House not selling (with listing)

[Houseadvice26]

Posted here for traffic. Thoughts welcome please!

Purchased for £360k in 2023
Heavily renovated
Reduced gradually from £495k last year
Now on with a new EA for £400k

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/165327158#/?channel=RES_BUY

It’s the outside, the inside is stunning - the outside is very unattractive - fence falling down. The first picture looks unwelcoming - the garage door does it no favours nor does the driveway.. this is your issue.

I think for me the main thing is it's not a 4 bed family house.

It's a 2 bed bungalow with a couple of bedrooms squeezed into the roof.

(I know Op didn't do that).

I think the downstairs & plot size reflect that.

Lets try to be positive. It's got a lot of bedrooms so you are looking at a family house. It needs a garden. If people were being put off before then it's probably because the grass was in poor condition. Reinstate a lawn and mend the falling down fence, if it's yours. Get the photo retaken so you cant see it if not. People might want an easy to care for garden but paving and astroturf - dont think so.

Make sure streetview links to the right house. At the moment it shows a much more run down area.

The front of the house looked better when it was not painted black and it had a bit of green in front. You have to remove the weeds and it would be better painted back to its previous colour. Put a few plants out there for colour.

The interior is not to my taste at all. All the black and grey and white tiles reminds me of hospital wards. It looks cold. The stairs are in the living area and where you'd want to put a dining table to be in easy reach of the kitchen.

You'll need to stage it so people can imagine themselves living there - that means putting some furniture in the living/dining room, including a table and chairs. Add some towels in the bathroom. Put some flowers on the chest in the bedroom.

https://Zoopla.co.uk - free account lets you look at house prices and shows all the old sales details.

https://www.zoopla.co.uk/property/uprn/100121157908/

the outside areas looked really nice in these photos. It’s a shame to get rid of all the greenery.

Nobody, literally nobody, is put off by a well maintained garden. However, if you'd allowed it to become as much of a dump as you've allowed the front to become then I can see where negative comments would come in.

The paint job on the front of the house is awful. It looks patchy, not sealed properly and doesn't look like the right paint.

The tarmac on the semi circle, apart from being a monstrosity (what the fuck were you thinking ripping out the nice plants?) is a really poor finish and looks very odd in contrast with the old block paving and the tarmac on the road.

Why have you removed so much kitchen worktop space and storage?

Honestly the more I look at it, the worse it gets.

I think you've got an awful nerve doing such a shit "renovation" and expecting £135k more for it when you've made everything worse than it was and haven't even changed the kitchen units (which incidentally looked much better before you ripped the cupboards out, added a fridge which is way too big for 2m of worktop and painted it that awful green).

I think it looks drab out side, I think 'the weeds' on closer inspection are a few plants in a narrow gravel bed but don't look good. Too much grey going on, inside and out, grey is a bit passe now. The kitchen is really off putting, no sense of any kind of style to it and very basic cupboards look dated. It doesn't look like much storage space at all anywhere. Dormer bedrooms are off putting low ceilings restrict movement around a room, especially for tall people. Garden ?

This. The photos just aren't doing it justice and it is probably a nice house with some good features. Just looks unloved and as though you are desperate to sell..sorry

I would lay money that most prospective buyers have done the same detective work that everyone here has done and just thought, nah fuck that.

Have they even done that?

One look at the prison building aesthetic of the first pic, and I think 99% would scroll by.

I really think the original plan was to strip anything requiring maintenance, then let or sell as an HMO. But with no idea of the rules and regulations.

There can't possibly have been any other plan for what has been done. It's the antithesis of a family home.

Haven’t RTFT so apologies if I’m repeating info already given but I think you need to do the following:

• Get a virtual tour or walkthrough video added because without the floor plan, it’s tricky to understand which rooms which and where they are in relation to each other
• The external images need to be reshot; clean up the weeds, power wash the brick work, add some planters and shoot from an angle where you can see the front door.
• The living room needs staging; the chair and desk look sad. Rent or borrow some furniture to show how the space works.
• The kitchen looks poor; invest in new doors and handles to bring it in line with the standard of the rest of the house.

They’re definitely weeds! The OP and her husband seem not to have done any basic garden maintenance for a while. There’s no way I’d have presented the first picture on the listing in that way when weeding and adding some attractive planting could be done quickly and cheaply.

