lordlucan

Your help and advice is needed...

I have a house on the Isle of Wight that I no longer live in and have been trying to sell since Dec. To date only 6 viewings and no negative feedback.

The agent contacted me last week and in her words I think we should drop the price to around 200k !!!! Its on for £235k, went on originally at £240k. The agent at the time valued it at £235k and said it will sell quickly !!!!
I did a good deal with the agent at got 1%, the have been marketing the property in the papers etc.

After her email I thought its time to get another agency in. They came round on Sat and the usual bull****, we have six interested people etc etc. Says it should go on to sell at £229,950. I am happy with that price.
Should I change agencys, the new one started off at 1.75% and was an absolute mare just to get down to 1.5%, had to call regional manager etc etc.

My original agent comes back and says they would be happy to go dual agency at the same fees, I suggested this to the new agent who said the rate would then be 2% with no discount available. Near enough 5k to market my house WTF !!

What should I do folks, new agency, dual agency or stick with original agent. Both have offices close so I would like to hope potential buyers would see the property in both windows.

Here is the house, marks for identifying the car parked on the drive !!

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetai...a_n=2&tr_t=buy

The house is chain free, vacant with NHBC etc etc. Just put new carpets in to help the sale, old ones were too dark etc etc.

Your advice is appreciated
Jay

brumdaisy

Hmmm trouble is, its been on the market so long now that people will think either there is something wrong with it or it was overpriced in the firstplace, or both!

You need to get to grips with why it didnt sell in the first place in order to sell it now....that might be stating the obvious but sometimes people just hit panic mode without thinking it through.

6 viewings is crap even though december is a lousy time to try to sell a house. Unless the house was obscenely overpriced in the first place the agents cleary are not marketing it - how many people actually look in estate agents windows these days? Are they advertising it in the paper? Is it on rightmove.co.uk? Have they tried the 'back on the market' strapline?

Chances are, if you negotiate a low rate with the agency, they arent going to give it a hard sell for long...

Have you looked at what else you can get in your area for that price? How does it compare? Is the house unfurnished? I think the people on tv have a point, buyers do seem to have very limited vison so if it doesnt feel like a home...... Are there any other glaring but minor problems that might be putting people off?

How many of the agents in the current company have actually seen the house? Can the one that saw it in the first place remember what it looks like? So you have no neg feedback, do you have any positive, or are the agents not even bothering to get any feedback? Ask one of the existing agents (or one from a different agency) to give you their opinion - its amazing how they wont bother unless you ask!

I dont think whether you have one or two agents is your issue, its having a house that appeals to buyers, priced to reflect the market and actively marketed by the agency.

HTH

Apparition

Try www.aquicksale.co.uk

They offer to buy properties very quickly (hence the name ). But they do purchase at 75% - 90% of the going rate.

House looks fine and location is great according to Google local hybrid.
Yve

King Eric

Have you tried an open house?

Good estate agents who now how to run these days well create a real bidding war. I went to one once and in the end was caught up in a fight with four other people trying to get the place. The house ended up being sold for 15% more than it was up for

King Eric

Also offer the estate agent manager £500.00 in his pocket cash in a brown envelope is he/she sells it. You can then be assured your house goes to the top of the importance list in their teams morning meetings

brumdaisy

yeah bugger my text book advice, just bribe the lazy b@st@rds

Brun

Clio V6

pslewis

Trouble is, you are up against these:-

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetai...a_n=4&tr_t=buy

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetai...a_n=4&tr_t=buy

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetai...a_n=4&tr_t=buy

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetai...a_n=4&tr_t=buy

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetai...a_n=4&tr_t=buy

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetai...a_n=5&tr_t=buy

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/viewdetai...a_n=5&tr_t=buy

Pete

MikeCardiff

iTrader: (2)

TBH, if you've only had 6 viewings in 6 months and no offers. then the house is too expensive - people must be looking at it in the estate agents or paper, and deciding for the price it isnt even worth viewing.

If it was originally £240K and didnt sell, then it wont sell at £230K either - thats less than 5% drop - if £230K is what it is really worth, someone would probably have made an offer around that price when it was up for £240K or £235K.

