01
The price is too high
This is the reason in most cases, and it is the one sellers resist hardest, understandably.
The clue is in your viewing numbers rather than your offer numbers. Plenty of viewings and no offers means the property is disappointing people once they arrive. Barely any viewings means the price is filtering you out before anyone looks properly.
Buyers search in brackets. If your house is worth £290,000 and you have listed it at £315,000, you are not appearing slightly expensive to the right buyers. You are appearing in a different search entirely, sitting next to nicer properties, and losing.
What to do: look at what has actually completed on comparable properties near you in the last six months. Not asking prices, completed prices, which are public on the Land Registry.
02
Your agent overvalued the property to win the instruction
Some agents quote a high figure to get the listing, then spend the next four months walking you down to something realistic. It is a well known tactic and it costs sellers months.
If two agents valued you at £280,000 and one said £320,000, and you went with the third one, that is worth thinking about now.
What to do: ask your agent directly for the completed comparables they used to justify the original figure. If they cannot produce them, you know where you stand.
03
The photographs are letting it down
Buyers decide in about two seconds of scrolling. Dark rooms, wide angle distortion, a bin in shot, curtains half drawn, photos taken in November when the garden is bare. Any of these will cut your viewing numbers substantially.
What to do: look at your listing on a phone alongside three competing properties in the same bracket. If you would not click yours, reshoot on a bright day, and pay for it if the agent will not.
04
The property needs work and buyers cannot fund it
A house that needs a new roof, rewiring, damp treatment or a full refit is a difficult open market sale, because the buyers who want a project are usually the buyers with the least spare cash. Anyone borrowing at high loan to value has nothing left after the deposit, and lenders may retain part of the loan until essential work is done.
This is why properties needing work often sit for six months and then sell to a builder anyway, at a lower figure than the seller could have had at the start.
What to do: get quotes for the essential work, not the cosmetic work. Then decide whether you fund it, price it in openly, or sell to a buyer who does not need a lender.
05
Something makes it hard to mortgage
If a surveyor or a lender flags a problem, your buyer pool shrinks to people paying cash. Common causes are a lease under 80 years, unusual construction, cladding on a block of flats, structural movement, spray foam in the roof, Japanese knotweed, a flying freehold, or work done without building regulations approval.
You often find out the hard way, when a sale collapses after a survey. If you have had two buyers pull out at the same stage, this is very likely your problem rather than bad luck.
What to do: work out which issue it is, then decide whether it can be fixed, insured around, or priced for. Our guide on why lenders decline properties goes through each cause.
06
There are tenants in it
Most residential buyers want vacant possession, and many lenders will not lend to an owner occupier on a property with a sitting tenant. That leaves you selling to investors, which is a smaller and more price sensitive market. Add an older energy rating and the pool narrows again, because incoming landlords are pricing in upgrade work.
What to do: either agree an end to the tenancy before marketing, which takes time and carries its own risk, or market specifically to investors and cash buyers rather than to the general public.
07
Viewings are too hard to arrange
If your agent can only get access on Saturday mornings, or every viewing needs three days notice, you will lose buyers who are looking at six properties this week and will simply see the other five.
What to do: give the agent a key, let them do accompanied viewings, and allow evening slots.
08
You are not in a position to proceed
Buyers ask about your position early. If you have not found anywhere to move to, or your own purchase depends on selling first with nothing lined up, some buyers will walk. Anyone with a deadline of their own does not want to wait four months while you look.
What to do: be honest about your position and clear about your flexibility. If you can move into rented, say so, because it makes you far more attractive.
09
Genuinely difficult local factors
Sometimes it really is the house. Backing onto a railway line, a busy road, a pylon, no parking on a street with permit pressure, a short lease in a block with a poor management company, flood risk on the insurance record. None of this is fixable, and pretending otherwise wastes months.
What to do: price for it from the start rather than discovering it through six failed viewings.
When you have had enough of waiting
There comes a point where the frustration stops being worth it. Another set of photographs, another reduction, another viewing that goes quiet, and all the while you are still paying the mortgage, still tidying the house every Saturday morning, and still no closer to moving. If you have been at this for six months, that feeling is not impatience. It is a reasonable response to a process that is not working.
At that stage it is worth knowing there is another route. House Buy Fast buys with our own funds, so there is no chain, no mortgage application and no agent commission, and we can usually complete in one to three weeks or work to a later date if that suits you better.
The trade off is straightforward and worth stating plainly. A cash offer is below full market value. What you get in exchange is a fixed price, a fixed date, and no fees taken out of it. If you have time and a straightforward property, staying on the open market will almost certainly net you more. If you have a deadline, or you have already watched one sale collapse, the sums often look different than people expect. Finding out the figure costs you nothing, and it gives you something concrete to weigh the waiting against.
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