Selling my house woes

Snap

Selling a house is a proper pain in the arse. People seem to go mental when it comes to buying and selling property. Most people have no idea about negotiation and are not used to dealing with vast sums of money. Couple that with the disruption and worry (cos its your home after all) and it is no wonder it's tricky.

We sold our house last year, and whilst it didn't take long at all, we were sick of viewings after a very short amount of time. Daytrippers and time wasters. The house was on a main road - yet viewers would say, oh the road is a bit noisy. Basically, citing reasons not to buy that were perfectly obvious from the selling info. Mental.

We hated the whole process. Constantly keeping things clean and tidy, regular home invasion, continually answering stupid questions and listening to people taking crap when you know deep down they have no intention of making an offer. Bog off out of my house please.

Regarding doing repairs and tarting up to sell a place. IMO that decision depends on how competitive your local market is, and how appealing the location of your house is. IF there is competition, then I think it's worth doing some cheap bland fettling so that people don't get put off by something that might look needs repairing.

Price - stick to your guns based on the local estate agent's opinion. they will price it to sell, after all its in their interest.

GuyR

It always baffles me when people ignore the laws of supply and demand. I’m sure there is a parallel universe where buyers will pay more than they are prepared to because the seller really, really would like a bit more or thinks it is “worth” more based on their cherry picking of overpriced non-sold comparable online. In real life that is not what happens. 
Common sense dictates that you should always keep a property you are selling clean and clutter free. Tidy up mouldy grouting, avoid vulgar decorative choices and avoid bad smells. Show the property at the most advantageous time of day. Make the price attractive?

Snap

@GuyR agree. We did a bit of decorating, especially in one room which was a bad colour. That took me a few days, but I judged it was a potential deal breaker really as it was a tip.

Touched up the rest, filled any cracks, repaired anything obvious. Don't see why you wouldn't unless you have a stunning house in an enviable location.

freakboy1610

I've moved 5 times in the last 14 years so I've seen both sides of the story multiple times. One thing I have learned is to always flush the loo before the potential buyer arrives! Good luck with the sale.

DrJazzTap

No offence to anyone who is one, but estate agents are as bad as we were led to believe. I get sales, it's fluffing things up, but not just flat out bullshit or hiding the truth from people. We had two bad experiences on our first house (two seperate properties) all due to estate agents lying or hiding facts.

One was being told that we could block off a pathway in the a garden if it hasn't been used in a year (by two seperate agencies no less), and the second was a major structural fault with a house. Our bank wouldn't offer a mortgage on it.

When I rung up to pull out of the sale on the second house I was told by the slimey estate agent "Ah yeah...I was expecting this call. It is a problem we are aware of"

We were then offered five grand off the house and an assurance that the work required to fix the structural problem would be done by the seller. Fuck that moved on.

I feel for you, I never want to go through the bullshit of looking for another house. The one thing I learnt was to go with a small independent agent, the chain agencies are terrible in the south west.

pmbomb

- broke my rule of not posting in OT. deleted. good luck with your move OP.

thermionic

Spoke with the estate agent today, she was thanking me for emailing her 22 banal answers yesterday and we had a laugh about it. Turns out she’d filtered out about ten of his dumbest questions telling him to google them! He wanted to know how often the No 30 bus went from the bus stop round the corner, amongst other things. Jesus wept.

Anyway, he’s apparently made an appointment for a second viewing next week and will bring a surveyor along. He has all the hallmarks of the worst kind of timewaster, so I’m not getting too optimistic!

Iamnobody

thermionic said:

Most of the people who are interested are developers who want to make drastic changes like convert it to two flats to rent. I've seen a few houses that have been bought by developers to sell on and they all look the same - white walls, grey carpets, bare bones kitchen etc. These do seem to appeal to first time buyers though. I have considered doing something like this, but I could do without the hassle and extra expense of finding somewhere to rent for six months while the work is going on.

