Why won't my house sell

[StopSearching]

My house has been on the market for nearly two years. Recently we took it off and remarketed with new agents. No viewings. We've been so patient for two years but it's getting me down now.

I just want to move on. Nothing wrong with where we live, it's a lovely little town but we have plans and this is all that stopping us. I've stopped looking for houses to buy as they are sold before we even get viewings.

Anyone else having similar problems? It's so frustrating.

There looks to be lots on the market in your area, and probably not a lot of activity. So what are you going to compete on, to make someone buy your house as opposed to, say, this: www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/80942017#/

Your fourth bedroom is tiny and your loft bedroom put in by cowboys, which puts it at the bottom of the 3 bed category. You have let the house fall into a state of neglect, and while the work you have had done is good (bathroom), it isn’t what most buyers want (kitchen). You don’t have much of an eye or appetite for interiors. That leaves cost. I think it would sell for £280k as is - more like £300k if you clear up the big maintenance issues listed on this thread.

Please post again if/when it sells!

877 posts!

Sadly, I think there are just too many issues with the house to get a decent price.

1 No ongoing maintenance has been done so it looks tatty. It looks, sadly, as if it's never had a lick of paint or repairs for years.

2 The location on the street is awful. Really cramped and tucked into a tight corner. No real frontage.

3 The dormer for the extension looks weird and I'd query if it has full building regs (assume you had a proper survey done @StopSearching before you bought?) The shower room is not nice. Far better to have replaced with a toilet and basin. It might not fulfil fire regs either if there is no proper fire door at the top of the stairs.

4 The decor looks tired and dull. Maybe give the bedrooms a make over with white duvets and pastel throws?

5 Kitchen and dining room need knocking through.

If I were buying, I'd offer at least 50K less than your asking price and that's not even factoring in the building work that may be needed or the houses planned for out the back of you.

fix a reserve and sod the estate agents then put it into auction maybe?

I agree I’d rather have a toilet and sink in that top room than a shower.

@MyAnacondaMight

There looks to be lots on the market in your area, and probably not a lot of activity. So what are you going to compete on, to make someone buy your house as opposed to, say, this: www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/80942017#/

Your fourth bedroom is tiny and your loft bedroom put in by cowboys, which puts it at the bottom of the 3 bed category. You have let the house fall into a state of neglect, and while the work you have had done is good (bathroom), it isn’t what most buyers want (kitchen). You don’t have much of an eye or appetite for interiors. That leaves cost. I think it would sell for £280k as is - more like £300k if you clear up the big maintenance issues listed on this thread.

Please post again if/when it sells!

Sorry but that house is ghastly. Not much better than the other one.

I have skimmed the thread and agree that it looks like an unloved rental. I know you hate it and haven’t enjoyed living there, and that’s fine, but goodness it is writ large in those photos!

You are depending on a viewer to see potential and most people are unable to do that. They need it literally laid out for them so that is what you have to do.

Either find an Instagram account that you love, and copy the house to the last detail or hire a home staging person to do it fir you.

www.independent.co.uk/money/mortgages/having-problems-selling-your-house-it-s-time-call-home-stagers-2265657.html

For instance, this person’s home was GRIM when she bought it but is amazing now: instagram.com/jade.doutch

There is some structural work to do, but a couple of thousand pounds on the more superficial decorative elements and accessories, with modern, trendy bedclothes & rugs etc. from H&M or la redoute will take it the rest of the way.

Honestly the sofas are grim throughout - as this is an emergency, I would eBay them this weekend & replace with SMALLER, more attractive/trendy sofas in light colours OR velvet (eBay - www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sofa-Workshop-Eden-Teal-Velvet-2-5-Seater-Excellent-Condition-Pick-Up-Penarth-/233912613763?_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49292 ) or an IKEA Sandbacken which is cheap as chips and has a modern shape but is pretty small. SMALL is crucial here though.

This is harsh but you need to SHOW how nice the house could be. Right now you are showing how much you hate it, and people pick up on that.

If the measurements for the Bedroom4/Study are right, I think it should still count as a bedroom based on the size of others I've seen - there should be just enough room for a single bed alongside the window with a small bedside table next to it, and a wardrobe on the opposite wall. I'd want to measure it though, as it can be hard to visualise when dressed as a study.

I am shocked at the prices to be honest and for the house you get in your area!!