All estate agents will give a high figure, and tell you they have buyers lined up when they are trying to get your custom.

Thing is, it depends how much you paid, and how desperate you are to sell - dont be greedy for the sake of some imaginary figure you MAY get in 12 months time - a house isnt worth anything unless you can actually find a buyer, so if £210K will get you a quick sale and you arent losing money, then consider that.

fast bloke

Take it off the market for a month, then put it on with different pictures and the new agency. If they are sure they can sell it for 230, tell them you will pay 0.5% for a sale under 230k and 2.0% for a sale over 230k. If they wont accept this then they know they are sh1tting you on the figures

Drunken Bungle Whore

Really feel for you - we struggled to sell most of last year and now (fingers and toes corssed) we're pretty close to exchange.

As above - check what houses have actually sold for here: http://www.nethouseprices.com/

I'd agree with switching agents - one agent becomes stale - and it's amazing how different agents (sometimes even next door to each other) can attract different people.

Don't freak at the rates. If you sold at £230k and paid 1.5% it would cost you £3450 in estate agent fees. If you go multiple agency and pay 2% that wold be £4600 - only £1150 more. We took the decision that for the chance of a quicker sale it was worth the extra and would save us money in the long run -and it did.

Good luck!

lordlucan

Thanks chaps.

Know what you mean Pete, hence the drop to 229k. should make more of a difference now i hope. The house its up against are on a new estate, nice but still an estate !

lordlucan

Agency change it is then !

Dunk

iTrader: (1)

Just changing a blood stained carpet won't erase peoples' memories of the hideous events in your house.............that poor nanny.
YOU MURDERER

D

lordlucan

He he

The Lord is supposed to be lying in the sea just of the island, every time they dredge a body up the local rag jumps on the bandwagon. Personally I think he is in Brazil !

J

Karl 227

Hence no need for the house on the IOW then

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

heloooooo !!

I wont guess what the car is ..cos I know

and where's me invite first !!!

Once I have been , you are welcome to sell it

JoeyDeacon

But according to the press, average houseprices went up by £4K last month so surely it must be underpriced now!!

Have to say we are trying to sell and buy at the moment and I don't think the market is quite as rosy as everybody is making out. Our property has been on the market for 2 months now and we have had 6 viewings and no offers. All we seem to get are timewasters, they are either not on the market yet or they have not sold. It seems where I live not much is selling and everytime I look on rightmove.co.uk I see the same properties month after month. Houses we looked at months ago and would consider buying if we could proceed, are still on the market.

When we first put the place on the market we got 3 valuations and one of those (Big corporate) was £50K more than the other two. I obviously knew they were just trying it on but I see they are actually finding people who believe them and sign up with them. In the long run this is obviously going to be a bad move for them when they can't actually sell anything but it is making an already overpriced (in my opinion) market look absolutely stupid.

I am also getting sent emails every other day now about yet another property that has been reduced in price.

By the way, if you can move that house to Surrey I will rip your arm off as that would cost around £400K where I live.

I also agree that I would take the property off the market for a few weeks, adjust the price slightly and go on the market with another agent. This is exactly what I am going to do once our contract expires.

Obviously I am talking rubbish about house prices as the Daily Mail said so.

Just out of interest what is the isle of wight like, as looking at those prices I could consider taking early retirement there as I would have no mortgage. Sounds preferable to working forever to pay a mortgage on a smaller house here!

davyboy

Where's the garage

MikeCardiff

iTrader: (2)

One thing to consider if you're getting viewings and no offers ( even silly ones ), is that the people buying may not be actual buyers - they could well be sellers who are looking what what else is about ( which is what I would do if I was selling a house and not getting any interest - look at others to see if my house is overpriced compared to others in the area ).

Also, the trick of taking the house off the market and re-advertising - I wouldnt have thought this would make much difference - if someone is looking to buy in your specific area - as a lot of buyers do, then they would have seen the house advertised before with the last agent ( as the poster above points out, looking on rightmove or similar, you'll see the same houses every week ).

Then they see it come up again, a bit cheaper and with a different agent, and it may set them thinking 'whats wrong with this house that nobody can sell it ?'

I think the only way to get a quick sale now is to knock a significant amount off the price, e.g. not just 5% - stop pricing things according to what they were selling for 12 months ago as its not the same market now.

