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Location: Old Leake, UK
Joined: Oct 2006
Posts: 12,080
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Any Suggestions Re House Sale?
I'm absolutely shot of ideas on this one and wondered if any of you had any better ideas.
I've sold my last 3 houses privately but with Clives house, (which we need to sell before we can move on), we can't seem to get it right. I have never had any problems selling a house before, I understand the economic climate isn't helping but we keep seeing ones we fancy and they seem to get snapped up..mind you, they are in Buckinghamshire and we are in Northamptonshire.
We had it valued with 3 agents just over 2 months ago. We marketed it with what we thought was the most dynamic go-getter type chap....big mistake, as soon as it had gone onto their books they didn't return any phone calls, it wasn't advertised on the net and they didn't send us any details to review and sign off. We sacked them after a while and went with another of the ones that had come out originally..they knew why we had sacked the first agent and they were extremely good to start with, got it on the internet, sent us out draft details and advertised it. A month later we still hadn't had any viewings so, on their advice and because we wanted a quick sale, we reduced it by £10k...two weeks later still no viewings and no feedback from the agent. I popped in to see them and the girl we had been dealing with said she would ring the people she'd sent it to and get back to me with some feedback...we waited and waited and heard nothing...Clive was getting very agitated that they were being rude in not returning any of our calls. I phoned them and, in a nice way as always, I advised that Clive wasn't too happy about the lack of communication and could we have a chat about the marketing...I was told they would call me back and still no phone call after 3 days.
Anyway, they agreed to cancel our contract with them as I sent them a long letter explaining that we had lost faith in them, we knew they couldn't just find interested buyers from thin air but that we expected our calls to be returned. I also asked how long we had to keep it on their books. They were very nice about it and sent us a letter back apologising and saying that they would take it back on if we did want to go back with them if the new agents didn't sell it!!
So, 2 weeks ago we marketed it with the 3rd agent...he was very good, didn't stand for any of Clives nonsense when he said he wasn't going to let it go for peanuts
..he can't understand the logic of letting his go cheap and then we put in a low offer for something that we want. They have got it on their website and the brochure is really nice but still no viewings.
I spoke to the agent yesterday to see what he really thought were the reasons for no interest..i.e. is it an ugly house, is it in a dodgy area? etc. He said that is it a lovely place, the ample parking and two garages should make it stand out from the crowd, the price is spot on and the village is a really nice one and he just can't explain why we haven't had any interest. I asked him whether we should reduce the price further to make it more attractive and he said that he doesn't think it will work...he can only summise that people that would be looking at this property at £139,950 would be first time buyers who can't get a mortgage and possibly people that are moving down the ladder but can't get a sale on theirs at the moment.
I've had it on ebay and all the free ads and Daltons Weekly but still no interest.
Can anyone advise where they think we can get some interest?