Main Line Homes Blog

This is an unofficial survey on why a house does not sell. Please give the 5 reasons why you think a house does not reach settlement or get an offer that is acceptable to the seller?

The top five reasons I think are:

• Priced unrealistically for the market
• Location
• Curb appeal
• Lack of maintenance and upkeep
• House is dirty or untidy

So what do you think?

Wawa seems to be inspecting the old Eckerd property on Lancaster Ave in Berwyn to see if they might be able to open a Wawa Gas station and store on the site. The site on the corner with Bridge and Lancaster Avenue in the heart of Berwyn would be a high visibility site and location that has been empty for a long time.

Tests seem to be underway, however they have not as yet according to sources made any approach to Easttown township for permission.

What do you think? Is this good for Berwyn or not? How do you think Easttown will react? Is this a chance for the township to make improvements to the intersection there?

How are you processing your short sales? When is it under contract?

When you receive an offer and forward to your sellers' banks are you marking these properties under contract in your MLS? As brokers are you processing checks or waiting for bank approval?

When do you consider the home is under contract? Whilst banks are supposed to be speeding the processing of short sales through their systems I am finding that it still takes a long time to get any answers. As such sellers are requesting homes stay active on the market to find alternative buyers if the original buyer looses patience with the process.

How are your MLS's choosing to react to these challenges?

I recently had to fly to the UK when my mother died unexpectedly and needed as one of her executors to get her home listed for sale. The British system is so totally different to the American system it got me considering the differences.

Firstly there is no MLS, all listings are sole agency, with the agent representing the seller. Brokers/Agents will not show the listing of another company as there is no buyer agency in the UK. Whilst there is no MLS all listings go on the internet, but whislt buyers are looking on the interent, most register with one or more agents so they hear about listings before the even get on the internet.

Secondly commissions are much lower, ranging from 1-1.5%. Now what is important when selecting an agent is really their database of possible buyers who have registered with them and their knowledge of the local market. Any English high street will have three or more real estate agencies and none of their listings overlap. Because of this consideration I actually thought they had a good reason for charging more, if they can prove the size of the database of potential clients.

Also pricing homes is different as "stamp duty" the tax paid by the buyer when purchasing jumps up at different levels, it does not slide proportional to the house. for example at five hundred thousand pounds it jumps by an extra five thousand pounds and obviously if you buy at the top of the range your tax is proportionally lower than at the bottom of  the slice. So pricing a home over five hundred thousand or wherever the breaks happen needs careful consideration.

I found it interesting to be on the other side, especially in such a different market. After interviewing three agents and hearing their analysis of the local market and their price suggestions I made a gut decision based on the agents not the price. All were excellent, all said the market was strong locally and for the same reasons, their pricing was varied, but ultimately I felt the one I chose had the best placement of offices in the area to pick up buyers who were looking and hopefully had a larger database of buyers. There was little competition as houses have been selling quickly.

Because of the way financing works in the UK, you also develop chains where one buyer is dependant on another to move on, and it is important for an agent to ascertain how strong or weak a buyers chain is when they make an offer. So you also need an agent who works well with others and can find this information out for you when you need to decide on a buyer if there are multiple offers.

All sellers are required to have an energy audit done, and the same provider of this does a 2-d and 3-d floorplan. Agents use less photos than us, using them more as a teaser than to totally show the house.

Here is the listing on Rightmove.com one of the leading UK property sites.

To date in one week there has been a lot of interest, with lots of showings and we hope to receive several offers soon.