This. I can see the photos from when it was previously listed in May last year and those are better photos in that they are taken from better angles and the house looks more dressed, but the grey/monochrome thing is doing you no favours at all. Most people in real life do not want a monochrome, minimalist 'instaworthy' home, they want something that feels warm and cosy which is the opposite of what it's giving off at the moment. The green kitchen is going to put off a lot of buyers, and the floors and walls seem to be different in every room, it feels very confused with no continuity. The bathrooms are also very marmite. I don't know what possessed you to destroy that beautiful garden. Turf the garden back over, paint the rooms a neutral colour and dress the house with warm cosy furnishings to appeal to more people.

Sorry if I've missed this, is this the first time you've bought a house to renovate OP?

The photos are terrible! Plus you do need to stage the big living area to show it off more and why is there no pictures of utility area?

Needs more curb appeal, add some planters or something to the front.

I think you need to stage the inside too, modern interiors can look cold when empty.

Ah I’m actually so sad for you OP.

It’s definitely worth less now than when you started. The gardens are ruined, so is the kerb appeal so this needs lots of spend to rectify. The kitchen still needs a full refurb. The black grout in the bathroom gives an… interesting effect, and doesn’t match the bathroom floor in terms of style or decor which is a bit bizarre.

Who was your target audience for this house as it wouldn’t work for everyone I know!
Me and DH - no garden, not to our style so would need to spend so much on it to make it right for us. No obvious space to use to WFH.
Most of my friends with kids - no garden, difficult sleeping arrangements as you’re not on the same floor a your kids
My parents - no garden, kitchen too small to host family
My in laws - need a bungalow, but there’s no shower downstairs so unsuitable and they love to garden
My grandparents - no garden, not decorated in a way that would appeal so would need to reno every room.

The garden is such a miss on your part, but even if you accept that someone might prefer concrete, it’s presumably because they think it would be lower maintenance. But your pictures have so many weeds, it shows it’s a high maintenance paved garden which literally no one wants.

From my perspective, I love a garden and from what I can see of yours, it looks like hardstanding for caravans back there, not a space to sit with a beer in the sunshine. Weeds coming through concrete is the worst of all worlds. It isn't low maintenance and you can never, ever get the roots up to solve the problem. Your weeds are WEEDY.

The bedroom-to-living space ratio is weighted too heavily in favour of bedrooms for me to be arsed to go to the effort of sorting out the garden. There isn't enough downstairs space to accommodate potentially 2 adults and at least 3 kids. I don't like stairs coming down into living spaces as I don't find it relaxing or cosy, and the bedrooms upstairs don't have access to a toilet on the same floor so people would have to go downstairs in the middle of the night for a wee.

There are too many compromises for me to be bothered with even looking at it, when there are plenty of houses in the same price bracket that that don't have these issues.

You need to stage it and soften the interior.

The wooden herringbone flooring and the tiles in the bathroom spoil it for me. Could you break them up with rugs?

Oh, and least of your worries, but it says guide price. I don’t click on any property that says guide price as I assume it’s an auction sale.

My son is looking to buy currently. Part of what we do is look it up on street view and get ariel views. Unfortunately it looks so much better in street view and people will know this. A higher cost for a more unattractive home I think is turning people off.

The homes in the neighbourhood are family homes, I think you're trying to appeal to a different audience, who don't want converted bungalows with poor gardens. People who do want converted bungalows probably don't want grey boxes and a trashed garden.

The first photo is bad - would put people off straight away, could you put some greenery out front?

Get brand new photos taken - they are terrible, the house actually looks nice but the photos are low quality and blurry, it looks like you have taken them yourselves, take them on a sunny day. Absolutely stage it and make it look more family friendly.

Look at that once beautiful garden that potential new kids would have loved larking around in! 😞

I think that most people would prefer to buy the 2023 version and decorate to their own taste rather than pay extra for what you have done.

Is the kitchen an original from the 1950s? It looks like it.

I like your new bathrooms but apart from that I’m struggling to see what you’ve done other than completely destroy the outside space 😬.

In your listing it looks as though the patio doors go out on to a road. It wasn’t until I saw the 2023 photos I realised that was the garden!

i’m really sorry to say this but for me personally you’ve reduced the value rather than increased it.