Selling house Midlands - very few viewings?

sadie9

Currently my family are selling a house in the Midlands, an investment property. A 3 bed bungalow. House has been for sale on Daft about 3 weeks nearly and only 2 viewings so far and they were people persuaded to view it by the estate agent who was showing them other houses. Like no one has come based specifically to look at it. Anyone else trying to sell a house in a Midlands town, what numbers of viewings should be expected? I know Dublin is different but when we were selling our house in Dublin in 2004 there were viewings 3 times a week.

mastermind2005

what sort of gains have you made on your investment? have you considered lowering your asking price for a quick exit?

Mailman

there was an article in the local paper that Offaly had the highest drops in price outside of Dublin. Portlaise and Mullingar are very similiar towns.

SimpleSam06

sadie9 wrote: »

Currently my family are selling a house in the Midlands, an investment property.

And theres your problem right there. The investors have all bailed out, the only people buying are unwise trader uppers, county councils and unwise FTBs. Everyone else is sitting it out. Unless you're in a good letting area, the concept of an "investment property" is defunct.

seamus

Your two main factors are price and condition.

Look at what similar homes are selling for and beat their price. If the house is in crap condition, drop it further. At the moment, you don't have any investors in the market so the people looking to buy aren't looking for a fixer-upper, they want something they can move in straight away to, or can afford to have cleaned and decorated. If it's in livable condition, drop your asking by 10%. If it needs work, drop it by at least 15%.

If you can't afford to do either, try to rent it out and sit on it for five more years.

sadie9

Well the elderly relative wants to sell it to buy something else nearer family. House is in great condition, but there are a lot of properties competing with it I guess. As it is with stamp duty etc, work done there won't be much - if any profit made on it as she only has it a few years, but that won't bother her too much she just wants out and is afraid prices will fall even further. I guess it's facing the reality of the market and reducing the asking price is hard to swallow. It's already being marketed at 25k less than a similar house in worse condition on the same street late last summer. We'll see how it goes for another week or two and I guess the lack of interest will speak for itself, then reduce the price.

jackbhoy

sadie9 wrote: »

House is in great condition, but there are a lot of properties competing with it I guess.

That's the crux of your problem. Look on some of these small towns in midlands and you'll see some with 100+ houses for sale. This is insane and fruition of years of money grabbing investors/developers (not to mention poor town planning) over-developing areas to make a quick buck.
I know a small town with 1 school, a few shops/pubs and no indigenous industry to speak off that has 138 houses on Daft at the moment, this town has been destroyed by over-development and is littered with empty homes that vendors can't give away....

wyndham

jackbhoy wrote: »

I know a small town with 1 school, a few shops/pubs and no indigenous industry to speak off that has 138 houses on Daft at the moment, this town has been destroyed by over-development and is littered with empty homes that vendors can't give away....

Which town?

orbital83

Which town?

I think I know the place he means.
Have a look at the Advanced Search on Daft under county Longford, you should spot the village.

I drove round the developments in that particular place on Saturday actually. It's quite depressing.
Half finished estates, with huge potholes in the road, mounds of clay, unfinished footpaths, piping sticking out of the footpaths... I could go on... and everywhere you look, "For Sale" and "To Let".

Who on earth is going to buy them?
Three years' rail travel is being offered with some of the apartments... but will anyone really want 3+ hours on a train per day as properties on Dublin's doorstep become more affordable??

Most of the current residents are non-nationals so if they start leaving things will get worse.

This is the legacy of the FF Section 23 tax breaks that fuelled the biggest party in our nation's history.
Unfortunately, the party's over, and the morning after hasn't even begun. And these unwanted houses and apartments will be much harder to clear away than crushed beer cans.

rainbowtrout

John J wrote: »

I think I know the place he means.
Have a look at the Advanced Search on Daft under county Longford, you should spot the village.

I drove round the developments in that particular place on Saturday actually. It's quite depressing.
Half finished estates, with huge potholes in the road, mounds of clay, unfinished footpaths, piping sticking out of the footpaths... I could go on... and everywhere you look, "For Sale" and "To Let".

Who on earth is going to buy them?
Three years' rail travel is being offered with some of the apartments... but will anyone really want 3+ hours on a train per day as properties on Dublin's doorstep become more affordable??

Most of the current residents are non-nationals so if they start leaving things will get worse.

This is the legacy of the FF Section 23 tax breaks that fuelled the biggest party in our nation's history.
Unfortunately, the party's over, and the morning after hasn't even begun. And these unwanted houses and apartments will be much harder to clear away than crushed beer cans.

