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The tale of the sale of our old house


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Just pulled up the EPC for my house, I had forgotten that they had doubled the floor area.

If I correct that, but use their figure of 289kWh/mI still get a nonsense figure of nearly £2500 a year.

Cost me about a fifth of that.

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On 16/07/2018 at 10:46, JSHarris said:

I probably have, but he'll be one of hundreds who are just as careless.

 

 

True but what is best for planet earth?

  1. 100 selfbuilders delivering a high spec passive house.
  2. Or 100 wayward EPC assessor rogues getting disbarred on grounds of gross negligence or fraud which then causes 5,000 of their colleagues to smarten up their act.
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2 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Just pulled up the EPC for my house, I had forgotten that they had doubled the floor area.

If I correct that, but use their figure of 289kWh/mI still get a nonsense figure of nearly £2500 a year.

Cost me about a fifth of that.

 

I can't understand how someone that's taken no measurements themselves, has been given a crib sheet with all the parameters that need to be entered into the Stroma RSAP+ app, in the right order, has also been given a floor plan, again with the floor area marked on it, along with all the room dimensions, window sizes etc can get things so badly wrong.  I hate to think how bad it would have been if he'd actually measured anything.

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2 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

 

True but what is best for planet earth?

  1. 100 selfbuilders delivering a high spec passive house.
  2. Or 100 wayward EPC assessor rogues getting disbarred on grounds of gross negligence or fraud which then causes 5,000 of their colleagues to smarten up their act.

 

I don't realistically think there is a hope in hell of getting any of these cowboys to change their ways.  The government have no desire to change things, in fact I've long felt that a fair bit of government legislation has been aimed primarily at creating new jobs in the construction and house sales business. 

 

RdSAP is extremely easy to use, no matter what the application used to do the calculations; so easy that at one time the Energy Saving Trust had an RdSAP calculator on their website, that home owners could use to obtain an EPC (it's been "down for maintenance" for a long time now).  It literally takes no more than ten minutes to enter the data into any RdSAP calculator, and it's simplified to the point where the assessor doesn't even have to work out U values at all.  Most homeowners who know a bit about their own home could fill it in without any real problem.

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On 09/07/2018 at 16:30, JSHarris said:

So, it's on the market for offers in excess of £260k and we shall see what happens next.  It'll take a week or two for the ad to make it's way on to the website, as there are photos to be taken, the EPC to be obtained (that has to be in the ad, apparently) etc.

 

 

I am worried that you could loose possibly £20k on this sale.

 

If your house was valued at £260k 5 years ago when the market was struggling to rebound from the financial crash then it should be worth +10% by now. Your home lies within a healthy economic region bounded by Bath, Bristol, Reading, the M4 and Bournmouth/Southampton to the south. I doubt very much property prices have been flat for the past 5 years.

 

Another concern is this "offers over" nonsense. This is the language of deluded fools and people working around the poorly designed search algorithms of internet property sites. There are long term figures available that show the typical difference between advertised prices and sold prices, I think the national figure is -7%.

 

Your present sales method is going to confuse the market. People will think, "wow that's cheap so what defect is lurking". Some will scroll on because they want a trouble free transaction whereas others with an appetite for risk will start pitching in at -5% and -10% of the asking price. Others will automatically resist the "offers over" barrier and mentally pigeon hole your property as one to watch & wait until the seller accepts market reality.

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16 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

I don't realistically think there is a hope in hell of getting any of these cowboys to change their ways. 

 

 

The fear of future employment on the shelf stacking night shift at Tesco can be persuasive.

 

17 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

The government have no desire to change things, in fact I've long felt that a fair bit of government legislation has been aimed primarily at creating new jobs in the construction and house sales business. 

 

 

This is the true problem, lack of political will. Some of the worst IT projects I have worked on are where the management use subtle hints they want to be deceived. 

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42 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

 

I am worried that you could loose possibly £20k on this sale.

 

If your house was valued at £260k 5 years ago when the market was struggling to rebound from the financial crash then it should be worth +10% by now. Your home lies within a healthy economic region bounded by Bath, Bristol, Reading, the M4 and Bournmouth/Southampton to the south. I doubt very much property prices have been flat for the past 5 years.

 

Another concern is this "offers over" nonsense. This is the language of deluded fools and people working around the poorly designed search algorithms of internet property sites. There are long term figures available that show the typical difference between advertised prices and sold prices, I think the national figure is -7%.

 

Your present sales method is going to confuse the market. People will think, "wow that's cheap so what defect is lurking". Some will scroll on because they want a trouble free transaction whereas others with an appetite for risk will start pitching in at -5% and -10% of the asking price. Others will automatically resist the "offers over" barrier and mentally pigeon hole your property as one to watch & wait until the seller accepts market reality.

