Any suggestions on why house isn’t selling (with listing)

[Sheepcountryside78]

Posting for traffic. Reduced a couple of times previously - would welcome any opinions, brutal or otherwise!

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/161097428#/?channel=RES_BUY

Silly things like the wrong loo seat will put some people off. I’d try to get a proper replacement that matches the loo. I’d also try to give the living room a better layout if possible.

Agree with previous posts re the shots of the front of the house. It’s actually very confusing.

Echoing others - put some trellis fencing between you and the neighbour with pots and planting to delineate and hide their garage door. Remove the old plants you’ve got out the front and make more of the main entrance door.

Can you switch the bedroom round so the desk is in the recess/understairs and the bed isn’t squished.

Or just drop the price rather than spending money to improve it. You definitely need some more photos, especially of the bedrooms and driveway/front door.

The living room looks quite small and studenty I wonder how you could style it to look more cozy

Definitely put the desk under the stairs instead of the bed, or remove the desk for the photos and put back.

Photo number 10 (which looks like it was taken from inside the cot), I had to look at the floor plan to realise the side of the cot wasn’t a banister and that’s not a storage space/bedroom with no door on the landing.

Remove one sofa from the living room for the photos as two makes it look like a squeeze.

The back garden doesn’t bother me but others are right about the front. The inside is really lovely but the front of the house makes it look like a do-er upper. Plants in nice pots, jet wash driveway, different angle to hide the neighbour’s blue door

Also just noticed - get rid of the child’s book case and dolls house in the lounge.

And maybe the coffee table is too big for the space. I’d switch for a smaller one.

Lovely house, really easy to fix,
jet wash all outside, front and back including the walls of the house,
cut the grass,
then get more photos, make them take the pics from all angles and then decide which ones look best to use together,

you have to literally follow them around taking everything out of each room for each photo…

move some furniture around, the longer sofa in my opinion would look better on the wall opposite the tv, I’d also get a light coloured rug for in here,
remove everything off the worktops and table for pics,
remove as much as you can from the bathrooms for pics, inc shampoos and towels,
remove desk and laundry bin and put single bed in better position in bedroom,
Remove clothes rails in bedroom,
remove toys from everywhere inc garden
remove the shelving at the back of the living room,

The goal is to make each room look spacious, and outside look pristine.

I think lastly, I would paint your garden gate, fence and shed along with all the jet washing as I agree with others it makes it look very neglected.

Get a cheap paint sprayer and it will take you 1-2hrs max to get 2-3 coats of paint on all that.

I think you need to try and improve the smallest bedrooms layout …. I’d barely class it as a bedroom if I had three children . Move the bed so it runs parallel to the window, and get fitted storage under the stairs, then smaller desk , smaller chair. The other bedroom with the open clothes hanging rail and the crib — take that rail away it just it makes it look as if the house is really short on storage . The bold wallpapers are a marmite thing - I’d go neutral also with the bright blue wall. In the bathroom take all that gumph off the glass and move the storage unit to the tiled wall and reduce what you have out to a bare minimum - it’s a lovely bathroom showcase it. Kerb appeal - power wash drive , dress doorway with a couple of planters ( filled with healthy planting!) it’s a lovely house and will sell I’m sure , but I would be thinking where is everything going to go and I’m going to have redecorate - and that would put me off I’m afraid.
Good luck !

The front is a deal breaker for me..the lack of boundary. There should be shrubs, a wall or a fence at least. Then the blue door would be harder to see, I would suggest a freestanding fence, or perhaps some large flower pots on the boundary and a clean up of your driveway with some added greenery. I could see past the clutter (I’ve seen much worse) and split garden for the right price.

It's the front of the house. Looks nice inside but not from the outside..clean up the drive, add some plants and some colour. Is there no front door?

@thatsmyhousethat's amazing! How funny to see it on here.

priority number one - make a feature of the front door, get that photoed and featured . Number two- tell the agent to take a photo just of your house and not to include the house next door or their garage door - this is confusing for people. Number 3 - remove the bed from the smallest room and keep it just as an office; get a new photo of it as an office. Number 4 - remove the railings from the back garden just to open it up a bit. (Keep them in case buyer wants to reinstall), and borrow a nice outdoor table and chairs for the grassy area at the back. 5 - remove any clutter or personal items from the remaining bedrooms

once all this is done get the agent to take new photos and re-launch it

1. I’m always dubious when the first picture isn’t the front of the house. I always assume it’s fairly ugly, or they’re hiding something, and would probably not bother s rolling further.

2. Lounge: The sofas facing opposite each other makes the room look narrow and the room smaller.

3. kerb appeal - as mentioned above.

4. picture 9 - bed under eaves. Makes the room look small. Can you get rid of this bed and just have it as an office?

5. picture 10 - clothes on open rail - emphasises lack of wardrobe space. Hide the clothes in a wardrobe for photo and viewings.

6. Garden - as others have said, needs sprucing and some colour put in.

The majority of photos are fine. It just needs some tweaking.

Looking at the office/bedroom I wouldnt have believed a bed fit in it without that photo. Butwith the desk in it looks small. Id take the desk out an stage appropriately.

I think the whole house looks cramped and I think soft of that is photo angles. I think someone of it is the dark walls.

