Cpd Posted July 22, 2018 Share Posted July 22, 2018 3 minutes ago, ProDave said: If the plot is right then a crap house can be upgraded. Thats what I did, got a stunning location / perfect plot and and 3 semi derelict buildings all needing a whole heap of work.... love to keep myself busy..... 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ferdinand Posted July 23, 2018 Share Posted July 23, 2018 On 17/07/2018 at 11:21, epsilonGreedy said: True but what is best for planet earth? 100 selfbuilders delivering a high spec passive house. 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. When no one attaches any weight to EPCs, it is probably 1 I am afraid. F Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ferdinand Posted July 23, 2018 Share Posted July 23, 2018 (edited) 14 hours ago, JSHarris said: 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. I have dealt with Purple Bricks before, but for a purchase. My comments: 1 - Yes, competent and a good system, but you are beholden to the competence of your counterparty. If your buyer is useless or appoints a poor solicitor, it can cause havoc. That is no different to normal EAs, however, except that the pile of doo-doo is on your plate, and you do not have a rep around to chase it up. 2 - Make sure that you have all the information in the system copied to be out of the system. In particular, make sure that the contact details of all your potential buyers or sellers are recorded in your own system somewhere. You need the direct communication. The best way is to swap details at the viewing for questions and so you can go back later if it falls through. Given your approach you have probably done this already ! 3 - Obviously the quality of the local Purple Bricks rep is important. On the transaction. 4 - You have highlighted that you want a quick sale. That means choosing the offer that is not encumbered but also the people with the support services that can deliver that sale. And responding to queries on a very short cycle. 5 - These days the selling and buying process is a hell of a lot more box-ticky than it was. Careful judgement needed when someone demands a change because of x or y whether to comply or walk-away. If you have eg all applicance instructions and so on in place, so much the better. 6 - Looking at the contemporary market (subject to Dorset being different if eg it is a total sellers' market or your place being gold dust), it will be dead in August and from autumn half-term; that is, a remarketing should the thing fall through will need to be in place by late Sept at the latest, or you will be taking a winter price, or waiting until at least March 2019 before remarketing seriously. 7 - So my conclusion would be to give it a very short time (perhaps another 10 days or end of July) for viewings and written offers to be received, then choose one that meets your criteria but with a strong emphasis on which one you believe will deliver, then ask for exchange quickly - perhaps end of August. That is easily doable if there are no serious problems. If you can find a cash buyer with a hard constraint kicking their backside (eg need to move in time for school year), then so much the better. 8 - Maintaining it for an extra 6 months will be £1000-2000, which counts against any costs from taking a slight hit elsewhere. I took a biggish hit (25%+ off a price which was really difficult to judge from the start so I started high and came down) on my last property, which took 18 months to sell, but do not regret it. I could have been in a situation of being stuck for several years, as the property was so unique. Was I there now, perceptions would also (falsely) be blighted by HS2 which is close but the other side of a motorway. OTOH we save about 20% on the one we bought. @ProDave has taken the other strategy of not slashing the price and waiting - horses for courses, as there is not a universal best strategy. Ferdinand Edited July 23, 2018 by Ferdinand 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
epsilonGreedy Posted July 23, 2018 Share Posted July 23, 2018 (edited) 3 hours ago, Ferdinand said: 1 - Yes, competent and a good system, but you are beholden to the competence of your counterparty. If your buyer is useless or appoints a poor solicitor, it can cause havoc. That is no different to normal EAs, however, except that the pile of doo-doo is on your plate, and you do not have a rep around to chase it up. I echo this and I am reminded of my previous house sale. Getting an acceptable offer is the easy bit, successful completion of the whole fragile conveyancing assault course is where a true local professional EA can shine through. My last house sale happened because the trad high street EA had a large database of buyers in his head and he knew my house was perfect to resuscitate a recently collapsed chain of local buyers and sellers. There were many bumps during conveyancing and the EA had an interest in 2 chain sales and so worked very hard to keep the chain alive with subtle social engineering. EAs are market makers and the UK housing market is becoming steadily more illiquid as the manifest gulf between perceived value in the heads of older owners confronts the real poor economic prospects of the young. Edited July 23, 2018 by epsilonGreedy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted July 23, 2018 Author Share Posted July 23, 2018 Thanks for all the tips, they are much appreciated. I think I have all bases covered, and have copies of every document regarding the house that I think might be needed by any prospective buyer (Land Registry Title Plan, warranties, gas safety inspection, etc, plus I can get an EICR done very quickly if needed) and of the three bookings for viewings we have taken so far, one has a house already sold subject to contract, one has a house on the market but not yet sold and one is a cash buyer (I suspect a landlord - there is a high demand for rented property in our local area). With regard to our local area we have a distorted market. The Army are moving many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of soldiers here; all those brought back from BAOR, plus those relocated to Andover, which is now HQ Land Command (20 mins away), my former employer (1 mile up the road from our old house) is in the process of relocating a few hundred staff from Kent to Porton Down, and generally the market here is quite buoyant. Staff being relocated (including some military personnel that own their own homes) will be on a relocation package that means they have no chain and are cash buyers, which may be good news. Fingers crossed to see what will happen... