House selling - negotiation advice

[mc2fool]

Not so. Righmove have actual sold prices but they just get them from the land registry...

I'm not talking about individual prices or listings but the Rightmove statistics, Rightmove are very handwavy about how exactly they are calculated, which makes their index rather suspect to me.
This is via 'Moving Home With Charlie' on youtube who is a bit of an industry insider. He sells software into the Estate Agency businesses.

Land Registry figures are often 3 to 12 months behind the market and agents can manipulate the figures by 'forgetting' to register the cheaper properties until the very last minute.

Individual prices are what you need to look at 'cos statistics aren't going to help you compare like for like.

The Land Registry listings show the dates so you can make a judgement about their relevance to the current market and BTW, it's the solicitor/conveyancer that registers the sale with the land registry, not estate agents.

Of course, if your property is particularly unique or bespoke or far from any other similar ones then it's more problematic to determine what a realistic price would be, you can only go by the data available and then guess, which is all estate agents do anyway. In the end the only true test is to put it on the market....

[Dicky99]

You should be able to establish from Rightmove what a realistic price for your property is

Rightmove will tell you nothing useful about sold prices, the only stats they have are asking prices, and even those are heavily slanted because they exclude anything that's been reduced or been on the market for more than a few months.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLpPg54cy_o

You're misquoting me. I said nothing about sold prices. I'm under offer on my property at the moment and months of monitoring Rightmove prices for similar properties in my area gave me a really good handle on what I could hope to achieve.
A good handle on current asking prices provides the aspiration price which I referred to.
Even so most people can throw their hat at the % that properties typically sell at below the asking price so it's nonsense anyway to say that asking prices tell you nothing about sold prices.

[zico]

Many thanks for all your replies and comments. I've discussed with the estate agent and decided to accept the £280k. Estate agent said the next stage is for buyer to provide proof of funds, and said normally remortgaging doesn't delay a sale. She also said that people use "cash offer" indiscriminately, including people who say they need to sell their house to provide the cash!

I first put the house up for sale in April 2023, when the market was very quiet, people staying put after the mini-budget rate rises. I got 3 estate agent valuations, £300, £335, and £350. Generally in this area, semis sell in the £200s, detached bungalows (mine) in the £300s, and larger detached houses in the £400s, so £350 seemed attainable, but there were only 2 viewings last year, so I reduced it to £325 which had absolutely no effect, then took it off in autumn, before putting it back on the market in April. Last year I got a building survey which showed no underlying structural problems, and estimated a selling price of £260. The house is sound, but old-fashioned, so would need rewiring, decoration, and new kitchen and bathroom to suit the buyer's tastes. It has lots of potential to modernise and also extend upstairs, but would take lots of time and money, and I really don't want the hassle of all that.

The house is unusual in that there's a sub-station between house and garage, and a flat-roof extension. It has 4 bedrooms including an upstairs bedroom (it's a former bungalow), with a stream 12 feet below the garden level and views over farmland on the other side. My parents moved there in 1969 and lived there the rest of their lives, and I can remember shovelling cement into the foundations as a teenager, so ideally I would prefer it to go to someone wanting to live in it and enjoy the view, and I also think theat kind of buyers would be more likely to follow through with the sale. My concern about buy-to-let is that the buyer may be considering several properties and will play the various sellers off against each other to get the best cost saving - which for a business person would be rational behaviour - but maybe I'm mistaken and these kind of buyers are more interested in the potential to make it a revenue-generating HMO.

So I'm now reconciled to getting a lower price than I'd hoped for. The pessimist in me is now waiting to be told the remortgage isn't enough to cover the offer,came for some more negotiating!

[zico]

Incidentally, there's a smaller bungalow (just 3-bed) 100 yards further on, but with no back garden, and no view over fields, but modernised inside which was on offer at £335, and has just sold for £310.

[Gerry557]

Zico. Congratulations on your sale.

After reading the fuller story it's fairly obvious why it didn't sell before. What would be your target market? A family. So you need someone with lots of spare cash in addition to the mortgage to do this work. Rewiring, new kitchen and bathrooms plus the decorating. I would expect that to be in the region of £25k done nicely. Even so they would probably want a family room so maybe another £10k knocking walls through if possible. Rates rising also stunted things cooling the market.

I suspect there would be a small number of buyers looking at a project and having the additional cash. Some sort of flipper or builder maybe. I think if you had updated it there would have been more of a market for it. Families could just mortgage the extra cost over a time period and most families don't have the time or skills to do a DIY project. Hopefully your estate agents discussed this with you. Buyers prefere ready to move in properties. It probably also need carpets or new flooring and I expect the double glazing is due to be updated. Being your childhood home means you add addional value to it. Your emotional view isn't experienced by the viewers looking to purchase.

