OT: Where's the House Doctor when you need her?

[Hugo Nebula]

I know this is OT, but there are people in this group with experience in these matters.

I have a house in Bath which I need to sell. The reason I need to sell is because I now work (and live) in Manchester.

The house itself is a 7-year old terraced house in good condition

. It's now completely empty apart from the carpets. It's been on sale with a sole agent for four months, with only one offer, since withdrawn. The agent is suggesting I lower the price by £5,000.

I'd appreciate some advice:

-I could put it on with another agent. If I were, how much extra commission do they charge? Do both agents charge if the house is sold, or is it winner takes all?

-Do I lower the price?

-As a last resort, I could rent it out, but how feasible is that from

200 miles away?

[Harvey Van Sickle]

On 30 May 2005, Hugo Nebula wrote

The last time I sold/bought a house (1995), after the "sole commission period" that you originally signed up for everything was fairly negotiable. (It depends how many agents have how many of the same type of property on their books, and how badly they want another one to sell.)

A £5,000 drop frankly doesn't sound a hell of a lot on a 160,000 property -- the market's generally a bit quiet these days. I guess the main question there is whether a £5,000 drop is a make-or-break hit for you: do you have to squeeze every last pound out of it, or are you making enough on it to take the hit?

Also, has the agent received any real offers in the range of 5K less, or is he just trying to keep it on his books?

Depends entirely on the rental market in Bath, but it sounds like a pain to me.

[Owain]

Check both your existing and new agents' contracts *very* carefully.

If you are desperate to sell, but depending on 'price elasticity of demand' this might not actually sell it much more quickly.

Perfectly feasable; many people rent their houses while they're the other side of the world. You need a good letting agent though, who will actively manage the property, rather than an estate agent who just finds tenants. They will charge for this service, and expect any repairs to be done by professionals, so you may find your rental income only just covers any mortgage (which may go up as you will need a letting mortgage rather than an owner-occupier one).

If you feel the property sale market is temporarily depressed and the rental market *for your property* is good, renting could be a good way of holding on to the property until the capital value increases. Bear in mind it will need to be redecorated for selling, so this is only worth doing if you are likely to be able to keep it on the rental market for say 3 years. You may also have to pay capital gains tax when you come to sell it, as you will lose the main residence exemption.

Owain

[Chris Bacon]

Seems on the dear side. If you have not already reduced the price, then I should think that you should drop it by £10,000 (just over

6%) to a psychologically-important figure. I recently sold a property with an initial asking price of £155,000 for £140,000. Things are not well in "the market", and IMO are unlikely to improve for some time.

Ask your estate agent or review your sales contract - you will probably find that you're locked in for 8 weeks. If you go multi- agent, there will be a certain amount of hand-rubbing by the agents, as they will receive increased commission. You chould be able to haggle and get 2% for multi-, 1.25% for single agency deals. Agents in these conditions will try to get your business. The squeeze is upon them, too.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Something I noticed as a buyer is that multi-agents are more keen on selling it over the other agent than they are doing the right thing for you. They gave me information of a nature which initially surprised me given they are supposed to be acting for the vendor, until I realised they were keen to sell it instead of the other agent. Admittedly this is a long while back now.

[Uno Hoo!]

"Hugo Nebula" wrote in message news: [e-mail]...

I have been trying to sell my mother-in-law's house since she died at the end of June last year. I had widely different valuations from different estate agents but chose a 'mid-point'. In nine months we didn't have a single viewing. We reduced the price from £117k to £101k and had an offer of £97k which subsequently fell through because the buyer had CCJ's recorded against him and couldn't get a mortgage. We reduced the selling price to £97,950 and immediately had significant interest shown. We had an offer for the full asking price and to date everything seems to be going well. It seems to me that the major problem is that house prices have exceeded the ability of first-time-buyers to obtain a sufficiently large mortgage. If there is no-one at the bottom of the chain then things stagnate higher up. Too many sellers are hanging on to unrealistically high prices because they fail to recognise this. If no-one is even coming to look at a property then clearly they are put off by the price. Reduce it sufficiently and the interest will be there. Personally I do not reckon it's worth changing estate agents - they are all as bad as one another! They are all in it for their own benefit, not yours, and will engage in all sorts of dirty tricks behind your back if they consider their own interests are at risk. The only thing I would say is that you should ensure that your agent is part of the 'Right-Move' network which seems to be the most widely used property search site.

Kev

[Bob Mannix]

Quite. It's a "free" (ish) market (for good or bad), houses are only "worth" what people will pay for them. There's no such thing as a house that won't sell, it's just overpriced (assuming you don't change it).

[David Lang]

Hugo

1) Paint everything beige.

2) Add pointless small nick nacks from Ikea.

3) Replace the carpets with sisal.

Seems to work every week for the house doctor..............

Dave

[Phil]

You forgot the obvious

Declutter the house by filling a 40ft container with everything essential to everyday living.

[Sue Begg]

It was amusing the other night when the hopeful seller was told that the baby's cot had to go. It was seemingly allowed back into the house at bedtime and had to be removed for viewings. I wonder what people viewing the house thought when the baby was mentioned and there was no sign of its existence at all :-)) My babies used to fill most of a 3 bed semi with their clutter

[Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)]

Quite right. It is distracting to viewers. They are there to view the house, not examine your life and family.

Why would it be mentioned? It's not being sold with the house is it?

They may well be the meaning of life to you, but potential buyers even if interested, should not be distracted from the viewing, if you want to make the sale that is.

[Sue Begg]

In message , "Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)" writes

Surely if they are there to buy the house not the contents then the said contents should be ignored (I do realise that there are people are unable to see past the decor - as someone who has just bought a derelict farm to renovate I find it hard to imagine such lack of vision)

The woman did mention the baby - it was the reason they were selling the house.

I never had a problem selling a house, but I was usually selling family homes to families

[Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)]

Exactly. That's why the house is "dressed" for show, not for practicality, including the removal of offspring and animals.

I'm sure she did. Some people can't help themselves, but it is silly to distract a purchaser from their viewing. That's why the advice is to declutter all personal items that viewers may find of interest.

[Uno Hoo!]

Couldn't agree more Sue. Ann Maurice and her ilk have a lot to answer for giving all buyers the idea that every house they view should look like a show-house. Buyers should not have to be molly-coddled like this. Yes, your house for sale should be neat, clean and tidy. No, it should not have to be de-personalised and sanitised.

Kev

[Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)]

That would be great in an ideal world. Sadly, the typical buyer has no imagination and so the "stage" has to be set. This is so that they can imagine themselves living there. Personal clutter dilutes this effect.

[Sam Nelson]

There's a happy medium to be struck, I think. You want to get the place to the (decorative, kitchen, bathroom) point where, when buyers see your house, they _don't_ think `there's bound to be somewhere that'll be cheaper than this to sort out' and leave to look for it. Once you've done that, while it's on sale, it's never more than about half an hour from being fit-to-be-viewed (from the PoV of, oh, kids' bedroom tidiness, washing-up, magazines all over living room, etc) so that if the estate agent wants to call or send someone, you can tell them `give me half an hour' and get on with it.

Home-staging, `meers', and `deluded paint' are for the brittle-sale world of the stupid buyer with more money than sense, and no house I'm ever likely to live in is going to sell to one of them---unfortunately.

[Sue Begg]

In message , Sam Nelson writes

LOL Actually the house we are putting on the market at the moment is almost one of them. We had a fire and it was gutted. The refitting has taken over a year but it is now done, everything new complete with magnolia paint, cream carpets throughout and is absolutely not the same house that we lived in (Complete with kids, grandkids, cats and dogs !!)