I think out front id tidy and add some flowers to give kerb appeal

I keep looking at pic 17 and still can't get my head around it. So you have a double-drive that's all yours/not shared, and your neighbour just has what looks like a path up to what looks like a garage door but is too small (but too big for a normal door) and surely can't be a garage as it's all they have at the front of their house and there's no path down the side for them to have a main door there. It's pretty strange and confusing. Or is just one half of the double-drive yours, the other is your neighbours and you only have one window at the front but they have two and they get inside via the garage?? Whatever you do, make it clearer what your actual house is and try to minimise the strangeness and confusion.

That aside, I love that a former owner of your house has found this thread!

Is it comfy watching the tv with it on the wall with the sofas where they are at that angle? It looks like there's nowhere else to put it

Ask the neighbour to paint that door or pay to have it done or get a better photo taken that crops it out.

Kids rooms are very cramped looking.

Okay I've looked on streetview and can see that the angle of pic 17 was part of the confusion - that the garage door and 'path' are bigger than they look and that the rest of the drive is yours. I still don't get how your neighbour gets into their house though and if that much of their downstairs is a garage, their living space must be tiny!

Here are what the portals say:

Bank of England inflation calculator: 372,896
Zoopla: low 297 medium 312 high 328
Houseprices.io: 284,250
Nationwide: 284,250

It's not often I see Houseprices and Nationwide agree to the penny, so they must both be taking in a lot of local sold data.

The agent you have listed it with has had to reduce the price on around 50% of their 43 listings in the 200-400k market. I would say they either don't know what people are prepared to pay these days, or they're overpricing in order to get you to sign a contract.

I can see you've changed the flooring, but what other upgrades have you made since 2018? Tangible ones, such as new windows, things being extended etc. Not just decor choices.

Houseprices.io also suggests that you overpaid in 'real' terms by 10.6% in 2018 (that's an inflation adjusted figure) 25k. I quite often see houses that went for more than they should have years ago sit on the market for a long time. The last two to sell in your postcode at a profit were both sold in 2020 and 2021, when everyone was overpaying after people could finally look at houses after covid. Other than that, the last three that have sold made a 'real' loss.

In fact, looking at the colour coding on io, I can time whether people are prepared to overpay for your area or not literally in sequence with finances at the time

2009 to 2015

Almost all red or orange: this fits the exact patterns I've seen elsewhere after the 2008 financial crash

2015 (later) to 2018

Green

2020 and 2021 - people had saved up a load of money not being able to go out during covid so had more for deposits, and then there was a stamp duty holiday

Green

2022 to 2024 (expensive mortgages)

Back to orange again

2025

Stamp duty back to normal levels again.

I liked the house until I saw the last picture. I thought that was your ugly blue garage! Can a better photo be taken of the front of the house without that in it? It’s not clear what house is yours.

Compared to an older listing of the house (https://www.zoopla.co.uk/property-history/57-bayleaf-avenue/swindon/sn2-2rx/47399676/) you've done a lot to make it nicer and more spacious.

I think people here can be a bit harsh - the outside looks alright to me! But it's a slow market just now and the house is a bit of a tricky layout. I agree with a few others that the living room pictures are a bit contradictory - I'd probably replace the one looking at the blue wall with a one from a slightly different angle as it does look rather long and thin like that. I'd also try taking a picture of the garden from a higher angle, like in the old listing, because it makes it look a lot bigger.

If you have a double driveway I'd specify that in the description, because it's not really clear from the pictures. I also think you should really change this sentence: 'the two floors below offer three more great-sized bedrooms' so that at the most it's 'two more good size bedrooms and a single/study'.

I think it looks like a detached house that has been split into two.

The house is cleanly decorated and nicely furnished, and I like the tiered garden but it could be dressed to show how it can be used as social or playing space. However, for a 4-bedroom house there is not lots of living space, and three of the bedrooms look really pokey from the pictures, the one with the cot and the one with the single bed and desk especially. Can you stage to make it seem more spacious? I agree about kerb appeal. It's a nice enough house, but not one that is anything particularly 'special' from the point of view of architectural appeal, design of interiors, layout, space and so on. So if it is not priced as a bargain, it may just be that there are nicer or more appealing similar properties in the area.

Get a different photo of the kerbside view of the house, one that doesn't include the awful-looking garage door of your neighbour - that alone would put me off.

Before the new picture is taken, fill those empty flower tubs with colourful flowering plants, fill the space with them. Make it look cared-for.

The bedroom in photo 9 looks really cramped. I'd remove the desk from it for a new photo, could it be relocated to the top landing? Get rid of the hanging rail, it emphasises a lack of space!

All of this ^

The front elevation pic is very confusing and the neighbour's blue garage door isn't helping your kerb appeal. It definitely needs a photo showing your semi only @Sheepcountryside78, possibly with next door greyed out as another poster (sorry, I can't recall who) suggested.

It needs staging inside and out to look as spacious as possible (but EA ridiculous wording about not wasting a single inch removed!) and the garden needs to look as though potential buyers would want to spend time out there - think 'lifestyle'!

Parts of your house are lovely, but has it really increased in value that much since you purchased it (assuming yours is the one sold in Oct 2018 for 236k)?