The op says it has building regs, so she’s good there, and will have the documentation to present when requested if it was ever sold, if not it would need technically to be sold as a two bed with loft space.

I agree an office is a huge selling point at the moment, I think though the desire to sell it as a four bed is due to th fact if it was a four bed you can command a a higher price.

There is an additional hurdle though, because whomever buys will have a survey done as the mortgage company will want to see the value before lending , unless it’s a cash buyer, so say she sold for 300, it could be valued at 275 by the surveyor, depending on what the surveyor sees, and based on the fact the field is being developed, the condition, and it’s not four bed. Which would potentially cost them any sale if the surveyor values it less than the sale price.

However as the ops had damp specialist in and structural surveyors she can present the reports to show no issues there.

Make pic 4 the first picture instead.

Delete pics 1 2 and 3

Move pics 5 and 6 to the end

If the circle in the garden is meant to be a patio add some chairs as it looks like a well to me when flicking through the pics

Add some colour /feature walls to each room to make it look more appealing.

Pic 13 paint that brick wall white?

Try "staging" which might mean updating the dated furniture /(mismatched furniture doesnt make the house look loved. Could any of it be painted for example ) adding soft furnishings too

Pic 16 take down the overhead cupboards they look dated

Pic 17 add a pic above the head board (as well as painting a wall etc)

Add a pic of bathroom

Then relist with a slightly Reduced price

If you want to not reduce the selling price then you need to do a number of things.

I think the repairs and repainting needs to be a decent job done by a decent professional.

I don't think you notice all the imperfections that others see. Who painted your house?

Doing a shoddy job won't help sell the house.

Find a friend or relative who has a really lovely house and get them to come and advise how to make your house look better. But be aware you may be offended and resistant to what they say.

Paying someone to stage the house would be best.

Pressure wash the drive and some pots at the front door with flowers in.

Was the small bedroom/study affected by the loft extension?

I think it's important to show it could be used as a bedroom by putting a single bed in there.

It doesn't look big enough to me and I imagine many potential buyers think the same.

The house you posted as the same isn’t the same, it’s much nicer.

I think the problem is that you can’t imagine your house as a home. You’ve gone too far in the decluttering. It looks like you’ve got these enormous pieces of furniture and placed them in the rooms in a hurry. It looks bleak and unloved (which makes me think about the state of repairs etc).

Have another look at the link you posted to the home you think is similar and notice how the furniture is smaller, lighter in colour, positioned in such a way that you could imagine people using it and has some smaller items, like cushions or fruit bowls, in place to help it seem like a useable space.

I look at your property and think half way house while I look at the other property and I think family home.

885 posts, the majority of which are saying it is overpriced. OP thinks it isn't overpriced. The house is going to be on the market until something changes - either the OP lowers the price or does quite a lot of renovation.

As I said upthread, it looks exactly like my Mum's 75 year old deceased friend's house after her family had removed her personal belongings. It's dated and needs at least 50 K of work doing on it to bring it up to the sort of living standard families in 2021 expect.

Kitchen is too small and most people would want to knock that through to make a kitchen diner. That means people will need to buy a whole new kitchen.
The bedroom in the loft is pretty grim - sorry. It could make a nice master bedroom with proper en suite or a room for an older teenager who needs a bit more privacy. But again, it's going to need a lot of work doing on it.
Then you've got the water damage.
And new carpets or other flooring throughout plus all paintwork doing.
That's the minimum.

The shoddy renovations and badly done paintwork remind me of many student houses or rented places I've been in.

If you watch 'Houses under the Hammer' the estate agents always comment on high spec/low spec finishes when they determine the final selling price figures.

Low spec finishes are sufficient for the rental market. High spec finishes for selling the house on.

Op you haven't said why you want to sell. But I think it could be a really nice family home but it needs money spent on it.

The exposed pipes need covered.
The artex needs to go.
The kitchen would be better as a kitchen dinner.
The green hall carpet is a tad wild, it needs to go.

But ultimately you either, reduce the price and let someone else do it to their taste or you do it.

If it was me I'd cover up the damp patches. Remove the bleach bottle in the downstairs loo (it says more about lack of storage than anything else) Juggle the photos around. And reduce the price.

It's just struck me that there is not a single table lamp in any of the downstairs rooms and only one bedside light in the upstairs bedroom, so you must only ever have those ghastly ceiling lights to illuminate the rooms. That is never a good idea; table lamps make everything look softer and not so stark.