 

You may be right, but to be honest if we got £260k for it and had a quick sale then we'd be happy.  That's all we need to get back to top up our savings to the position they were in before we started the build, our outgoings will decrease by over £3k per year once the old house is sold and I'm fortunate enough to be retired on a pension that is a fair bit more than we spend, plus I still do some consultancy work from time to time, and this year has been a very good year, to the point that I'm not going to do any more consultancy work for a while because I don't much like the idea of 40% of it going to the tax man.

 

The valuation we've just had has compared our house to two roughly similar houses in the village.  One was a bit larger, still 3 bedrooms, in a better location in the village, but in need of a fair bit more work than ours, and that sold for £305k earlier this year, one was bigger, 4 bedrooms on a slightly larger plot, in much better internal condition (ours needs new carpets and redecorating in most rooms) and sold for £325k.  Realistically our house needs as a minimum new carpets and redecorating in all the rooms except the kitchen, bathroom, one bedroom and the downstairs WC.  If someone wanted to do a better job it could do with a new kitchen, too.  Adding that lot up comes to around £5k to £15k to bring the house up to the standard of the more expensive 4 bedroom bungalow that sold for £325k.  Taking account of the small garden we have, that probably knocks another £5k off the price.   All told I think the house could fetch as much as £280k, but to get that we would probably have to wait, and frankly we want a quick sale, as we are sick and tired of the old place.

 

The "offers over" tactic was suggested by the agent as a way to optimise the way sites like Rightmove and Zoopla price band searches by buyers.  If we put in an asking price of, say, £290k, expecting to sell for around 7% less, say £270k, then our ad would only get seen by those that had set an upper price point of £290k or above.  By putting the price in as offers over £260k the ad gets seen by anyone that has set their upper price point as £260k or above, and that apparently makes a fairly big difference (the agent did a quick check and reckoned it might get around 30% more views by doing this).

 

Interestingly, having no onward chain isn't really a significant plus point, which surprised me.  Having no chain is only really a plus point for cash buyers, not sellers.  There is also the problem that there are a lot of new builds in this area at around the same price point, albeit not in a village setting and packed a lot closer together.  A new build does have the advantage of the "Help to Buy" scheme, so means a smaller deposit for buyers.  Lender LTVs are still not back up to the high levels they were before the crash, so anyone looking to buy would need a fair bit of equity to start with.  Add in the effect of stamp duty land tax (SDLT), which would be £3k for £260k, or £4k for £280k, and that's a further disincentive for too high a price.  Paying an extra £1k in SDLT for an extra £20k on the house price is a pretty hefty disincentive for some.

 

It has been suggested that the house might appeal as a buy to let, as the market for rental properties of this size and type in this area is buoyant.  We were previously advised that it would make a good rental prospect, with an expected rental income of between £800 and £900 pm, some time ago, when we considered just renting it, rather than selling.  Potential future CGT was the reason we chose not to go down that route, together with the hassle of being a landlord.

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29 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

You may be right, but to be honest if we got £260k for it and had a quick sale then we'd be happy.

 

 

My concern is that the market signals you are giving might thwart even that modest expectation.

 

The modern estate newbuilds nearby are not a concern, they will attract a very different buyer.

 

As to the logic of banded price searches, people will expand their search price band to factor in a typical negotiation margin.

 

Your pricing logic re. carpets is no very logical. New carpets only have value with newbuild move-in packages. The likelihood that newish carpets match the interior design requirements of a viewer is small, the most likely result is that the viewer will think "hmm smells like a new carpet, why did they fit something so hideous just before selling... now they will expect me to pay for their clueless interior design decision".

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You may well be right, although we've moved house loads of times we've only twice before actually done the donkey work, as most of our house moves were part of a relocation package, where my employer's relocation company just gave us a cheque for the agreed price of our old house and all we had to do was buy another house in the new area, the snag being we only had a week to do it each time - only five days leave for buying a house was included in the package, not fun when moving from Cornwall to Scotland, or Scotland to West Sussex!

 

The last house we sold ourselves was in Scotland, back in 1994, and that sold within a week to the first person who came to look at it, plus the Scottish system is much simpler and faster than the system here in England.  This time we are relying very much on the guidance from the agent, but as they don't get paid until we sell, he does have a motive for trying to sell the house quickly, which suits us.

 

Last time we bought a house, Rightmove etc didn't exist, so my only experience of using sites like that is from when we were plot hunting and to be honest I found the way they classified property and land a bit strange and not very user-friendly.  Having said that, I've not looked at any of these sites since 2012, so hopefully they've improved.

 

I'll have a chat with the agent later this week and see what he has to say about putting in a higher asking price.

