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

Oh wow, just seen the old listing. The old garden was gorgeous. Could you even do some pebbles and grass plants in the old semi circle?

Front of the house picture is awful. It put people off

Whilst you've put the work in, it's all cosmetic and nothing tackles the issues with the functional layout. If I wanted to make this a family home I'd already be stacking up the big money thinking of all the changes id want to make....
The fireplace is in a stupid position. I'd tear the whole this out. Turn the stairs the other way and move the toilet to under the stairs.If you can build a side extension to make a nicer entrance, great. You can then divide off the bedrooms and family bathroom to make a downstairs "kid sleeping" situation. This can also give you some more storage space.

The utility is a bit redundant. Like a giant corridor of nothing. if you shortened it and made it more of a laundry room this would be more useable. It makes sense to still keep access to the garage though. If this is a decent space with storage then great. Show it.

The kitchen needs replacing and I'd take down the wall dividing the kitchen from the living space, puting in a peninsula with hob on and turning the rear wall of the kitchen into a wall of oven / fridge etc.

Looks like the lighting is all spotlights which gives me the creeps, id want to sort that out.

Upstairs the eaves storage must run on both sides, could this be transformed with better access from the bedrooms? Also a dormer window on the bedroom with just a skylight would be good, even better if it could be a window all the way to the floor as these rooms feel pokey and dark. Also where would you put wardrobes? You'd end up using one as a walk in dressing room come guest bedroom and treating the whole upstairs like a master with en suite.

As for the garden, I'd want a wrap around patio, some decent fencing and a lawn.Why the hell you'd tear that up I have no idea, grass is better than plastic sheeting .

Good luck OP. For the area and the price I'd be looking elsewhere ....

That first picture is hugely off-putting. No pics of the back garden would make me suspicious and make me question what else you could be hiding. I would also be questioning why you've dropped the price by almost £100k in less than a year. Tthis screams 'dud' not factoring in the 'What a ball ache it's going to be making it modern' element.

Also hold on

The living room had almost floor to ceiling windows, and now they're halved?!

And where's the cupboards/fitted wardrobes gone in the bedrooms?

💔

Ripping out a mature garden is criminal and will have certainly lost you money. Absolute madness.

It’s unclear who you think the target market is. Layout could appeal to elderly / disabled people needing everything on one level (or anticipating that need) - would be lovely for grandparents, for example, setting up top bedrooms for grandchildren to visit while mostly living downstairs themselves. But then you’d want bathrooms that are more disabled friendly like a large walk in shower rather than having to climb into a bath. Could possibly appeal to a family although bedrooms on two levels isn’t ideal. In either case the decor is soulless and not reminiscent of either cosy retirement or busy family. Kitchen looks cheap and old. So grey. Personally I’d have been more likely to buy it before renovation — obviously knowing I’d have to replace kitchen and bathroom and redecorate everything, but that’s all doable and I can choose what I like. And the garden would have been a huge selling point for me. As it is I’d be paying for new stuff that I still don’t like and would want to replace (and I’d feel bad for doing so) and a mess of a garden that will take years and loads of money to recover.

Hopefully you’re able to take this as a learning opportunity and if you do another renovation you’ll think more carefully about your target market and not destroy one of the biggest selling points of the house!

It would be the lack of a proper garden for me (front and back as I can’t see either). Gravel or plastic grass would be an absolute no from me.

The ripped them both out and replaced with tarmac and black sheeting

Trying to sell that for £495k after buying it for 360k two years previous seems rather greedy to me. Can't quite get my head around that. Doubt you had 140k worth of work done.

And it doesn't seem worth anywhere near 500k even now. Looks OK but nothing special, it's swindon and garden small. You can get nice 3 bed in south London with a garden for that.

Have you bought that hoping to upgrade and make a quick buck? That sort of thing is pushing people out of the housing market - people who could have bought at 360k but can't buy this. If you did, sorry but I'm judging you. Either way you've priced that way too high.

To be honest it all looks a bit dreary. I don’t really know what pic 2 is, I can see a toilet and what is the other room, a shower? Is this a bedroom?

Sorry for going off topic but I've planted some purple cyclamen bulbs (corms?!) and they've not done anything and I'm sad 😔 😭

Sorry OP but this is the major issue.

You took a lovely mid-century style home, which has it's own unique aesthetic, and tried to cover it up with 2026 looks.

It doesn't work. It worked before.

Your 2026 style would look great on a modern house. It doesn't work on a mid-century bungalow.

It would be like taking a Victorian terrace and trying to make it look 50s space age. Wrong proportions, styles, colour schemes, use of space. It's not going to work.

I'm afraid in your efforts to make it "insta-worthy" you have, to put it bluntly, butchered it.

My advice would be to put the front and garden back to how they were, insofar as reasonably practical, and then make the interior as neutral as possible as much as you can. But the key is going to be to get that exterior right. I would guess most people won't be clicking on the listing at all with that cover photo.

Agree about ripping out a mature garden. any passing thought at all for wildlife/the human need for nature? The house before this mediocre/cheap looking renovation, with a proper garden, is more valuable imo.

😱 Are you sure? Even my 21yr old despises fake grass. Why did you dig up an actual lawn?

the problem is before it was a house with potential for gentle updating by residents, its now all newly done but in a very specific style so unless someone who has a twin Pinterest board to you sees this I doubt many people would want to pay over the odds for the space for somewhere that despite being recently updated will need everything re-doing...

It looks a real turn-off sorry. A whole load of "diy on a budget" clichés, black windows and cladding, and awful millennial grey. It looks like it's been flipped by (possibly untrustworthy) opportunistic builders with no class or taste. Nice flooring, but the overall effect isn't very homely or welcoming. Reinstate some flower beds and planting. It's just too depressing as it is.

The outside view is awful (sorry!). Zero kerb appear and looked much better on the old photos.
with the exception of the bathroom - which I love - the inside looks dreary and unloved. Too much black and grey.

Yes, I think that's probably fair. They were obviously new to this and were very badly advised by a terrible EA.

FLW
would have worked but I doubt they were thinking that way given they took out the extg stairs that would have worked and put in a Victorian ish style one
It’s a Shame

For £400k I would expect a way better
kitchen. Also the front as other have mentioned it looks cold and unwelcoming. It’s had a nife
makeover but rooms need
more colour and living room needs defined a bit
more.

Love the kitchen but otherwise looks lacking in character.

I'd be put off by the fact that everything is brand new, so replacing it would feel wasteful, but none of it is to my taste. Grey is dated now, you need to be as neutral as possible to appeal to the masses so they can imagine putting their own stamp on it!

As per everyone else, the broken fence post, and the cheaply infilled semi-circle, indicates it’s a cheaply executed flipper, that was better before the ‘improvements’.
Also, you bought at the peak of the market, you’ll be lucky to break even.

You really need a new agent. The advice they have given you is shocking!!

OMG agree. Absolutely criminal. Nothing puts me off quicker than a garden with fake grass or gravel.

I think you have devalued the house by removing the mature shrubs from the front. It looks cold and hard. I’d clean up the weeds and get some tubs or hanging baskets out the front.
id also stage the house. You probably need to chuck a bit of money at it if you are looking to get £400k and hiring some furniture and re doing the photos would help a lot. I also think you need to show the garden as most families are interested in the outside space.