MikeCardiff

iTrader: (2)

Just looked at the OP's ad for the house - agree with davyboy - if I was looking to spend over £200K on a house, I'd expect a garage.

Do like the way one of the selling points the agent lists though is that its close to Argos !!! might work better if selling the sort of house Chavs go for.

Adidas

Fancy swapping it for a 205 Gti in red??

lozgti

Housing market is dead apart from in the eyes of the newspapers/estate agents/mortgage lenders.

We have the same problem with our sale.All the houses we have viewed over the last few months are still up for sale as well.There are a sea of for sale boards up as well.

Stick it in an Auction with a reserve.With the internet available to sellers,estate agents may well have their day.

Clarebabes

I think it's all down to Location, Location, Location! In our street, there are 4 houses with 'sold' signs on them, including ours and it's rare that anything is left on the market for too long in our area.

Depends on your area and if people want to move to it

JoeyDeacon

lozgti, clarebabes where in the country are you from?

I was speaking to some of my wifes friends who are estate agents in Hastings and Worthing and according to them they are making more sales now than they have for a long time.

My experience of most places in Surrey is that very few people can sell and hence the chains are just not happening.

We looked at a place at the weekend which was a 4 bed Semi with no off street parking, near a busy road for £385K. Who in their right mind is going to pay that sort of figure? It also needed decorating throughout after the estate agent promised me it was immaculate. Only reason we went to look at it was because the estate agent called when I was half asleep and I thought it was in a different road to the one it was in! Strangely enough he also failed to mention the parking situation.

It was a youngish couple selling it and I can just see them getting all excited when the agent told them it was worth £385K, planning their next move.

Clarebabes

JD,

We are in Northampton, but right on the west edge and very near the countryside. Our 'village' has about 7 estate agents! So it's a very bouyant and competitive market.

We sold our house for £3K below asking price, but we did put it on the market at the right price - there are other houses very similar to compare with.

Hopefully be exchanging next week or week after. Can't wait as the house we're moving into needs alot of work and I love a challenge! (It's in the same area we are now but a bigger house, so we know it's resaleable).

fatscoobyfella

Our house in Solihull went to the 1st people that viewed it.Guess we were lucky,in fact i will keep my fingers crossed as were close to completion.The house were buying had been on since Nov 05,and isnt everyones cup of tea,so i can see why it has stuck a bit...

Just as an example..My friend is selling his house.Its a 3 bed detached with double car drive,twin receptions,front and rear garden.Nice area with countryside view to front and rear.Saddleworth border..Nice house all round with a small amount of updating needed,although the house is only 8 yrs old,the interior decor wont be to eveyones taste...Anyway..£165,000....8 views but no offers.This is cheap for the area,a 2up 2 down terrace on a street is £ 110,000...
I can only assume the market is very quiet at the moment,in fact i reckon were on the edge of a slump.Prices cant keep climbing like they have over the last 5 years,and all the "analysts" that say 4% growth etc etc,well i think they say it to keep people from panicking in general.Lets have it right,if houses arent selling that a competively priced for that given area,where are these growth figures coming from??

Drunken Bungle Whore

I think a lot of it comes down to what's happening in your area economically. I've recently started having to visit Northampton due to work and you can see a lot of new office parks etc going up. People are keen to move away from the over crowded South East - but they want decent jobs to go to. Places like Northampton are ideally placed - easilly commutable, nice countryside, cheaper prices than the South East, etc.

We're just in the middle of trying to move from Berkshire to Hampshire. The market in Hampshire (Fleet/ Basingstoke area) seems pretty bouyant. We had to move quickly on the decent houses - with some of them being sold between us booking the viewing and actually going along! Lukily we've found a blinder - managed to get £10k off the asking price as we're just about ready to exchange on the sale of our flat (fingers crossed!!!).

Selling the flat was a pain in the **** though - our part of Berkshire is way overpriced and you need to rely on finding someone who really wants to live in the village. It took us over 9 months to find a buyer (buying to rent), they chopped a great chunk off the price and have dawdled along since February - we really hope they drag themselves along to exchange sometime in the next couple of weeks.......