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6 hours ago, JSHarris said:

 

I can't understand how someone that's taken no measurements themselves, has been given a crib sheet with all the parameters that need to be entered into the Stroma RSAP+ app, in the right order, has also been given a floor plan, again with the floor area marked on it, along with all the room dimensions, window sizes etc can get things so badly wrong.  I hate to think how bad it would have been if he'd actually measured anything.

It could be that if someone "gives them all the information" they think you are trying to pull a fast one and get an EPC better than it really is, so deliberately ignore what you have given them.

 

It you told your MOT tester "the brakes are just fine" would you expect him to not bother testing the brakes?

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37 minutes ago, ProDave said:

It could be that if someone "gives them all the information" they think you are trying to pull a fast one and get an EPC better than it really is, so deliberately ignore what you have given them.

 

It you told your MOT tester "the brakes are just fine" would you expect him to not bother testing the brakes?

 

 

Could be, but the guy didn't even bother to take any measurements himself.  As a minimum he has to know the footprint of the house, the door and window areas, and the external wall area (assuming a cold loft).  He had a laser measure in his hand but never once used it.

 

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OK, time for another update on progress.  We had reasons for holding off on getting the photos taken for the sale advert (like me panicking to get the drive refurbished, clearing out junk, making things look half way presentable, etc) and that happened to coincide with our Purple Bricks chap having a few days off, so the timing, from our point of view, worked perfectly.  We had the joke EPC done, the floor plan done and then yesterday morning the Purple Bricks chap came around to take some photos and double check the descriptions etc.  Given how much of a mess things were in the photos haven't come out too badly (I just love the magic "Estate Agent" camera that makes rooms look massive...).

 

So, around lunchtime today we received the advert details for approval, with the option for us to edit any of the text, add some of our own photos if we wished, etc.  As it happens all looked fine to me, no exaggeration, just accurate descriptive text, so I clicked the "submit" button on our Purple Bricks control panel page.  Within seconds the advert was up on Purple Bricks, Zoopla and RightMove.

 

Within the first hour of the advert going live the control panel was telling me that our ad had been viewed 20 times.  Three hours after the ad going live we had our first viewing request, for Tuesday lunchtime (they wanted to view tomorrow, but I'm getting some fencing put up at the new place), from a potential cash buyer (no mortgage required).  The info that you are fed from the Purple Bricks system is pretty useful, as it tells you a fair bit about the identity and buying status of the potential purchaser, so you can, if you wish, choose to filter out people you think may be time wasters, or that haven't yet put their own house on the market, so are a long way away from being in a position to make an offer.

 

Whilst typing this another viewing request email has just arrived, so it looks as if I may have to do another update later.

 

My initial view is that this method of selling a house is a heck of a lot easier than using a conventional estate agent, with the proviso that you need some time to get to grips with the way the online booking and availability system works (I've already made an error by not having filled in our viewing availability diary - I hadn't realised how important that is to the way the system works.

 

I'll try and keep this thread updated with progress, in the hope that it might shed some light on how selling via an online agency works that might be helpful for others.

 

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52 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

so you can, if you wish, choose to filter out people you think may be time wasters, or that haven't yet put their own house on the market, so are a long way away from being in a position to make an offer.

 

That's an interesting chicken and egg situation. We are going to move; maintaining our house and land is going to get too much in the not too distant future, but it's an idyllic location and we aren't going to move to any old rubbish house (95% of those on the market fit that description!) So we wanted to find a suitable house to buy before we put ours on the market and have run into this issue, estate agents are unwilling to accept an offer until you've sold your house. So now we are putting our house on the market. Of course, if we get a buyer but can't find a suitable house there will be one very annoyed buyer when we don't sell it to him.

 

No, we aren't going to self build - no suitable plots available at a reasonable price, don't fancy all the bureaucratic aggro and it seems to be cheaper to buy a second hand house than build one (round here anyway).

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One advantage of the way Purple Bricks (and I suspect the other on-line agencies) work is that they put the seller in the driving seat for these decisions.  My intention is to evaluate how realistic a prospect any buyer is myself, as I want to be able to decide whether to take a risk on someone who hasn't yet marketed their house myself, rather than have them filtered out automatically by the agent. 

 

All that the online agencies do is give the seller all the information they have about any prospective buyer, and leave it up to the seller to make the decision.  They do provide a lot of help and advice, but ultimately it's only the seller who drives the control panel and makes the decisions.   There are, in my view, advantages in being put in the driving seat, and not having an agent acting as a buffer, but there's also the slight downside of needing to do more work.  As a seller you can choose to pay a bit more and have the online agency manage the whole sale process for you if you wish, including running viewings, but as I have time on my hands I didn't see the point in paying for something I could do pretty easily.

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I decided to go with Purple Bricks until I saw their ad for my house.

The guy who did the valuation took pictures with an ordinary camera when he came to value - I thought the pics were just reminders for him when it came to writing the blurb.  The blurb was pathetic; the photos were worse and the floor plan got the shape all wrong.