The fact your property is appealing to investors means you’ll never get a good price for it. You can easily do a basic bathroom and kitchen renovation for sub £10k. And it won’t take 6 months and you won’t need to move out and rent. 

If you don’t sell soon it’s probably worth considering doing the refurb. The fact you can’t be arsed to do it probably means half the prospective buyers can’t as well so you’re narrowing down the market.

We we had a two storey extension built and partial garage conversion last winter including a new kitchen and bathroom and that only took 3 months! We didn’t move out for one day and we managed as a famiy of 4 inc a two year old and six year old.

LuttiS

We found out that the seller and the estate agent were friends when we bought.. were told that the valuation survey was enough and didn't need to bother with anything more (ha!)

We did bother, and so many faults turned up.. 

So we wanted to get quotes on the work required (new roof, among others). Agents recommended some building contractors who would quote. Turned out hard to get people to quote on a property you don't own yet..  so went with recommended people. At that point we had no reason not to trust agents, major chain so in theory wouldn't associate with bad contractors, right? Wrong. They quoted really, really low for the work. We didn't know any better at that point so we went ahead..

Agents called up before we had been given official quote saying that the owner had called and wanted to know what was going on.. whether she should put back on the market, agent also gave a long explanation of why the seller was not going to budge on price. It's a take it or leave it situation. 

Wasn't having that, so put in a lower offer which after a bit of haggling was accepted. 

After getting the house, got more quotes in.. turned out the work would actually cost a hell of a lot more..  
We still got a good deal in the end, and even with work doing it won't quite hit the ceiling price form the area but still, bastard agents...
 

GuyR

It's the lying seller, the flaky buyer, the bastard agent (all bastards) They're all the same.
It's never us, our self centred unreasonable expectations, our lack of preparation, our dinner-party gleaned "expertise" or our utter absence of empathy that is the problem. 
I wonder how many of us have changed their mind about a property purchase, without ever considering recompense to the other parties whose time & money has been wasted.

doogz84

DrJazzTap said:

No offence to anyone who is one, but estate agents are as bad as we were led to believe. I get sales, it's fluffing things up, but not just flat out bullshit or hiding the truth from people. 

Truth.

57Deluxe

A few years ago I was selling privately via the web (when it wasn't a thing then) and had a couple where the young girl was enraptured over the house and kept visiting with all sorts of friends/family as she was sooo excited. They agreed the asking price and were desperate for agreement that I would not sell it to someone else whilst thy got organised.

Then came the building survey which was OK - Except for a sub clause that stated that in the the surveyor's opinion, that the house was at the top of the price point for properties of this ilk in the area BUT should the market fall then it would be more expensive...???

On this skewed criteria they pulled out??

Surely it is not the position of a surveyor to make these crass statements in a buildings survey?

strtdv

Probably depends on who paid for the survey. If I was the buyer I'd want to know that information. I wouldn't pull out of the sale necessarily but I would probably drop my offer a bit. 
If it's through the bank then the only comment it should make is whether the mortgageable value is appropriate

PolarityMan

GuyR said:

It's the lying seller, the flaky buyer, the bastard agent (all bastards) They're all the same.
It's never us, our self centred unreasonable expectations, our lack of preparation, our dinner-party gleaned "expertise" or our utter absence of empathy that is the problem. 
I wonder how many of us have changed their mind about a property purchase, without ever considering recompense to the other parties whose time & money has been wasted.

Well in my case Ive never pulled out of a sale but have seen the bastard agent thing (agent lying to both parties for no reason, went round the end of him and closed out immediately), the sellers who suddenly decide theyre not moving and the buyers who withdraw an offer for no reason.

Is it cold up there on your high horse?

GuyR

PolarityMan said:

GuyR said:

It's the lying seller, the flaky buyer, the bastard agent (all bastards) They're all the same.
It's never us, our self centred unreasonable expectations, our lack of preparation, our dinner-party gleaned "expertise" or our utter absence of empathy that is the problem. 
I wonder how many of us have changed their mind about a property purchase, without ever considering recompense to the other parties whose time & money has been wasted.

