Take house off market or wait few months -advice?

Just looking for opinions on what to do about selling our house.

We have it on the market since start sept. We have an offer 10% below the asking price and are not going to accept that. We are now faced with leaving it on the market into the new year or take it down and wait 6 months.

Not sure if there will be much movement in jan/feb/mar and by apr if will be 8 months on the market, which I think looks bad. On the other hand the fact that there is an offer there might just mean we could get it up the extra few percent we want.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

arry

Are there any tangible (e.g. ongoing EA/advertising fees, inconvenience to you in facilitating viewings) or intangible (e.g. fear that the longer it's on the market the more people will be suspicious or unwilling to meet the asking price) costs to leaving it on the market? If not or they are not major then why not just leave it on the market? Maybe the asking price is simply too high for the current market?

Agree, maybe price is too high for current market. But, if you will not sell for less than asking price, then maybe its a case that you will not sell it and maybe you should take off the market. However, it is possible that the long awaited recovery might start in the new year in which case you would lose out by not having the house on the market.
If it costs you nothing tangible (i.e. money) to leave the house on the market then I think you should

hi arry,

I agree with last poster - leave it on the market. It hasn't been on that long really considering the year that we have had - you can't judge 2007 by other years. 10% is a lot to drop by I agree but as long as you are open to negotiation and not have a fixed price in your head. I have had mine on market a while like thousands of others have dropped price but thank God for news on stamp duty last week - if it didn't happen I would have taken house off market for and have waited for a couple of years. I wouldn't pay a lot for advertising - just put it on daft and my home. Best of luck with sale.

Difficult to give accurate advice without knowing the full picture. First question I would have to ask is if your asking price is realistic.? I sold my house and completed in November and ended up getting 5% above the asking price but I wasn't asking for anything unrealistic in the first place.
Secondly what is property doing in your area, are similer properties selling and if so for what?
Thirdly are you getting viewings, is the EA doing his job in marketing the property. Some of them are learning the hard way that they actually have to work now to sell houses, but I know from shopping around this year, that some are still thinking it is 2 years ago. You might need to consider changing agents
Also what feedback are you getting from viewings, is there anything you can do to make the property more attractive. Paint is cheap
Lastly it depends on your own financial situation, have you bought elsewhere, what profit are you going to make on your sale, even at 10% less. Have you any bridging finances issues

also don't discount the offer you;ve had, if the prospective buyer is not in a chain and is a cash buyer, might be worth seeing can you negotiate with them rather then say no out of hand

I'm househunting at the moment and 10% sounds reasonable to me.
I've talked to alot of agents, off the cuff, while viewing houses etc and absolutely every one is open to offers. If you bought your house more than 2 years ago than the 10% drop is very favourably balanced against gains over that period. If you bought last year then I can see why you wouldn't want to make a loss.

Nobody knows for sure what the market will do. Personally, I'd expect prices to drop until they meet the historic multiple of average earnings. But how long that will take no one knows. 10% below asking sounds OK to me. A few months ago, a neighbour of mine refused an offer about 10% below his asking - and ended up selling recently for 25k less than the previous offer.

It's up to you, and how confident you feel in a market that's been trading far, far higher than historical levels for a long time. That's a bubble that has to (and seemingly already has) burst.

What's to assume the market is going to come back at all, let alone to the dizzying heights of the gold old days... Look at the global property crisis, the huge losses incurred by the financial institutions making it harder for people to get mortgages (100%'s are now practically non-existent unless you're a professional or a civil servant), the figures for Irish economic growth being amended downwards by the government, wage increases to fall sharply next year, etc. etc.... Even the Taoiseach has agreed not to take his much deserved (cough) wage increases in light of new figures... What's to say this is all going to turn around in just a short few months, where's the light at the end of tunnel, what's going to drive this...

Figures show 10,000 apartments lying vacant in Dublin, houses don't instantly sell not matter what price the sellers dream up, highly desirable new schemes lie half empty, building is slowing quite quickly and no-one talks about property anymore... Either everyone has everything they want or things are changing.

My view is there is never going to be a crash, we work too hard to allow that to happen, but I do believe we're all going to be caught in a period of re-adjustment in the coming months / years... What came easily before may not in the future, a fact that hurts when you slog all hours to move on/up... The fact you're being offered 10% below might seem like a tough deal considering what you believe your property to be worth but against the economic backdrop you might be best to part with it as it could be the best you'll get for a while, maybe even the only offer...

Maybe it will all bounce back though but I see no sign or mention of what this miracle cure will be... Anyone any suggestions what's keeping Bertie out of buying more Canary Yellow suits...

arry said:

Just looking for opinions on what to do about selling our house.

We have it on the market since start sept. We have an offer 10% below the asking price and are not going to accept that.

Any thoughts?

Click to expand...

My AIB shares were worth 24 euro a few months ago. Now they're 15. However I believe they are still "worth" 24 and I'm looking to sell them.

That is the current position of vendors in the Irish property market from what I can see. Asset prices can go down as well as up. Unfortunately that fact seems to be lost on people.

Market always decides. Accept what the market tells you. Houses normally sell within 70 days - yours has a problem so it all comes down to price. Ignore this at your peril.

Pantone said:

My view is there is never going to be a crash, we work too hard to allow that to happen, but I do believe we're all going to be caught in a period of re-adjustment

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What is a period of readjustment, 0% HPG over several years versus inflation. There are no property markets that I am aware of where HPI grew 10% above CPI for several years, that eventually had a soft landing. Nowhere. It's a misnomer. Accept the previous offer, get the EA to chase it down. Hard cash always beats anticipation of what you think it's worth. Good luck with it though - I'm in the same boat too.

Good advice.

If the property drops further in price when you put it back on the market in 6 months can you afford that. That is the question you should be asking yourself. 10% less than the asking might then seem very good. Nobody can tell you whether the market will recover.

I know that houses are going for 10% less than the asking price, but thats not a rule of thumb! When I placed it on the market I had already factored in a drop of price when we set the asking price.

The offer was before the stamp change and I have told the EA that if we could get around 93/94% of the asking price we would go for it.

As for asking for a reasonable price, its a case of who blinks first. I dont want to drop my price, sell and then get caught when I am looking to buy. We have taken the view of not really looking until we are sale agreed. Obviously we are looking on the net but not actually viewing in case we see something we really like and put an offer

I suppose four months is not too long, but I think it looks bad when you see place that have been up for 10 months.

We do not allow speculation on house prices on Askaboutmoney.