 

I cancelled  

 

 

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On 22/07/2018 at 19:05, Hecateh said:

I decided to go with Purple Bricks until I saw their ad for my house.

The guy who did the valuation took pictures with an ordinary camera when he came to value - I thought the pics were just reminders for him when it came to writing the blurb.  The blurb was pathetic; the photos were worse and the floor plan got the shape all wrong.

 

I cancelled  

 

 

 

That's a bit of a difference from our experience.  Our chap turned up with a Nikon D7500 plus tripod and fill-in flash.  He seems to have used the 18mm lens for all the indoor shots and I really can't fault them, they are a heck of a lot better than anything I could have shot with my Panasonic DMC-TZ70.

 

Bearing in mind that our old house is pretty dire, here's a link to the advert on RightMove: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-66568030.html

 

I'm happy with it.  We've had 43 advert views as of ten minutes ago and have two viewings booked this week, one a cash buyer, the other sold subject to contract.  I'm under no illusions that this is very early days, and things could turn sour, but so far I have to say I'm pretty damned impressed.  I suspect that a lot depends on the local agent that handles your initial data gathering and puts the ad together, but you do have the option via the control panel to take your own photos and edit any of the advert text.  The principle seems to be that they put you in control, but give you advice when requested, and for me that seems an ideal approach, but I accept that it won't suit everyone

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Happy to be in control once professional photos and description done.  Your photos sell your house.  Mine looked like they were done on a mobile phone.

 

Having said that, I went with a traditional EA and they haven't done much either even though their photos are better.  

 

This is the view from my lounge, even with the new house in shot.  Purple bricks didn't put it in at all and Hunter's put one in taken with a wide angle so the view looked like a slice of pizza dominated by tree and new property.

 

DSCF1316.thumb.JPG.d520cb3f969891002edddb82cb066fb1.JPG

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Just now, JSHarris said:

 

The snag may be that when people view they may realise that the photos are slightly optimistic!

I don't think so - wide angle lense in selling houses is well known and, I think, apart from weird perspectives, they do cover more as we see things.  Ordinary photos show the areas we don't normally focus on so seem to minimise the interesting areas.

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I hope you have better luck than us.  We first tried a local estate agent and when that didn't work, we switched to a national estate agent. That would still have been a commision based deal rather than the Purple Bricks model of a fixed fee, but we chose the particular agent we did, because their claim was they advertised the property on every on line site available, and that certainly included the popular ones like Right Move, Zoopla etc.

 

At least the fact we did not sell also means it did not cost us a penny.

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The photos are a tool to get people through the door. There are stats for rightmove where people flick past properties with unappealing photos.

 

These days Estate Agents are generally too lazy to actually work at getting people in the door and rely on the internet pics. Dont underestimate the value of good pics for getting people round to look. If you are not happy with them ask for them to be done again. Also ask for the main intro pic on internet sites to be swapped every week or so to keep it fresh. e.g. An internal or garden view may catch the attention of someone who passed over it a week before as they didnt like the look of it from previous the intro pic. Not everyone clicks through to look at all the pics.

 

Once you have them over the doorstep then at least you have a chance.

 

Good luck to all who are selling!

 

 

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I have said it many times before, and I am obviously not your average buyer.  For me it's all about the right location, the right plot, enough parking space, garage space etc.  The house is the last thing I look at. If the plot is wrong, then a perfect house would be no good. If the plot is right then a crap house can be upgraded.

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1 hour ago, lizzie said:

The photos are a tool to get people through the door. There are stats for rightmove where people flick past properties with unappealing photos.

 

These days Estate Agents are generally too lazy to actually work at getting people in the door and rely on the internet pics. Dont underestimate the value of good pics for getting people round to look. If you are not happy with them ask for them to be done again. Also ask for the main intro pic on internet sites to be swapped every week or so to keep it fresh. e.g. An internal or garden view may catch the attention of someone who passed over it a week before as they didnt like the look of it from previous the intro pic. Not everyone clicks through to look at all the pics.

 

Once you have them over the doorstep then at least you have a chance.

 

Good luck to all who are selling!

 

 

 

Thanks, seems to be working. Third viewing just booked and the advert only went live around midday today.

 

FWIW, Purple Bricks give you a pretty good breakdown of stats from Zoopla, Purple Bricks and RightMove.  They give you the number of unique page views from each of the three sites, the number of individuals who have looked at/downloaded the online brochure (so one layer deeper than just a page view) and the number of emailed individuals to whom the details have been sent because they match the house types/area/price range they are looking at.

 

The control panel allows me to change the order of photos any time I like, so I may well try switching them around every week or so.

 

So far, all three viewings have come via RightMove and RightMove is also far and away the most popular site.  The least popular at the moment seems to be Zoopla.

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