Well in my case Ive never pulled out of a sale but have seen the bastard agent thing (agent lying to both parties for no reason, went round the end of him and closed out immediately), the sellers who suddenly decide theyre not moving and the buyers who withdraw an offer for no reason.

Is it cold up there on your high horse?

I’m the one saying we’re all part of the problem in that we don’t consider the position of other parties, while you are without blame.

thermionic

Well now, it gets worse...

When my buyer pulled out, I told estate agents B who I was buying off, immediately. I asked what the position of the vendor was, whether they were in a chain, if they were going to put their house back on the market etc. Nobody could give me a straight answer, but several phone calls later they said the vendor would be happier if estate agents B marketed it as well, the implication being they were happy to wait for a while in the hope of my house getting a quick sale. Fine, so now I have two estate agents A and B doing viewings, loads of people tramping through over the last four weeks.

I accepted a hideously low but just about affordable offer on Thursday, through estate agent B. Cash buyer so things could proceed quickly. I tell estate agents A and they cancel the viewings they had planned. Estate agent B then calls their branch where I was buying to let them know that things could get going again. They just called me now - the vendor had put the house back on the market, had accepted an offer and their sale was proceeding... BUT THEY DIDN’T BOTHER TELLING ME.

I hate estate agents.

VimFuego

ah yes, the whole estate agent not keeping you informed. We had our offer accepted by the seller, and we were proceeding normally when out of the blue I got a call from the sellers agent asking that as the house was back in the market were we still interested. I said to her that I wasn't actually aware that the seller had taken it off the market, for which she apologised. I then asked what did she actually do, cos she was shit at the communication thing. 

joneve

thermionic said:

Well now, it gets worse...

When my buyer pulled out, I told estate agents B who I was buying off, immediately. I asked what the position of the vendor was, whether they were in a chain, if they were going to put their house back on the market etc. Nobody could give me a straight answer, but several phone calls later they said the vendor would be happier if estate agents B marketed it as well, the implication being they were happy to wait for a while in the hope of my house getting a quick sale. Fine, so now I have two estate agents A and B doing viewings, loads of people tramping through over the last four weeks.

I accepted a hideously low but just about affordable offer on Thursday, through estate agent B. Cash buyer so things could proceed quickly. I tell estate agents A and they cancel the viewings they had planned. Estate agent B then calls their branch where I was buying to let them know that things could get going again. They just called me now - the vendor had put the house back on the market, had accepted an offer and their sale was proceeding... BUT THEY DIDN’T BOTHER TELLING ME.

I hate estate agents.

what the fuck? cunts. 

Ours have been pretty transparent in comparison.

There's a problem with our buyer, in that he was given mis-information about the stamp duty he'd need to pay, as he currently has a buytolet, so would need to pay the stamp duty on that apparently (we're in a similar situation but something to do with the timing of us living in our current dwelling (which isn't our rental property) and selling means we don't get penalised for it)....so he's now going to put his buy to let on the market so he can rid himself of that - but already has two interested parties. Estate agent has kept us in the loop in all of this. We must be very lucky to deal with ones who aren't completely incompetent. 

So now the chain is a bit more complex, but still hopeful we can get stuff sorted relatively quickly as our mortgage payments on our current property shoot up by £250 from next month. What fun. 

thomasross20

I also wouldn't spend money doing the place up. Sheena did that on her flat and the cost wasn't reflected and apparently they've ripped half the stuff out to do it their own way. So the real winners there are the furnishing / decorator companies!

strtdv

There are certain things that I'd consider worth doing on a house you're selling. Paint over any particularly strong colours with a neutral colour, give the bathrooms a freshen up with some bathroom paint and a bleach based grout cleaner, change the strips on the end of the shower and redo any off colour silicone sealant. Tidy up the garden, put a couple of nice plants on the doorstep to create a good impression. Whole lot shouldn't cost more than about £200 but will make the house instantly more appealing