Please judge this house!?

[cookielove]

Hello, my mum is trying to sell her house please give honest feedback on the house and the photos.

What can we do to sell this house???

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/133383485?utm_campaign=property-details&utm_content=buying&utm_medium=sharing&utm_source=copytoclipboard#/&channel=RES_BUY

The third bedroom is the office. The fourth bedroom isn’t shown, as far as I can make out.

Even a wide angle lense and magic can’t make a 2.6m by 2.4m room look like a bedroom.

Large box room is probably how an estate agent would never market it.

I am not familiar with the area but there is no way I would pay that sort of money to live next to a railway line!

@cookielove we had 49 viewings of our house and it didn’t sell. We re listed at another time, the market had changed and it sold in the first weekend. This was in Surrey but a similar area, good reach of London and outstanding schools. For us we didn’t make any change to the house itself, it really was the market and families from Hong Kong buying in safe areas near to good schools

This house is lovely but the audience for it is going to be tricky . You need a horse riding family with daughters and an ageing parent, who want views but need to be close to town . Or a train nerd .

Be open about the price. I think the oil heaters will put people off, especially when this went on the market when the winter energy bills were all over the media. People are afraid of the unknown . There’s also the threat of nearby development . So resisting in the summer when people are warmer and thinking about paddling pools and pimms might help .

Other than that see if you can up the country charm. Welly racks and fireplaces .Does the house have an interesting history ?. Make sure the estate agent knows how to respond to issues people might throw at them .

The house it's attached to looks neater and tidier, which doesn't help.

The concrete driveway is really scruffy and needs a good weed and sweep.

The garden looks half finished too, and half the pictures are varying angles of this.

The interior is not homely. It looks hard and severe, no nice colours. Quite an industrial palette. Flowers? Cushions? Throws?

I think someone mentioned it earlier but I think that you need to make the front door somehow. It's an ideal time for bright bedding plants so I would get some in large pots. If you can face some gardening I'd be tempted to line the path with lavenders or similar. It feels a bit unloved out there.

As a side note the EA will be so confused by the huge up tick in views

Hello thanks all again.

My mum is on her own, my dad passed last year and had been declining over the last few years and they were unable to put as much in to the house that that they had in the past. My mum is in her 70's she is tired and she just wants to move in to a house closer to her kids where she doesn't have to worry about mowing a big garden or whatever crops up next.

We help as much as we can, but we have kids so its quite limited what we can do at the weekends.

I have said previously but understand it can be missed. The house has sold, due to a problem with their house the sale has not progressed through. She has had lots of viewings when it was intially on but since it was relisted we have had one. The estate agent repeatedly said it was due to no one selling in the area.

Agree the train line isn't idle but lots of houses are next to train lines and you really do not notice it after a while.

We are gonna smarten up the front and have already started on the back patio.

Mum has started speaking to new agents so hopefully we can get it sold.

Good Luck to your mum.

It's a lovely house and the area is desirable & expensive - especially being so close to STAGS school. A bit of smartening up outside and some new photos on a (hopefully)sunny day and she will be well set to get it sold soon.

Good luck. I’d learn from the mistakes made over the last year. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but you probably could have sold it for £850-£900k last July. The EA got greedy at the wrong time. The sizeable amount of money leftover after her onward sale (assume she is majorly downsizing) would have then been invested probably in Autumn which would have gained a fair bit since then. That or it would have been gifted to you and your siblings starting the 7-year clock.

Hi Cookielove,

We have been to see your Mum's house for a viewing, which is beautiful. We love the garden, the house is gorgeous, the outbuildings are great and the location is beautiful. It didn't matter that the house wasn't 'trendy' as it would have been nice to update it ourselves. Its the kind of house that you fall in love with and therefore the pictures don't really matter. I think maybe advertising as a smallholding (with someone like rural scene) might work. It only takes 1 person to find it and fall in love with it but unfortunately because of the train line your audience is smaller than your average St Albans house but if someone wanted the space for animals the train line wouldn't matter as much. It was only the train line that put us off nothing else. Literally it was the perfect house for us were it not for the train line. It would be a lovely place to bring up a family.
I hope you sell it soon.