And it's recently been bypassed so it's unlikely business is going to thrive there in the near future.

seahorse

John J wrote: »

Who on earth is going to buy them?
Three years' rail travel is being offered with some of the apartments...

Sweet Jesus! That says it all! :eek:

seahorse

Sorry OP, I forgot to comment on your issue. I think your relation may find themselves waiting longer than anticipated. I don't want to make you feel worse about things, but a friend of mine has been trying to sell her WestMeath home for the guts of TWO YEARS! In fairness it needs a bit of work done, but not a huge amount. I think the problem is just that it's a bit off the beaten track and is competing with similar homes which have far better transport links; you'd really need to be driving to buy what she's selling. She's kicking herself she didn't put it up a year before.

jackbhoy

John J wrote: »

I think I know the place he means.
Have a look at the Advanced Search on Daft under county Longford, you should spot the village.

I drove round the developments in that particular place on Saturday actually. It's quite depressing.
Half finished estates, with huge potholes in the road, mounds of clay, unfinished footpaths, piping sticking out of the footpaths... I could go on... and everywhere you look, "For Sale" and "To Let".

Who on earth is going to buy them?
Three years' rail travel is being offered with some of the apartments... but will anyone really want 3+ hours on a train per day as properties on Dublin's doorstep become more affordable??

Most of the current residents are non-nationals so if they start leaving things will get worse.

This is the legacy of the FF Section 23 tax breaks that fuelled the biggest party in our nation's history.
Unfortunately, the party's over, and the morning after hasn't even begun. And these unwanted houses and apartments will be much harder to clear away than crushed beer cans.

That's the one alright. Wouldn't mind 3 years of rail travel if trains were fast/comfortable or on time but you'd probably have to stand for good chunk of journey home before arriving 2 hours late!

People were sold a bs win-win of working in Dublin and still having nice 4bed house with garden for kids within 60mins of city, everyone has woken up to the impact this has on families/health and sanity of the people who do it.

The developers and investors were greedy and just out to make a fast buck but this is human nature, I'd probably have done it myself if it was a viable investment. The real villains in all this are the planning authorities and local councils that allowed this to go ahead, but they don't care they can rest easy with the brown envelopes they've amassed permitting all this.

ionapaul

Most of the empty 'cant-give-away' homes in Cavan, Longford, Roscommon etc are going to have to be bulldozed over the next decade. That is the frightening reality of the mad situation we've let ourselves get into. People will end up bankrupt and lives and marriages ruined (lots of marriages failed during the British house price crash in the early 90s). The hangover from our decade of drunken unrestrained greed.

The_Conductor

Sadie- if your relative really wants to sell the property- they will have to bite the bullet and reduce the price sufficiently to the stage that its cheaper than any comparable properties in the area. A reduction of EUR 25k on last summer's prices quite simply may not be enough (even though house prices had already started to deflate at that stage). Ignore the profit or loss involved- do they want to sell the property- and if so- reduce, reduce, reduce. Its an entirely different scene out there- people are not going to queue up to buy the house as they did in 2004/2005- it will take a lot of effort.

Spending a few days cleaning up the property and painting it in neutral colours so that it is in tip-top condition- will pay off here too.

It takes an immense amount of effort and a very pragmatic approach towards pricing to move anything at the moment.

chancer_007

houses in the midlands are very difficult to sell at the moment. Take kinnegad which is "relatively" close to dublin and there must be about 150 houses for sale on daft.
When kinngead is struggling to sell houses what hope this mullingar/longford have?
As one of the earlier posters said,houses will have to drop between 20-30k!

orbital83

jackbhoy wrote: »

That's the one alright. Wouldn't mind 3 years of rail travel if trains were fast/comfortable or on time but you'd probably have to stand for good chunk of journey home before arriving 2 hours late!

Indeed. If you bought one of those "commuter" apartments, this is what you would have endured today for example.
http://forum.platform11.org/showthread.php?p=31053#post31053
Single track rail systems operated by possibly the most incompetent, union-shackled public transport company in Europe. No thanks.

Perhaps there's some hope of flogging them to car-based commuters when the dual carraigeway opens but construction won't begin till 2010 at the earliest... and rising energy costs and green taxes will soon make car-based commuting from the midlands unviable.

Pure madness. Sometimes I feel sorry for the developers, but then I remember the massive wealth transfer from the youth to the builders in this country over the last 15 years - and I say "stuff them".