What can we do if we have had no offers on our house for sale?

PROPERTY CLINIC: We’ve had our house on the market for months and plenty of viewings but no offers, how can we get it sold?

  • Generally, experts say no sale suggests a price reduction may be required
  • Price may not be the issue, however, if you have had viewings
  • Listen to the feedback from buyers to fix any issues at the house

We want to move home and put our house on the market in July at what we thought was a reasonable price that compared favourably with similar properties.

We have had quite a few viewings and some good feedback but no offers, which is frustrating when we keep reading about a property market mini-boom.

In the meantime, we have seen other similar properties come up for sale and go under offer quickly.

Property clinic: Is there anything we can do to try to get our house sold?

We have a three-bedroom semi-detached house in good condition with a decent garden in a town about 35 miles from London, in an area popular with families.

We’ve seen a number of places we’d quite like to buy but not been able to make any offers stick, because we aren’t under offer ourselves.

Do we just need to be more patient, or is there anything we can do to try to get our house sold?

MailOnline Property expert Myra Butterworth said: By and large, if you’re failing to sell your house, it is often because you’re asking too much money for it.

Sellers often fall into the trap of thinking they know what a property is worth, but it is the buyer who has the final say. They will decide what price they are prepared to pay for the bricks and mortar in front of them.

If the price is right, they will overlook things that they don’t like. And, if the price goes low enough, someone will eventually see through the things that others can’t.

However, in this case, buyers obviously don’t think that the price is wide of the mark as they are still going ahead and viewing the property. This is despite them knowing the price tag well in advance – they are not ruling it out immediately based on price.

But obviously once they view the property in person, they spot something that makes other homes more attractive and you need to find out what this and whether it can be fixed – otherwise you may indeed have to lower the price.

If you listen carefully to the feedback, it may be something that you can remedy quite easily, such as painting over a bright lime front door with a more appealing neutral colour, tweaking room layouts, or doing some simple work to refresh elements of your home.

Another thing to watch out for is that your details online aren’t overselling the property or hiding something that puts buyers off. Rooms made to look much bigger than they are, a house that appears to look out over fields but actually has a busy road by it, or a small garden wide-angled to look huge, can lead to disappointment on viewings.  

James Forrester, managing director of estate agents Barrows and Forrester, said: There’s a wealth of ‘tips and hacks’ that can make your home more appealing to buyers, but the bottom line of a slow sale is often down to price.

The fact that you’re receiving interest is a positive sign that you’ve priced at a reasonable threshold and that your advert is of adequate quality and is being seen by the right type of buyer.

However, there may be an underlying issue that viewers aren’t disclosing in their feedback. This could be an overlooked garden, perhaps the road is just that little bit too busy, or there may be an aesthetic issue deterring them.

Push your agent to dig deeper at the feedback stage in order to find out exactly what the issue is, or take this task on yourself in person at the end of a viewing. Only then you can look to address it, and more often than not, an element of compromise on price could be the answer for a prospective buyer.

A top-line reduction in price via might not be necessary and this should be approached on a viewer by viewer basis depending on their hesitations.

A few thousand pounds less could make that road a little less noisy or cover the cost of that aesthetic change and is a small price to pay to get moving.

A top-line reduction in the asking price via might not be necessary to get your house sold

A top-line reduction in the asking price via might not be necessary to get your house sold

Buying agent Henry Pryor said: There is a market – you can buy and you can sell but you can’t get a premium price or bag a bargain – at least you can’t yet.

The asking price is part of the marketing, it is designed to get people to come and see the property. Like a price tag on a jacket in a shop it should be big enough for you to feel like you can afford it as a treat, but not too cheap that you worry for the welfare of the children who must have made it!.

If you have been getting viewers then the price has done it’s job and your agent needs to find out why these buyers haven’t made an offer. Have they been getting the wrong people round? 

It doesn’t sound like reducing the price is necessary. What you may need to look at is the marketing. Are the photos giving people a reasonable idea of what they can expect when they visit? Are they finding something unexpected? Road noise? Mess or smell? 

You never get a second chance to make a first impression so double-check that the house and garden are clean and tidy. You want people going away talking about how they would live in the property not remarking about the ring around the bath. 

Be brave and be honest with yourselves. Find out why the people who looking at it aren’t even making a cheeky offer and then take action based on what they say.

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