OP you have taken feedback so well! I hope it helps and that you do manage to get the house sold. You spoke about why you thought the house was worth 110k more than you paid for it. I'm not sure you're looking at this entirely correctly. The kitchen is now too dated to add value and that was on the list of improvements you made. I'm sure it gave you many years of pleasure so it was worth doing it for that but it's now so dated it's added no value to the house. I think the same for the garden room. If it were just a separate room then some people like those and might pay more. But being open plan is a problem for many people as a plastic and glass room is always a significant source of heat loss. I would take a conservatory down nowadays having had, and hated one so would consider them to decrease the value personally. Perhaps not everyone agrees but as it is such a split market and as taking yours down means also rebuilding a wall, I doubt this adds any value. I do think you are starting to think on the right lines re: repairing things and re-decorating but it may be a bigger job than you actually have in mind at the moment. It's not just patching the ceiling properly, it looks like all the doors and woodwork needs preparing and painting (and putting on new hardware as the painted over door catches are very tatty looking), and updating some things like cupboard doors, perhaps putting toilet in 'shower room' instead of shower, replacing cupboard doors on the landing, putting pipes in the wall in downstairs toilet and replacing suite and floor, possibly putting in doors to separate the garden room, open planning the kitchen to dining room, redecorating whole house. You have a great deal of work to do to modernise the house. In some ways you need to make a tricky decision now. Either you spend a great deal of time and effort updating many many aspects of the house - which will cost many thousands of pounds - or dramatically drop the price so you are much more competitive - min 10% off but you would need to consider offers at 20% less. I don't want you to dabble with a few things thinking that will make the house sell and then be in the worst of both worlds where you still need to drop 20% but have also spend 3k on new carpets and painting ceilings.

I'd also advise against describing a shed as a home office even if it does have power and light. This makes you look shady and makes people wonder what else is being fudged. You can point out the power and light but that does not a home office make.

@PandemicAtTheDisco

Was the small bedroom/study affected by the loft extension?

I think it's important to show it could be used as a bedroom by putting a single bed in there.

It doesn't look big enough to me and I imagine many potential buyers think the same.

The small study isn't big enough to be a legal bedroom. Someone pointed it out upthread

I thought that use as a 'legal bedroom' was more related to getting extra housing benefit based on room size - rather than whether the bedroom could actually be used as a bedroom?

Can sellers be sued for mis selling if the room is too small?

OP your house has so much potential

but its tired and needs a lot of tic which is going to cost, so the price is important and when I can buy a house round the corner (so to speak) for 25k less..

I would want the master bedroom to have a loo on the same floor, so would wonder why their is a shower but no loo? not enough room or another reason? As the window could be changed for a Juliet balcony

the kitchen lounge and sun room could all be open plan and give a feeling of space - at present there are no clean lines when you look at the phot from the front of the house to the back. You may think this doesn't matter but it leads to the house looking tired and for a house that is 20 years old doesn't give the modern look or add character

The house hasn't been cared for, the downstairs loo (yes I did notice you do have one) is really sad looking.

what would I do to sell it

paint the house and doors, all of them off white (including the louvered doors in partial blue) replace the carpets

make the kitchen look like its used

paint the utility door to the garage and dress the utility

or reduce the price by 30k and get it marketed as a projected

get planning for an extension across the back of the house

really like the dinning area vibe

@Meltinthemiddle

I am shocked at the prices to be honest and for the house you get in your area!!

I'm shocked too but in a different way!

In my area that house would be £550K at least

@PandemicAtTheDisco

I thought that use as a 'legal bedroom' was more related to getting extra housing benefit based on room size - rather than whether the bedroom could actually be used as a bedroom?

Can sellers be sued for mis selling if the room is too small?

I’m pretty sure it means you shouldn’t describe it as a bedroom in an add like this because it won’t be valued as such? The mortgage company will consider it a closet and instantly knock off a chunk so it’s impossible to sell as a bedroom. People buying therefore will know that it affects value

@StopSearching I think you have taken this thread in really good humour.

I've looked and looked at the kitchen pictures and can't work out where the fridge is....

Is it in there or in the garage/ utility?

My personal take is you need to decide if you have the appetite to really redecorate or just want to save the money / hassle and sell at a lower price.

We just sold a house which needed work and after discussion with the estate agent sold it as it was and accepted the price reduction.