We are absolutely dreading selling our house right now We live in Scotland just outside Glasgow and plan to put it on the market after having meds. To say the market is slow here is an understatement. A friend of mine who lives quite close to us had her flat on the market for over a year now without a single viewing. She thinks it's because it's more of a first-time buyers property though and banks are not really lending without hefty deposits. We're hoping that since ours is a house big enough for a second-time buyer with a family, it'll do a bit better. There's already two houses in our area that have sold within 4 months of being put up for sale so

I wish you lots of luck for a speedy sale of your home. I think being in Surrey will help because it is within commuting distance of London.

Kaye5

Hi Robin

We put our house on the market late October 2010, had 2 offers in January and exchanged contracts last week.

(We decided to sell regardless of whether we get to Canada or not. It's taking so long that we don't want to have to go through the lengthy process of selling when we finally get a decision (good or bad) - we will sell anyway.)

We didn't drop our asking price at all - we got a good final offer. As we marketed early, we wouldn't have dropped for a long time. If we'd put it on the market after getting a decision on immigration, I'd have dropped the price if it wasn't selling.

We sold with an online estate agent - charged much less than an office based one - thought it was worth a shot as we weren't in a rush. I've sold a lot of houses, and I didn't notice any difference in number of viewings - 4 or 5 at the start, tailed off towards Christmas, then 4 or 5 after - with more serious viewers January. You have to of course be available to show viewers round (you can't leave the keys with the estate agent) but we didn't have a problem with that, even though we both work.

We're in North London/Herts borders, so commutable to London like you. Sales where we are seem to be ok for houses of our sort (3 / 4 bed semis), as we are quite cheap for a London suburb - that may be a factor as people struggle to get finance for more expensive houses (pure speculation, of course). Our house is nicely decorated, but no show house. We started to work on it from the top down, so it still needs work doing, and is on a busy road and bus route - so it has its faults, yet still had an offer within 3 months (and that was including Christmas) which I think in this market is pretty good.

I wouldn't panic at the 3 week stage, nor reduce to a silly price yet (providing you've marketed it at a sensible one)! Probably not mention to viewers that you are emigrating or they may try to take advantage of perceived desperation...! Not sure what your timescale is for selling, but if no immediate rush, I'd not be worried for 3 months.

You've done all the usual marketing "tricks" I guess? PM me if you want to chat about house selling (a dubious asset, but I have sold so many houses, I'm probably better than an estate agent... )

x

rubberduckofdeath

Hi Robin,

We put our house on the market 6 weeks ago in Guildford, Surrey. We've had about 15-20 viewings. One 2nd viewing. Our price is £375k for a 4 bed house. We're going to drop the price to a touch under £350k very soon as we believe the property is overpriced. In our area, the market seems reasonable if you have a decent property at a realistic price.

Good luck!

Steveh27wp

Hi. We are in the final stages of selling our property in Derbyshire....offer accepted, awaiting contract. We used one of our local high-street agencies. We put the house on the market in August (2010). We had NO viewings for a month or two. We had already established a new home in Canada....and were living there. We tried to be extremely proactive regarding the sale.....we were in very regular (telephone) contact with the agency. We tweaked the brochure details pretty regularly and in November we reduced the price in line with our agency's suggestion......many reports in the press about dropping house values!!

At last we started to get some interest...there were several viewings, but no offers. After EVERY viewing, we contacted the agent and sought a debrief...did they like the house, location, presentation etc etc. In general the responses from the viewers were positive. Still no offer! On January 13th we reduced the price. Again this was in line with advice from the agents. At this point the "floodgates" opened.....we had a large number of viewing and several offers. We finally accepted an offer, and as previously stated we are well on our way to the contract stage.

Once the contract is signed and exchanged, I shall return to the UK to remove the remainder of my personal effects.

Good luck with your sale,
Steve

Kaye5

I'd agree with Rubberduck and Steve - a realistic price is essential. There are houses near us similar to ours gone on with crazy prices. Dropped their prices after a few weeks to similar to ours and sold.

Be careful with estate agents who over-value to get the work and then tell you to drop the price (to what you probably would have marketed it at in the first place...)

We didn't actually drop our price, but we did manipulate it slightly. We put it on at £365k anticipating getting £355k - £360k. Changed it to "offers over £350k" and it brought in more viewers and we got the price we were aiming for. All to do with the bands on Rightmove being wider when you get above £300k - (£25k bands - under that the bands are £10k). So dropping ours into the £350k bracket marketed it a bit wider without actually reducing the price. Worth a thought.

The Normans

Hi
We are in Scotland just outside Glasgow. We put our house on the market in October 2010. It's a 3 bedroom mid terrace with large garden in walk in condition. Unfortunately the market here is very very slow. We have had 4 viewings so far and it's on the market at £10k below market price. Others in the area have started drastically slashing their prices ina n effort to sell but it hasn't really made much of a difference in my area as they are still on the market. We are just not willing to sell our house at a loss right now so we have had to organise to rent it out for 2 years and then hopefully the market will have picked up and we can try to sell again. It's not ideal but renting for 2 years in Canada will make our own home all the more sweeter when we finally can buy it.
Good luck to all of you who are selling.

