trying to sell house = so frustrated

[cfknight]

Just wanting to check and see how everyone who's house is on the market are doing? Anybody have a sale yet? Same situation here,a tone of lookers but still no offers

 

[cindrela]

It's almost August and my house still hasn't sold. We packed up and moved to Florida the end of June (the one plus, we're closer to the Mouse!). I thought it was bad keeping the house perfect, now its nervracking knowing the house was at it's best "designed to sell" and now it sits there empty. My realtor had to bring in someone to give the house a good cleaning, and her and her husband are going to freshen up the yard, and put a fresh coat of paint in the kitchen. My neighbor's husband has a ride on mower, so he's taking care of my lawn (thank goodness, for that). I have two months to sell this house, and then we're on our own with a rent and mortgage. Right now my husband's company is reimbursing us the mortgage, since its the lesser of the two payments. I never had negative feedback from realtors. My agent was involved in two progressive lunches, and both times we had great feedback. They may have nit-picked at little things, which I took care of. Overall, they felt it was a great price, great location, yada, yada, yada, my house is still not sold!!!!!

 

[mommy2twingles]

We've had about 5 people say they love our home and would like to purchase, but they need to sell their house first. DH is currently living with his dad as he needs to be within a 30 minutes drive of his new job. I'm living at the house with the 3 kids and traveling 1 hr each way to my job. We can't afford both a rent and house payment so I'm stuck until this house sells. We have price dropped 2x and are priced right in the middle of other comp homes.

 

[cfknight]

It's almost August and my house still hasn't sold. We packed up and moved to Florida the end of June (the one plus, we're closer to the Mouse!). I thought it was bad keeping the house perfect, now its nervracking knowing the house was at it's best "designed to sell" and now it sits there empty. My realtor had to bring in someone to give the house a good cleaning, and her and her husband are going to freshen up the yard, and put a fresh coat of paint in the kitchen. My neighbor's husband has a ride on mower, so he's taking care of my lawn (thank goodness, for that). I have two months to sell this house, and then we're on our own with a rent and mortgage. Right now my husband's company is reimbursing us the mortgage, since its the lesser of the two payments. I never had negative feedback from realtors. My agent was involved in two progressive lunches, and both times we had great feedback. They may have nit-picked at little things, which I took care of. Overall, they felt it was a great price, great location, yada, yada, yada, my house is still not sold!!!!!

We are getting the same thing! Every feedback has been positive including price. We have had 3 people come back for a second showing and 1 person saw it 4 times, but still not a dang offer. IMHO There has to be something these people don't like!? or there would have been an offer!

 

[Gillian]

To those with houses on the market...

The realtor signs you have in front of your house - does your realtor have the website on it? Is it easy on the agency website to find your realtor and all of their listings?

Do you have flyers in front of your house? Does the flyer have the PRICE on it? Are there a few pictures? (more of the house, less of your agent! LOL a couple flyers we picked up had huge pics of the agent (glamour shots) and 1-2 small pics of the house) Are the flyers kept stocked?

We're in the market for a house in the next 3-6 months - unfortunately not in the area any of you are selling in- and have been driving around for the last 6 months or so to get a feel for what we can reasonably get in this area and what areas we like. It is such a turn off to drive by a house and a) find the flyer tube empty b) get the flyer with no price on it or if there's not a flyer right down the agent info & website and then not be able to find the house! The few times I've called the agent for info someone has tried to sign me with them and show me other houses - all without giving me the price of the house I called about. So I've stopped calling agents. If there's no flyer or no price on the flyer we don't bother taking down info anymore.

We do go in neighborhoods and just drive around but we're more apt to drive through the neighborhood if we can see a sign off the main road -even a directional sign if no neighbors have a house for sale. So if you're in the back of the neighborhood see what you can do about putting a sign somewhere near an entrance.

I don't know if you're reading anymore, but I'm sorry about your experience. Most of our agents have started putting their cell phone # on signs so they get the business themselves, but also so that people driving by get the info they need right away.

I hate flyers with no price.

 

[dizcrazy]

It is (one day shy of) August and our house hasn't sold either. I lierally feel sick. It seems like the price of housing in my area keeps dropping, and yet the prices in the area I am looking are remaining steady.
What a nightmare. . . .

 

[cats mom]

I hesitated about posting again since I don't want to make anyone feel bad - but then decided maybe a 'we sold' post might get the positive energies flowing here! (fingers crossed)

Last time I posted on this thread we were still getting our house ready to list and now I'm sitting here surrounded by moving boxes and we have to be out Wed.

The market is horrendous here. We only had 3 lookers through in the month or so we were for sale. But one of them was the right one. It just takes one you know.

I wish I had some great ideas to help everyone else, but I think we just got really lucky. I did use the citrus scent idea someone posted earlier, although mine was a citrus/vanilla combo.