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted July 23, 2018 Author Share Posted July 23, 2018 This is getting silly. In the last fifteen minutes I've got four more viewing requests. Looks like all I'm going to be doing this week is showing people around the house... 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe90 Posted July 23, 2018 Share Posted July 23, 2018 20 minutes ago, JSHarris said: This is getting silly. In the last fifteen minutes I've got four more viewing requests. Looks like all I'm going to be doing this week is showing people around the house... If it sells your house quickly it’s not silly, my old house was on the market about 2 years ago and took 14 months to sell and we had to lower the price by £100k. Best of luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ferdinand Posted July 23, 2018 Share Posted July 23, 2018 (edited) 36 minutes ago, joe90 said: If it sells your house quickly it’s not silly, my old house was on the market about 2 years ago and took 14 months to sell and we had to lower the price by £100k. Best of luck. Have an open day on Saturday to mop up the viewings 1 hr slots or free for all if they have said they are coming if you wish. With a published deadline for offers of Tue 31st 12pm. Hard deadline at Wed 8am or Tue 7pm if people ask. Then decide on Wed. Then make a choice. People making offers will be looking elsewhere after about 1 week, or will be finding greener grass if they are looking continuously. Need to strike before the birds return to the bush. F Edited July 23, 2018 by Ferdinand 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
epsilonGreedy Posted July 23, 2018 Share Posted July 23, 2018 (edited) 45 minutes ago, JSHarris said: Looks like all I'm going to be doing this week is showing people around the house... Don't mention the war, Brexit or that plug in the bathroom. Edited July 23, 2018 by epsilonGreedy 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Posted July 23, 2018 Share Posted July 23, 2018 53 minutes ago, JSHarris said: This is getting silly. In the last fifteen minutes I've got four more viewing requests. Looks like all I'm going to be doing this week is showing people around the house... brilliant result - well done! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Alphonsox Posted July 23, 2018 Share Posted July 23, 2018 I would recommend trying to mop up as many as possible at an “open house” if you can. You could end up sinking a lot of time into this. We have had five such events for my mothers place and have shown more than 100 people around the property. Hopefully at least two will show up for the auction on Thursday ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted July 23, 2018 Author Share Posted July 23, 2018 And another one has just come in for a viewing on Wednesday, whose house is sold subject to contract... 25 minutes ago, Ferdinand said: Have an open day on Saturday to mop up the viewings 1 hr slots or free for all if they have said they are coming if you wish. With a published deadline for offers of Tue 31st 12pm. Hard deadline at Wed 8am or Tue 7pm if people ask. Then decide on Wed. Then make a choice. People making offers will be looking elsewhere after about 1 week, or will be finding greener grass if they are looking continuously. Need to strike before the birds return to the bush. F In effect it looks like we're going to have most viewings tomorrow and Wednesday, with most being cash buyers or house sold subject to contract. That'll probably work a bit like an open house, I think, except I be repeating myself a lot. We have no viewings booked after Friday (so far) so if we get a reasonable offer out of the fairly big group looking at the house over the next couple of days then we'll push hard to try and seal a deal as quickly as we can. One advantage of the appointment diary system is that buyers can tell when appointment slots are taken - we've just had one switch an appointment from Wednesday to tomorrow, taking advantage of the one remaining appointment slot tomorrow, and I suspect that may well be because they've seen the level of interest. Clearly we've priced the house to sell, and that's probably making a fair difference, but as long as we get a quick sale and enough money back to top up our depleted savings pot then that's we really want anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barney12 Posted July 23, 2018 Share Posted July 23, 2018 If you do get several offers then you could always go to sealed bids. I did this with the last place I renovated (Never should have sold it, long story!). Its a tidy way to achieve the highest price in a timely manner. Stops all the 'low ball offers' from almost interested parties and the tiresome negotiating. Its not a binding system so you can still choose to accept a lower offer if you feel that buyer is a stronger position to complete. