Saturday 12 July 2014

The Selling Your Home Emotional Rollercoaster - from Listing to Offers

After deciding which estate agent to go with (you can read about that here if you like) we were all set to sell!

selling your home - sold sign

The Bromley estate agent we chose was confident of our schedule - we'd be marketed as a guide price with a realistic expectation of achieving above this. The photos would be taken on the Friday and we would be live on the internet that evening or the Saturday morning at the latest with the following Saturday being our open day.
The open day would see one viewing at a time but several scheduled after each other. Offers wouldn't be accepted that same day but rather people would be invited to submit their very best offer by lunch time on Monday after the open day and we would be able to sit down, go through the offers and pick the one we wanted to accept. Sounds simple right? 


So this is how things actually happened ... We didn't go live online that Friday - we didn't go live until the Monday, there had been a computer update at the estate agents which caused a delay in uploading new properties. Being an ex online marketing manager I panicked, we wouldn't even have online presence for a full week before the open day, but the estate agent was calm and confident that this wasn't an issue, they'd already been using their database to establish interest and bookings for our property.

selling your home


The day before the open day and I was busy busy busy! I had my father in law's help to mow the lawn and clear any rubbish (including animal poo!) from our front garden and my mother in law had made up some hanging baskets, planted some plants and vaxed the carpets! I had our window cleaner come round and do all the windows, I put fresh flowers all around the house and polished everywhere, hid as many toys as possible and made sure our home looked it's best! The big stress point was that the local council had decided that this was the day they were going to close off my entire road and dig it up! Arrgh!  I was nervous but our estate agent was very positive and confident and we were left with happy thoughts of all these exciting offers above the guide price to expect after the weekend.
selling your homeIt was finally happening, we are selling the house! Our estate agent had expressed such confidence that we dared to view a possible house for us to buy!




But that lovely happy confident bubble popped. The open day didn't bring in the promised plethora of offers and not one above guide price - actually not even any at guide price. It sucked, we felt really low, disappointed and let down but you've got to keep going right?
The estate agents confirmed they had two bookings for Thursday evening so from that low we rode all the way up to a new high - two evening viewings sounded promising. 
Although terribly inconvenient - our children are 2 and 4 so evening viewings suck - it means starting the bedtime routine at a nearby family member's home but it has a negative effect on the kids - they really struggle having such a disrupted bedtime - but you've got to do whatever it takes right?
So that Thursday, I'd cleaned, scrubbed, gardened and spread even more fresh flowers everywhere  but part way through the morning I got the call to say one of the evenings viewings had cancelled so only one would be coming. I packed everything for the evening and bedtime into the car so we could have dinner and start the bedtime routine elsewhere  and we set off half an hour before the only viewing left was due.
Then we got the call - just 15 mins before the viewing was supposed to happen to say that one had also cancelled - I could have cried, getting everything ready and getting the kids out had been hard work and it had all been for nothing. 
Back to feeling rubbish.
selling your homeThere was a viewing booked in for Saturday but that would mean that in an entire week - following the failure of open day, we would have had just one viewing - that is really rubbish and not at all a reflection of the confidence and impression given by the estate agents. Needless to say, that viewing didn't go well either - apparently the kitchen dining area was too small (ouch! That hurt, I'm particularly proud of our kitchen - its impressive for a 2up2down!) we fit all four of us in and there's room for a bigger table than ours if you wanted!
Then came even more evening viewings - back to a happy place - 2 viewings is good right?  one on Tuesday night and one on Wednesday night - both school nights, both nights really took their toll on my four year old - poor little soul.
The Tuesday viewer said our home was far superior to any of the other ones he'd viewed yet complained the bathroom was too small - well we manage with it as a family of four but you could change it to a wet room, or a walk in shower instead of bath if you really wanted even more space - I'm starting to wonder if the agent has lost interest in our property or isn't pointing these obvious things out to people? 

Things continued in this way and just when we were contemplating our choice of agent and considering swapping to a rival - afterall, It had come down to a choice of two for me, we had good news! Not only had we viewed a house that felt like "the one" but we also had an offer at guide price on our home! After some negotiating and three revisions, we had an offer accepted on the house we wanted to buy and we accepted the offer to buy our house so now we swap onto a whole other rollercoaster!

Emma in Bromley x


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Emma x