We did price low. The same floorplan down the street was priced at what everyone in the neighborhood and most of the realtors we talked to thought was a killer deal and we priced 8% below them. (Of course they immediately lowered their price by 3%) Believe me it was tough to do after just spending a fortune updating this place! Given current market condition it was probably the best choice we made though. Now we're on our way and they're still sitting and they will most likely have to drop their price eventually anyway.

Pixie dust to all of you still trying to sell
It's no fun!

Both times our buyers came through their agent called and gave me less than an hours notice for the showings.

Edited to add: just saw the bit about price on the flyers. Our agent didn't want to put it on. We had to be really firm about it. I told her if I'm gonna bite the bullet and price low I want everyone to know it - not just the folks who take the time to call! BTW the day after we put up our sign w/flyers our closest competition, who had been on the market with flyers out front for about 3 months, took theirs down. It will be interesting to see if theirs goes back up now that we've closed.

 

[LuvENDisney]

I hesitated about posting again since I don't want to make anyone feel bad - but then decided maybe a 'we sold' post might get the positive energies flowing here! (fingers crossed)

Cogratulations!! Good news. A little jealous, but, of course, happy for you. If you were my next door neighbor, it might be a different story.


My townhouse is still on the market. Has been 5 weeks. We have moved out and so, the TH is empty. I just did an Open House this weekend, so you never know. I am just glad to still have lookers. I agree, it just takes one, but where is my one!

Good luck to everyone too. We all need it sometime.

 

[DebMcDonald]

We put our house on the market in February and had an offer in April. No one that came to any of the open houses made an offer. I honestly think that open houses are people just being noisy and not serious lookers. I visited every open house in the area that we were priced against to see what they had to offer vs. what we had to offer and what their condition was vs. ours. We had two offers and both were a call that came the day before saying can we come by tomorrow. We showed the house probably 10 times not including the open houses. Make sure you house is priced right to sell, if you are priced a little higher than anyone around you will not get anyone coming. It all will work out, I believe the saying if it is meant to be it will.

Yes our relator did serve snacks and coffee not that it helped.

Good Luck.

 

[AlexTina]

Sending pixie dust to everyone trying to sell . It's absolutely horrible right now and all the media attention to the housing market is just making it worse, in the last 3 days the housing market has been on the front page of our news paper and the headline on all of the morning news shows, UGH...

We have had our house on the market since the middle of May and have reduced several times. We just came down again yesterday for a grand total of $15000 and are now priced $1000 below all the comps in the area but we have a large cul-de-sac lot (large lots/yards are very hard to find around here), 3 car garage (no other houses in the area have this), a huge deck off the master, and huge covered patio (again no other houses have this) and still nothing. We are supposed to close on our new house which is currently under construction sometime around the end of August so I figure I have about 2 weeks to get this place under contract, if not then I officially give up .

 

[rbork]

Did the OP get some showings???
We've sold 2x in the last 2 years. 1st house sold in 2 mos and the 2nd sold in 8 LONG months of cleaning. Feel your pain OP with cleaning and kid's. I did turn it into a "family" effort though. Even DH after long days at work would help with cleaning! I am so happy to learn that other's threw their laundry into their cars too! After all we REALLY wanted to move out of the 2nd houses' neighborhood- what a mistake buying that one! Oh well live and learn! Had a great agent who market'ed the heck out of the house. We had about ~25 showings in 8 months but no offers. Finally rcvd one crazy low ball offer BUT started negotiations reluctantly. In the end, got to the table without losing the shirt on our backs!
Good Luck to the OP!
p.s price right and welcome any negotiations!

 

[MrMarv]

In many areas of the country this real estate market is the worst in well over twenty years.

The problem is that 2008 & 2009 are going to be much worse.

 

[cats mom]

Sending pixie dust to everyone trying to sell . It's absolutely horrible right now and all the media attention to the housing market is just making it worse, in the last 3 days the housing market has been on the front page of our news paper and the headline on all of the morning news shows, UGH...

We have had our house on the market since the middle of May and have reduced several times. We just came down again yesterday for a grand total of $15000 and are now priced $1000 below all the comps in the area but we have a large cul-de-sac lot (large lots/yards are very hard to find around here), 3 car garage (no other houses in the area have this), a huge deck off the master, and huge covered patio (again no other houses have this) and still nothing. We are supposed to close on our new house which is currently under construction sometime around the end of August so I figure I have about 2 weeks to get this place under contract, if not then I officially give up .

ITA

Lots of buyers sitting on the sidelines watching to see what the market is going to do I think.

Just a heads up for those of you waiting for an offer... be prepared for the "I am the almighty buyer, I make the rules" attitude you're likely to get right now.
Believe me we got MORE than our fair share of that.

Our agent says it sure does stink when you're the seller, but it's great for buyers. Along with price reductions people are asking for help with closing costs and all kinds of personal property thrown in as well... and they're getting it.