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted July 23, 2018 Author Share Posted July 23, 2018 9 minutes ago, Barney12 said: If you do get several offers then you could always go to sealed bids. I did this with the last place I renovated (Never should have sold it, long story!). Its a tidy way to achieve the highest price in a timely manner. Stops all the 'low ball offers' from almost interested parties and the tiresome negotiating. Its not a binding system so you can still choose to accept a lower offer if you feel that buyer is a stronger position to complete. The thought has occurred to me, as this is a method sometimes used in Scotland and seems to work well. If we get several people this week who I judge to be serious buyers (always the hard part) then I think instead of negotiating I'll just ask for sealed bids by, say, next week. Not sure how to organise this, though. In Scotland the sealed bids are handled by the agent/lawyer, with the seller choosing to accept the bid (not necessarily the highest one, either). I can't see a problem in running a sealed bid system myself - I'm quite prepared to just make my viewing diary public, with the names of the viewers blurred out, as evidence that there is a great deal of serious interest (the viewing diary shows the status of each viewer, in terms of being a cash buyer, sold subject to contract, house on the market, or house not yet on the market). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barney12 Posted July 23, 2018 Share Posted July 23, 2018 2 minutes ago, JSHarris said: The thought has occurred to me, as this is a method sometimes used in Scotland and seems to work well. If we get several people this week who I judge to be serious buyers (always the hard part) then I think instead of negotiating I'll just ask for sealed bids by, say, next week. Not sure how to organise this, though. In Scotland the sealed bids are handled by the agent/lawyer, with the seller choosing to accept the bid (not necessarily the highest one, either). I can't see a problem in running a sealed bid system myself - I'm quite prepared to just make my viewing diary public, with the names of the viewers blurred out, as evidence that there is a great deal of serious interest (the viewing diary shows the status of each viewer, in terms of being a cash buyer, sold subject to contract, house on the market, or house not yet on the market). As you say there is no formal system here. All I did was instructed the selling agent to accept sealed written bids by a date. They needed to state a price and their ability to proceed (i.e. cash, SSTC etc). He then opened them and I chose one. No reason at all why you cant run that system yourself. We achieved bids over the asking price but actually proceeded with a cash buyer who offered the full asking price. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HerbJ Posted July 23, 2018 Share Posted July 23, 2018 You could set out a simple sealed bid procedure, which outlines your of selection criteria and may be based not only price but also: 1) cash buyer and ability to proceed quickly - they must give your their solicitors name and details with bid. No solicitor provided would put them down your list! 2) firm commitment to exchange/completion date - state your preference, say 6/8 weeks to exchange and rank their ability to comply etc On your part, you need to be able to meet your side of the deal and get all the paper work and solicitor in order asap 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted July 23, 2018 Author Share Posted July 23, 2018 2 hours ago, Barney12 said: As you say there is no formal system here. All I did was instructed the selling agent to accept sealed written bids by a date. They needed to state a price and their ability to proceed (i.e. cash, SSTC etc). He then opened them and I chose one. No reason at all why you cant run that system yourself. We achieved bids over the asking price but actually proceeded with a cash buyer who offered the full asking price. 24 minutes ago, HerbJ said: You could set out a simple sealed bid procedure, which outlines your of selection criteria and may be based not only price but also: 1) cash buyer and ability to proceed quickly - they must give your their solicitors name and details with bid. No solicitor provided would put them down your list! 2) firm commitment to exchange/completion date - state your preference, say 6/8 weeks to exchange and rank their ability to comply etc On your part, you need to be able to meet your side of the deal and get all the paper work and solicitor in order asap Thanks for all the useful tips and info, I think I'm going to do this, as we've just had yet another viewing appointment for tomorrow (that makes 6 that are coming tomorrow, 2 on Wednesday and one on Friday). The latest one is "house sold subject to contract" too, so that gives us half a dozen pretty good prospects. We've already made the advert "offers in excess of" the listed price, which will fit well with a sealed bid system, I think. I'll double check that we can sort everything our side out in time, but I'm pretty confident that I've already got most of the key info sorted and available. I'm still slightly stunned at the pace with which things seem to be happening. When I clicked the "submit" button to make the advert go live about this time yesterday, I didn't expect to have so many viewings booked in the first 24 hours. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cpd Posted July 23, 2018 Share Posted July 23, 2018 This is going to keep you on your toes over the next few weeks ! Seems like a lot of genuine interest and very few tyre kickers. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted July 23, 2018 Author Share Posted July 23, 2018 22 minutes ago, Cpd said: This is going to keep you on your toes over the next few weeks ! Seems like a lot of genuine interest and very few tyre kickers. Good luck. I think you're right, but my wife is being exceptionally pessimistic and is convinced they are all tyre kickers! My view is that people only usually bother to view a property if they've already done a "drive by" and checked the local area out (certainly that's what we've always done in the past when looking for a house, and we've moved lots of times over the years). Out of those that have made appointments to view, three have no property to sell, so are probably cash buyers, and three have properties that are sold subject to contract. The remaining three have either properties on the market or not yet marketed, so don't sound like very realistic prospects at this stage. Interestingly 8 out of the nine are women, coming on their own to view. Not sure how relevant that is, or what it suggests, but it seems a bit curious. Whenever we've made appointments to view we've done so jointly; I don't think there's been a single occasion when only one of us has viewed a property. With six people viewing tomorrow, I think I'm in for a pretty busy day... