I don't understand this attitude either. Some dutch friends of ours have their house on the market and expect to take 3-5 years to sell it. The agent encouraged them to ask more than they actually want for it by 75,000 euros!! The rational is that no-one will pay the asking price so if you want a certain amount you have to ask more. As they are prepared to stay here a few more years I don't know why they don't just wait and ask a realistic price when they really want to sell.
I have met others who also say that houses will take years to sell so better start now. One couple have had theirs for sale for 2 years and only 2 couples have been to look at it.
Don't think I could stand trying to keep a place immaculate in case someone came round for years and years. It was bad enough for a few weeks when we sold up to move here.

I have a flat on the market at the moment. I was aware there were a few loose tiles in one bathroom so this week I took the opportunity to sort them out.
I've had three viewings whilst they were removed

That's called 's**s law' - but maybe its the answer!

Good luck with your sale

According to a report in Sur a few months ago the average time to sell a house in Málaga province in 4 years 2 months

I have seen houses up for sale with tiny scrappy pieces of paper marked Se Vende and a mobile number, on searching can find no agency involved.
Some places shown on Google Maps Streetwalk as Se Vende are still up for sale - and those piccys taken 3-4 years ago !

In the UK nearly everyone involves the bloodsuckers - oops sorry - estate agents, but in Spain so many just seem to stick a notice up and wait.
At a party last weekend and one of the Spanish has had his house up for sale for 2 years - but it isnt advertised, he is just using word of mouth.

I once heard it said (probably on one of the TV property shows, to which I am addicted - can't you tell?) that if your property is on the market and you are not getting viewings, then it is the asking price that is the problem, whereas if you are getting viewings but no offers, then it is something about the property that is the problem, and I think that's absolutely right. I can understand maybe adding 10% to the price you really want to allow room for negotiation, but overpricing something by €75,000 just means people won't bother to look at it, IMO. Buyers are not daft and can look around on the net to see what similar places are going for.

When I sold my house in the UK prior to moving here, after it had been on the market for 6 months we reduced the asking price by 5%, and got 5 offers in the space of a week, two of them at the revised asking price.

Of course some people still come along and make silly offers even if you have priced the house realistically, but I can't understand why agents don't encourage people to take a more pragmatic view when they are only going to end up with a glut of overpriced property on their books which is not moving, if they don't.

That might not be so daft - when we were looking after viewings for a friend's house which was up for sale, we got more viewings and enquiries from a Se Vende sign with my mobile number on it than we got from the 2 agents it was listed with, combined. It didn't sell within the 6 months it was for sale it had to be taken off the market when he died to allow his sister to get the estate settled and the house transferred into her name.

Obviously that must work better in an urban location than in the campo.

Lynn, as we keep discussing - this is not the UK, it is another country which has different ways of acheiving the same objective.
Far be it for us guiri's to tell them what to do, they are happy with the way they are doing things.

When we were house hunting here we found agents very frustrating. You'd look at their website, pick places you wanted to visit and then they'd take you everywhere but those. Later on we found out that some of the places they advertise aren't even for sale.

Round here people seem to put houses on the market for the winter and then let them in the summer so that no-one can get to see them. That seems mad to me as the houses I'm talking of are most likely to be bought by foreigners who come here on holiday.

If I was trying to pick an estate agent to sell my property I wouldn't know where to start.

We tried a couple of Spanish estate agents when we were property hunting and found it a very frustrating experience. At the time they didn't have websites so you could look beforehand at all the properties listed, we would tell them our requirements and they'd say "ah yes, I have just the house for you". They would take us to see one house per day (which more often than not was completely unsuitable) and as we were only there for a week or two we didn't get much done!

Then we came across a property finding service run by a British couple and sent them details of what we wanted and the area we were interested in. They were great, we saw 10 houses in 2 days with them and found the one we went on to buy. It didn't cost us anything, in those days they made their money by splitting the commission with the estate agents. It wouldn't work these days I suppose, not enough commission to keep the agents going, let alone a third party!

I must say, when we come to want to sell our house I don't think I'd go down the Se Vende sign route, at least until we've tried an agent for a while. I don't fancy a barrage of phone calls and "viewings" from nosy neighbours and passers-by just wanting a look around! Luckily there is one agent who I know has sold at least half a dozen houses in my immediate area in the last 3 years and if she is still around we will go with her. A good track record locally counts for a lot, I think.

We once fell for an agent trailing us around, one that we wanted to see she said she couldn't get the key We cut the viewings short. Have bought most of ours privately but beware that not all those tatty se vende signs indicate private as I have called a few and they turned out to be agents!

Problem is that the agents won't tell you the exact address so you can't do a look around the area on google. We viewed one and it was lovely, garden large. Across the narrow street was an 8 story hotel and every balcony looked into that garden

I was looking at property in Portugal a few years ago. I had gone on the internet a found some likely candidates with different agents.
On viewing we found three of our choices advertised with three agents who had used different photos and descriptions and prices of the same property

We didn't use an agent. We did our own listing with photos and just displayed it in some prominent places. We knew the possible market for our house would come via local knowledge/word of mouth. We priced sensibly, but were prepared to come down quite a lot to get a sale.

We knew that if someone came along who wanted to live in a pueblo blanco up a mountain, they would buy our house.

We had two viewings, (both seen an advert in a bar), the first bought it. We advertised at 126.000 euros and sold for 103.000 and made a small profit

The exact same thing happened to us with one agent - she drove us to see a house and then announced she hadn't got the key. Did they expect us to buy it without seeing inside? The day before she'd taken us to view a house that had a chicken farm next door (inside). Needless to say we didn't bother to ask her to show us any more!

Another agent showed us a house that he said had 3 bedrooms (you could just about squeeze a bed in each but nothing else) and 3 terraces (each of which would just about accommodate a single chair).

When we were looking very few of the local Spanish agents seemed to have websites, but they have dragged themselves into the 21st century now. Probably still have lots on their websites that were sold 3 years ago, though.

I love Spain, but it took me years to fully understand that it is and always will be a foreign country. Once that knowledge sunk in, my life became a lot easier. I try to follow their ways in everything I do.

I'm involved in a car selling and buying exercise at the moment (for myself) and I'm in truly shark infested waters. The lookie-lookie men don't even come close to Spanish car dealers and I'm thinking of going around with a gun.