Since there are 2 sides to the coin... I hope to be loving it when we're ready to buy in our new location (after a little fence sitting of course) although I will NOT be as petty and demanding as our buyers have been.

Again, good luck to those of you trying to sell right now.

 

[cindrela]

As one of those who is waiting to sell, I just dropped my price (again) yesterday and we're also offering an additional incentive to the agent who brings us the offer. I don't know what else to do. The prospect of the mortgage and rent scares the life out of me.

 

[luvindisneyworld]

Well we close on our house Friday.It was on the market for over 2 months.We had about 10-12 showings and no offers.I was so discoraged I didnt even want them to show my house that day,I am so glad that I did though.The people went into my house and was in there about 10-15 minutes and before they could even get back to the office the agent was calling mine.Within the hour we had an offer.We went back and forth just a couple of times and then we agreed.
The thing is that they were paying cash and wanted to close in 30 days,do you know how hard it is to find a decent rental anymore .
Thank God we actually found something before having to live in a Motel.

But all is well and we will be closing Friday at 1:00PM.DH is taking off Thursday and Friday and we are moving al of our stuff out Thursday and staying our last night here in our house tomorrow night.I know that I am going to cry this was our First home together.But we are making enough to pay off all of our CCs and loans and still have some to put back.We also have one of our DVC memberships up for sale to pay for the other one so we will have that off of us.DH is selling his truck and his motorcycle.So all in all e are going to be saving a bit over 2000.00 a month when they sell.We are on the money saving kick right now.I am so glad I have finally talked some sense into him about trying to get all of these things off of us.

We will be building next year and will have the 25000.00 t put down on the house that w have saved for a year.

Good Luck to all that is still waiting it will happen just be patient.

 

[myAAbatteries&aTD]

I just talked to our realtor today since our goal was to sell by Aug. 1st (she said the market gets really slow in Aug-Sept) and we have nothing yet. We lowered the price again and hopefully that will help. My dh is tired of rooming w/ our friends 2 hours away (and I know they're tired of him being there!) and I'm tired of keeping the house clean and doing everything w/ three adorable children for NOTHING! The family who wanted to buy the house can't get approved for a loan since he doesn't have a job! Ummm, that just MIGHT help!!! I'm starting to get a little frustrated, but it is what it is and it will all be fine in the end!!!

 

[CarolA]

I just talked to our realtor today since our goal was to sell by Aug. 1st (she said the market gets really slow in Aug-Sept) and we have nothing yet. We lowered the price again and hopefully that will help. My dh is tired of rooming w/ our friends 2 hours away (and I know they're tired of him being there!) and I'm tired of keeping the house clean and doing everything w/ three adorable children for NOTHING! The family who wanted to buy the house can't get approved for a loan since he doesn't have a job! Ummm, that just MIGHT help!!! I'm starting to get a little frustrated, but it is what it is and it will all be fine in the end!!!

Don't you just wonder why some people get involved? I mean most banks like income!!! I feel for you.

The townhouse beside me is STILL empty, and there is a new one on the market here plus at some point the townhouse on the other side has to go on the market (the owner passed away in March. No heirs and her "executor" was her age (83) and is really unable to deal with this.....) Thank goodness I don't have to sell! I figure I could get out without oweing anything, but that would be ALL! I would lose a lot!

Good luck to everyone. I can't imagine the stress.

 

[cindrela]

I have someone who is interested in my house. She saw the house at least 3 times over the weekend. She came with her sister one of the times, who happens to be a picky person. Found little imperfections that we would gladly say "heres $XX for decorating allowance" if we were given a reasonable offer. She needs to move ASAP, as she's sold her condo and accepted a job. When will it ever end?????

 

[Not so Dumbo]

I agree with the poster who said to watch out for the almighty buyer syndrome. We had a couple who thought they could offer us $16,000 less and have us out in 2 weeks. We countered and they completey walked. 2 weeks later we got an offer for $600 less than asking. This couple thought our house was "thee house". Goes to show, it just takes that one person looking for just what you have.

 

[cindrela]

Just wanted to update my scenario. It took exactly 6 months to the DAY to find the right person who wanted my house The couple are moving back to SC and need to sell a house in Michigan. We had just decided to rent our home because we could no way afford rent and a mortgage. They are renting with the intent to purchase. In 6 months they will try to get financing under the wife's name,(if their house hasn't sold by then) otherwise they have until the end of the year rental agreement. I'm in a rental lease until the end of June, so I'm not going anywhere. It works out in my favor that they are making my mortgage payments and I will have more equity when we actually close. Their payments do not come off the selling price!! It was stressful, but hopefully the worst part is behind us Good luck to all those who are still going thru the struggle of trying to sell their house By the way, they accepted the price we were listed at with no questions asked. We were at our lowest to feel comfortable with what we would get out of it. Thank goodness!!