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jml Posted July 23, 2018 Share Posted July 23, 2018 (edited) 5 hours ago, HerbJ said: You could set out a simple sealed bid procedure, which outlines your of selection criteria and may be based not only price but also: 1) cash buyer and ability to proceed quickly - they must give your their solicitors name and details with bid. No solicitor provided would put them down your list! 2) firm commitment to exchange/completion date - state your preference, say 6/8 weeks to exchange and rank their ability to comply etc On your part, you need to be able to meet your side of the deal and get all the paper work and solicitor in order asap We have bought and sold many houses over the years. Would recommend that you have 4 weeks to exchange and further 4 to complete, which tends to be standard if cash buyer, if not quicker. For those who are in a chain, who have a house under offer, this may not be posssible, as you may be held up by slowest in chain. Make sure you get a good solicitor working for you, one that specialises in conveyencing is best as they are not distracted by other things. We have an excellent one who has done many transactions for us, who knows that we chase continually, so we are always waiting on the other side. Edited July 23, 2018 by Jml 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NSS Posted July 23, 2018 Share Posted July 23, 2018 Think I'd be concerned I'd pitched the price too low with that much interest so quickly, so agree the sealed bid approach may be best. As for using PB, we sold our last place using a sort of hybrid EA in so much that they use the same model as PB but are local only and staffed by people who have worked in traditional estate agencies in the area for many years. The advantage for us was they have great local knowledge and contacts. I incentivised them with a bonus payment if they exceeded our minimum acceptable price (they did) and they also did some of the viewings when we were unable to (at no additional charge). The net result was that we saved well over £4k on fees compared to a traditional agent, and the only noticeable difference was their office was in an industrial unit in a boatyard rather than on the high street. Would definitely use them again. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted July 23, 2018 Author Share Posted July 23, 2018 Sounds a damned good compromise to me. I think we may have been lucky, in that our PB contact used to be a local estate agent, and seems pretty switched on. We know the price is low, but frankly that was our choice in order to try and facilitate a quick sale. We don't need to make any more than the minimum asking price to put us back in our planned financial position, and would rather trade speed of sale for a bit of additional profit - we're both heartily sick and tired of our old house, especially in this hot weather where it's a bloody nightmare. I've been at the new house all day, which sits at it's normal 22 deg C, only to come home to a house that's close to 30 deg C, and shows no signs of cooling down much overnight. Boy am I thankful for having got to grips with the concept of decrement delay! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lizzie Posted July 23, 2018 Share Posted July 23, 2018 44 minutes ago, JSHarris said: don't think there's been a single occasion when only one of us has viewed a property. I usually do a recce and sift out OH hates looking at properties so only looks at final shortlisted ones. When I used to act as a buying agent for ppl it was very usual to just have the lady out on her own to do first viewing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lizzie Posted July 23, 2018 Share Posted July 23, 2018 2 minutes ago, JSHarris said: come home to a house that's close to 30 deg C, and shows no signs of cooling down much overnight. Boy am I thankful for having got to grips with the concept of decrement delay! Jeremy i so envy you I am sitting in a house that struggles to drop to 25 overnight even with windows open. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HerbJ Posted July 23, 2018 Share Posted July 23, 2018 58 minutes ago, Jml said: We have bought and sold many houses over the years. Would recommend that you have 4 weeks to exchange and further 4 to complete, which tends to be standard if cash buyer, if not quicker. For those who are in a chain, who have a house under offer, this may not be posssible, as you may be held up by slowest in chain. I agree with this and my 6/8 weeks was just something for @JSHarris to think about, having a better idea of what he can support from his side. When we bought the house (that we demolished for our new build) we offered a bonus of £20,000 to the seller if they exchanged by a set date. There was some history with them procastrinating with sellling and they wanted a higher price than we really wanted to pay. So essentially we agreed to a lower price but with a bonus to take them to their asking price, but only payable if they exchanged on a specified date,. They missed the date by a day because they/ their solicitor wasted weeks. So, we paid less, with a lot of moaning and groaning..... It something to consider in your price and sealed bid process to keep the focus on the exchange date 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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