helcat12

I hope this is in the right place, moderators.

We have just accepted an offer on our UK house which is nearly 9% below the original asking price and 6% below the reduced price it was on the market for when the offer was made.

I wondered how much of a reduction people are taking when they sell their UK property in order to emigrate?

I just thought that this information might be useful to others who are thinking of emigrating soon and who are relying on proceeds from their house to fund their move.

MandyStock

We took an offer 5.5% below original asking price. We sold prior to moving over (we won't be there until next Summer), but we were unsure what the market was going to do, so took the offer. I suppose we could have hold out for a bit longer - but just wanted to have a major financial worry out of the way, so we could concentrate on other things.
We were lucky in the situation that we had alternative accommodation.
I suppose it comes down to whether someone is holding out for a profit, or just need to cover their mortgage. Everyone's circumstances will be different. I think at the moment it is just a good feeling to get an offer at all. I believe it is this time of year when the housing market begins to slacken off, as people start to think about Christmas, and will resume looking for houses in the New Year. So you may have got an offer just at the right time.
Good luck with the sale - hope it all goes smoothly for you.

Almost Canadian

Informed buyers will pay what it is worth and not a penny more. Enough said

Tangram

Those percentage drops do not sound bad noting the economic climate ( plus if they knew your situation ). I did the same and had the same done to me back in 2007.

Swings and roundabouts as the cliche goes or business is business.

helcat12

I don't agree at all.
House prices are not now and never have been anything to do with the intrinsic value of a property.

Buyers will pay what they can get away with, depending on the situation they and their prospective seller are in.

Buyers in the UK are being convinced by the media that they are in a strong position by hearing that house prices are going down.
This is in itself driving down prices by encouraging prospective buyers to make ridiculously low offers with a hope they might be accepted.

A spiral is being created as sellers who need to move now (due to job relocation or emigration) take these low offers and this then passes down the chain, with the seller having less to offer on the home they want to buy. So the view that the market is in decline is reinforced and becomes reality.

Our Estate Agent is a very good bloke and has a lot of experience selling successfully in our area and he is shocked at how little buyers are offering as their opening gambit at the moment. He couldn't tell us what to do, of course, but once we had negotiated up a bit and accepted the offer he said he thought we were doing the right thing as the market is "very difficult".

I know of someone who rejected a low offer on their home last year and the buyer refused to improve.
They didn't have another offer for a year.

The aim of my thread was just to try to give other members some idea of what might be the current situation in the reality of house selling by finding out what percentage others are dealing at now, just as a guide.

We have had to revise down what we could expect to achieve to fund our start-up in Canada but luckily we have significant equity and also we are Cat 2 and so have income straight away.
Others who are not in such a good position on equity (and there are many) and who are Cat 1 and have no employment lined up might be able to use our experience to make a better informed judgment whether to take an offer on their property they receive now or look at what other options they might have.

helcat12

I don't think they are too bad, either but it depends on whether your Estate Agent is up to date with things and accurate with their market value assessment.
Obviously an over-ambitious marketing price should lead to a larger percentage drop and may put buyers off from actually viewing the property in the first place.

For instance, a property almost exactly the same build and floor plan area as ours has been on sale in our village for over a year which is an estate sale.
It is in a totally un-modernised condition.
It has a larger garden than ours but no potential for developing the land.
They are asking thirty five thousand pounds more than I have just accepted on my house.

As beneficiaries of the estate, they can wait as long as they like at this price but they won't sell it!
If you want to sell you have to be more realistic.
That is why I thought information about what people are actually accepting at the moment might be a better guide than For Sale prices.

carolyn_vdv

We sold for 3% below asking last year. It was in London and from listing to completion was about 4 months.

It is probably better to look at offer vs fair value, instead of asking price. Our experience is agents want the business and will artificially inflate the value to get your business, we knew what homes were selling for etc and priced accordingly, we could have asked for more but the trade off is you wait longer to get rid of it and ultimately may end up dropping the price anyway.

mrsr0binson

We have just accepted an offer approx. 5.5% below what we were asking. AlmostCanadian, in my mind, does have a good point; a house is only worth what someone is willing to pay. I also agree with you too. Some people were offering us silly money, like £25k below what we were asking. Like I said to Mr. R, you just have to make enough silly offers; before you finally get success (as you say; from someone desperately needing a sale). That then creates a ripple effect throughout the housing market... which benefits the buyers but has a huge impact on the sellers.

We just wanted the property sold, and to be honest we were of the mind that there was no point in being contrary and holding out for a better offer - when we could possibly have ended up paying the same amount we were holding out for, in additional mortgage payments, while we waited for it to happen.

It is a great thread though and interesting to hear that you have had a similar experience. I hope the house sale goes smoothly for you guys..

iaink

But that IS then the market value. If it was worth more, then it would have sold for more. If it was worth less it would have sold for less. Its only actually really worth what it sells for, no matter what the real estate agent may say otherwise or what the seller may wish it would go for.

Realtors seem to think property on my road is worth a lot more than it really is, judging by the number of properties that have been for sale for months at prices that I would consider optimistic even in my wildest dreams.

jimf

We could have sold a couple of years ago at 5% below a reduced asking price. In hindsight I would have taken it but at the time it seemed too risky. Both previous house purchases in the UK were at reduced prices so it works both ways. I remember the first one was in the early nineties and we paid approx 2/3 of what the owner had paid for it at the peak of the 80s boom.

Almost Canadian

I make no comment about the value of your thread to others in the same position and I said nothing about intrinsic value.

What is the intrinsic value of gold, silver, crude oil? Exactly, it has no intrinsic value and is worth only what a buyer is prepared to pay for it and the seller is prepared to accept for it. As I said above, enough said

My realtor may tell me my property is valued at $500,000 and I may get an offer at $450,000, or one at $550,000. Which one represents its value?

helcat12

Worth and market value are not the same thing.
I think the word "worth" has no meaning in the housing market at all.

House prices work on what the buyer and seller are prepared to offer/accept.
This has many factors including personal circumstances which are nothing to do with the actual property at all, such as the equity of the seller, the chain situation of the buyer and the potential need for a mortgage and in our case on this forum, the emigration issue.

This will also make each individual transaction unique because of the combination of factors between buyer and seller which have affected the negotiations and so no one transaction can be used as a guide to whether an offer is fair or reasonable.

Overall trends can be identified with enough examples, though, which is what I hope will happen here.

Thanks for the info on your sale.
I am not sure what the definition of a "fair value" is.
Realistic valuation I think is important and the asking price should be a fair valuation.

You are so right, though that some agents do inflate the valuation above realistic levels to get you hooked.
We didn't know that and assumed agents would value according to the market as most are 'no sale no fee' and it doesn't make sense to do work and not sell as then they get no money!

Initially we chose an estate agent because we thought they had good coverage for marketing and they had good previous reports but they were useless and over-valued our house (with very few houses being on the market in a village setting, we had no idea what our house should be marketed at) and got no viewings.

We later took up with another agent who marketed the house realistically and had a few viewings.

The issue is at the moment that buyers think they can screw the price down. Unless they get a reduction on the price, they aren't interested so it doesn't matter how "fair" your asking price is, they will want a discount.

People have a Sale mentality now. Stick a 10% Off sticker on something and they will be interested but show it at a reasonable price to begin with and they will think it is over-priced.

Time with this agent from initial instruction to offer accepted about three months.

helcat12

None of them.

All they can say is what they think someone might pay for it.

Depends on the person buying as to what they will pay.

Tangram

Can I make a guess..... the one which is offered and then accepted ?

helcat12

which might be more or less than any of these ....