Onto agents, I found the first thing they asked was has anyone else been and then what price did they say. They seemed proud to say they could get more that the last agent. Unfortunately it's the buyers that dictate the price not what an agent thinks, they are just a guide.

The substation would have probably put me off completely.

As for your concerns over a BTL buyer. Don't you think it's the same for anyone. A buyer always wants to pay less and the seller always wants more so it's finding ground that both can accept. Most houses that don't sell quickly are because it's over priced or it's very unloved. I'm sure they have done their sums and for them there is no emotion in decisions. Hopefully there are no surprises in the survey having had your own which had a lower price than being offered.

Usually the latter are the older generation passing on. The floral carpets and peach and advocado bathrooms don't cut it with the house buyers of today.

I hope it moves smoothly and you can move onto something more fun

[Gerry557]

Personally I prefer a doer upper as I can fit my own likes. I looked at a nice house once and said to the agent that I need to budget for a new kitchen. He said it had just been refitted. I said yes but it's bright purple and we don't like it.

We couldn't live with it. Maybe a white one or neutral colour and they might have got a sale.

[mc2fool]

The floral carpets and peach and advocado bathrooms don't cut it with the house buyers of today.

Beh, well no floral carpets or peach in my flat (close to exchange now, fingers crossed...) but it does have magnolia walls and an avocado bathroom suite (the latter original from 1978 when the flat was built), which I figured any buyer was going to replace.

But much to my surprise on my mass-viewings day several of the viewers, pretty much all of which were in their 20s/30s, commented on how much they liked the avocado bathroom ... and the '70s Formica kitchen too! It ain't old fashioned you know, it's retro!

And, indeed, when the offers came in the higher ones repeated that, and within four days I had the luxury of choosing between two offers at 9% more than my OEIO price, and I accepted the one from a young lady in her mid 20s who wrote in her offer that she loved the "retro" aspects of the flat....!

Maybe I'd have got even more if it'd had floral carpets.

[Gerry557]

I take back everything I said.

Off to buy a flower carpet, advocado bathroom, black n white tv in a cabinet and the deal sealer, a chopper bike in the front garden.

[Gerry557]

Still I might tell a few fibs to butter you up into selling to me.

[mc2fool]

I take back everything I said.

Off to buy a flower carpet, advocado bathroom, black n white tv in a cabinet and the deal sealer, a chopper bike in the front garden.

In decluttering I got £30 on eBay for my (still working) 1980s 12 inch B&W TV that's been sitting in the garage for several decades. And £54 for a 1990s 14 inch colour TV VCR combi. £30 for a 1960s Hoover, another £30 for a 1953 Kodak Brownie, another £30 for a 1980s developing drum, £25 for a 1970s imperial socket set and ...

I should have sorted out and decluttered my old junk retro objects yonks ago.

[Mike4]

I take back everything I said.

Off to buy a flower carpet, advocado bathroom, black n white tv in a cabinet and the deal sealer, a chopper bike in the front garden.

Mk1 Raleigh Chopper on ebay right now! £3,000.00

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/176438509108?

[Gerry557]

I take back everything I said.

Off to buy a flower carpet, advocado bathroom, black n white tv in a cabinet and the deal sealer, a chopper bike in the front garden.

Mk1 Raleigh Chopper on ebay right now! £3,000.00

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/176438509108?

A good investment, might out grow the house! As much as I like bikes I cant say I enjoyed riding a chopper. OK for riding circles on the street but a bit useless if you wanted to go uphill or any distance. The position of the gear lever always had me worried

[Howard]

When I sold my father's house there were several offers from developers. The estate agent was optimistic about each one. The conveyancing manager of my solicitors was very experienced and he said "developers never have enough cash".

The problem was addressed by setting a deadline for exchange of contracts. Four weeks was chosen. This indicated if the buyer really did have the wherewithal to purchase. The estate agent wasn't too happy but this quickly weeded out a couple of potential buyers who, despite claiming to have cash, clearly were unable to proceed. The final buyer didn't meet the deadline but was convincing because he paid for a buyer's survey and gave clear indications that his mortgage was progressing.

In selling houses one might have to accept that speed is more important than holding out for the highest price. As an investor one has to accept that it is virtually impossible to purposely sell at the top.

When I bought my current house as a "cash" buyer the seller set a similar deadline for me which was achievable because I had checked a mortgage was available for the amount required and could easily meet his timetable.

So I'd suggest a deadline - you will soon see if the buyer is serious.

regards

Howard