Piff Poff

If it's any comfort, we have had a house on the market here for coming upto a year, only 6 or 7 viewings and certainly no sign of an offer and some of those viewings were just the realtors nosing at the house to tell their potential clients about it

Oh well, because of where it is we knew it would be a slow one

Robin (The Gadget family)

Hey Kaye, thanks for the info there, as for marketing 'tricks'.......well we are in the process of tweaking by painting and tidying the garden and are also having a major declutter which will take a long time because we are so cluttered! I am trying to keep the place tidy......though sorting just seems to make the space more cluttered at the moment...

Ours in on the market for £342,500 and is a 3 bed family home & loft, with a couple of extra rooms, one being my office - the old kitchen on the ground floor at the front, and the other being a sort of brick conservatory extension at the back. We also have a 19' x14' garage with work bench and inspection pit and a large loft separate from the house.

Our house is not the norm for the area and is painted bright yellow so is difficult for the agents to price.

We are on with 2 agents at 1.2%.....we'll keep waiting but I really don't want our friend who's house we are buying in Canada to decide to go on the market because we are taking so long......

Robin (The Gadget family)

I'd like to lower but am holding off because once we have lowered then if there's no interest then...what's the next step. i think I'm just being impatient!

Thank you, though our agents said that people were complaining that because the station was 25 mins walk away they weren't interested, even though the bus stop is one minute to walk to and takes 10 minutes to get there. They're obviously not the right people for this house!
Good luck selling yours, maybe now that spring is on it's way people will start to think about getting out and looking at houses!

Wow, quite a few viewings then! Apparently being under the £350 bracket helps, but to be honest.....I really can't believe what the agents say - one of the agents in the office said that we had had 4 viewings during our 5-day absence in Canada......the truth turns out to be one viewing with a 2nd viewing a couple of hours later! good luck on selling yours.


Thanks Steve, It goes to show that the agents don't always get the original pricing right. I do think that we are overpriced but will have to be patient!

Hope things pick up for you. We really can't rent in Canada because we are buying this house on 1.1 acres just two properties away from my brothers properties, (which are 1-2 acre plots next door to eachother). Really don't want to let this opportunity slip away.

By here I assume you mean Red Deer. Property out there seems to take even longer than here to sell if you live outside of towns in the more rural areas.

lcar

Our house is an 1880s 4 bed semi in rural south Wales, half an hour from Cardiff.
I de-cluttered and painted it cream throughout before it went on the market.
We put it on the market last May with a high street estate agent, and had 5 or 6 viewings before September. Then nothing. No phone calls from the estate agent, no progress report. Nothing.
We decided the agency wasn't working hard enough for its money, and took it off their books in December.
We took a month break, and put it back on the market with an online agency in January. After 2 days, we had our first viewing, and they made a (low) offer, which we refused. They upped the offer a couple of days later, and we accepted.
We're hoping to exchange contracts in 2 weeks, and to complete in early April. Not bad for an unsellable house. I would recommend the agency - getanoffer.co.uk. Very proactive, and cheaper than most high street agencies.

Skimom

I'm also busy with decluttering and repainting ready to put the house on the market, though probably not until mid to late May judging by the time it's taking me!

Robin, I well understand your decluttering problems. It's all very well trying to sort stuff out but you do have to put it somewhere. I think I'm just one of those people who has too much "stuff"!! My husband's suggestion is to just bin it all but then I might need something I've just chucked out...

Rubberduck, we are not too far from you, between Guildford and Aldershot (one of my reasons for moving to Canada, lol) and the market does seem to have picked up round here since Christmas. One of our neighbours was on the market for a year at a ridiculously high price...come January they reduced their asking price to a more sensible one and sold within 3 weeks. Hopefully that will happen for us when our time comes

I suppose we could always rent the house out when we go but I'd prefer to just get rid of it and not have the worry of wondering what's going on there while we're so far away. Plus, we need the money to buy in Canada.

Good luck to everyone trying to sell their house - let's hope we all find buyers soon!

Clematis

Hi Robin,
Do you need a hand with the de-cluttering???

Having seen a picture of your gorgeous house, I do not think you should start lowering the price yet. I know that the estate agent said not to paint the house, but have you considered doing it.

I know it would not put me off, but personally I think it might put others off, if they cannot see beyond a colour of paint. You know how narrow minded some people can be.

Just a thought....

johnh009

You are right about changing agencies. I have recently returned to the UK from Canada and am astonished as to how slow the UK estate agents are off the mark compared with their Canadian counterparts. As a cash buyer, I have enquired about numerous properties over the past few months and four agents have even failed to return my calls although the houses are still for sale. In one case, they told me it would take two months to close on an empty house and that is with me having no house to sell. I wonder if the people who are selling these homes really know how hard their agents are working and wonder why their properties are not selling? In another case, an agent insisted that they tried to contact me but no message on my mobile, answering machine, or email. Just excuses or a pack of lies. I believe some agents in the UK work on a salary and others on commission which may explain a lot.