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

I wonder if the Insta feedback has been overwhelmingly positive which has caused the surprise with it not generating any offers. Shows the mismatch between your Instagram demographic and that of target buyers.

It looks as if the fence at the back is falling down.

Why has that not been replaced?

Target buyers are likely to be older couples who want a low maintenance home (bungalow) with 2 rooms upstairs for visiting family or grand children.

It's not a family home IMO as the downstairs is too open plan, considering many people work from home.

I read most of the "advice on decor" and "why is my home not selling" threads and never yet have I found one that is so unanimous in opinion!

I've been thinking that the OP might not be the current owner or developer as well. Maybe the house used to belong to a family member, or they are a neighbour. Easy to imagine that in either of those scenarios they'd be appalled at what's been done. It's probably spoilt the look and feel of the whole cul de sac as well, even affected the value of neighbouring houses. That seems to happen quite often with flipping and over-zealous modernisation unfortunately.

Wait WHAT. Am I understanding correctly - the lovely, neat front area with the flowers is the before? And it's all been dug up and replaced with the paving and scrubby weeds? If that's the case OP then yeah that was a pretty insane call.

I mean at least do some weeding to make it need and maybe put some pots out with flowers in to make it slightly pretty again?

OP will probably say the EA advised it!

The space isn't "for" anything, it's just left over space from where they ripped out two cupboards from a perfectly attractive kitchen to make room for a big ugly american-style fridge / freezer that is only the width of one-and-a-half cupboards 🤦

(Bonus points for managing to make the appliances, worktops, cupboard doors, tiles, and flooring all clash with each other.)

You're right

The whole thing looks half arsed and not thought through.

Apart from the radiators. I quite like them

I also wonder if they got really bogged down on the insta worthy and lost sight of the bigger picture here, in thay they were trying to flip for a profit. I strongly suspect the insta followers were not the target demographic as buyers and they focused on individual elements rather than the bigger picture.

the garden in this property was a huge selling point, looking at the old pictures, so to rip it all out and leave it with such a mess is quite shocking. It will take a lot of money and time to fix now.

as is the decision to paint that kitchen in that green, and leave it alone, when it should have been one of the top priorities. For any buyer it will still be a top priority. Quite frankly it looks bad and incongruous. That will also take a lot of time and money,

there are other costly mistakes too, like the dark grey carpet. Practical but unattractive and sucks the light out. I’d have to change them, they should have been done in a neutral colour ie oat meal.

overall I’d be looking at the amount of money I’d now need to spend to fix it. Anyone looking for a turn key home would walk away, as would anyone looking for a doer upper,

it falls into the bracket of when renovations go wrong, and when someone focuses too hard on the insta crowd, and has a poor eye for interior design, and sadly lacks any insight into how to Reno and flip a property.

it should have been get in, update quick, spend minimal money, sell. Leave the good bits alone, ie the garden, fix the bad bits, ie update kitchen/bathroom/flooring/decor. Make sure buying price allows for the spend, and to then still make a profit.

For me. The first picture is not flattering at all. I wouldn't even click on the ad. There's no picture of the garden

There is no garden, that’s why, they’ve ripped it out, literally and left just tarpaulin, weeds and a falling down fence.

Don't do this. It won't get permission. I'd sell at a loss. So OIRO £375,000. Unfortunately the outside might need a bit of attention and money circa £3000 for new fence panels and a repaint. The weeds need sorting. Take the weed suppression off and relay grass.

Good luck.

Just seen the pictures everyone else shared. It looked so much nicer before being heavily renovated. Sorry.

The "insta worthy" attempt has been so ill judged. It just needed a bit of gentle updating.

This thread is what's known as Rage bait!

Agree with so many others that the 'reno' is baffling in that it has taken a perfectly nice house and made it incredibly unattractive. Why you would do all that work and not bother to update the kitchen is beyond me. Ripping out the established garden is barbaric. What a waste of money.

first look is terrible, dont know if they are weeds or plants but do not look good. from the look of it garden is the same. it needs tidying and some colour.
to me the whole place looks half bare like stuff has already been taken out. it looks cold and clinical a lot of bathrooms and not a lot else. whole place inside and out looks cold and uninviting

It depends on the area. As I said, we (thankfully) ignored the advice to turn our back garden into a gravel wasteland. However, so many of the houses round here have done just that.

The worst that I saw was the hellscape next door to my parents' garden. The entire front garden is now gravel. The last time that I saw the back garden, the entire area was covered in decking which had been painted some kind of weird orangey cover.

There was a metal decoration of some kind and a single clothes pole had been painted silver with orange outlines on the crossbars and a union flag added. (Yes, the owner was a Rangers fan.)

The owner's gardening consisted of spraying weedkiller ever so often.

Oooff. I can't really add anything that hasn't already been said, but the fact you mentioned an "Instagram reno page" suggests you did this as an investment, and that you think it's a good outcome.

Sorry OP, but I really think you need to find an alternative revenue stream because flipping houses isn't a natural gift for you and your husband.

And a note to all who intend on doing similar - grey is out - stop filling a house head to toe in grey (especially gun metal grey) and expecting other people to be impressed.

@HigherandHigher So true. There is a road near us of rather large red brick 30s semis with front and back gardens. One has been rendered and painted a dark battle ship grey with grey windows. The owners have also removed all of the soft landscaping and installed a sort of sunken paved car port instead. It is known locally as "the grey Lubyanka". This is not a compliment.

I have got a sibling who has got a beautiful gravelled garden. It wouldn't be my choice but they are not into gardening and just wanted somewhere to sit. They have got loose laid gravel with mediterranean style pots and a small paved area for a table and a couple of seats. There is also one near to me who has gravelled their front area and planted silver leafed plants, again low maintenance. ecologically sound and beautiful.

There was a Radio 4 series many years ago by the comedian Tom Wrigglsworth about... I guess things we could all do without? One episode focussed on Estate Agents, and his experience of buying his first home with his wife, and how the EA was more of a hinderance than a help during the process. How he would turn up to show them properties that he knew nothing about, opening doors while saying "aaaand here's the..... master bedroom?", shit-stirring by claiming the seller was getting impatient about the fime it was taking to get the mortgage sorted (the seller wasn't worried) and ultimately giving them the wrong keys at 5 pm on moving-in day, before going incommunicado for the weekend.

Anyway. the point is, the property they bought was full of period features that were the thing that made them fall in love with it, and when they asked about some of them - I think it might have been internal window shutters - he waved his hands at all the old-timey loveliness and said

"you can rip all of this out"

That's who has been advising OP, isn't it.

Is the garden here a beautiful Mediterranean style patio garden with lovely plants? No.

Yes, I reckon they either ran out of money before tackling the kitchen or else decided it was fine (🤣) and could merely have a paint job! Although why they used that strange shade of green when their obvious preference is for grey, beats me.

We've renovated several houses - not to flip, although some we ended up selling after roughly three years of living there. I confess we never choose the blank - or black, lol! - canvas option, but decorate in the colours/style we love (so saturated colours, eclectic country house etc) as though it's going to be our 'forever' home. We try to minimise the budget whilst maximising the high end finish, so our 'new' kitchen here is a mix of reclaimed 1960s cabinetry, painted oak in-frame units (sourced on eBay) and new Devol brass hardware.

Reconfiguration features highly on our to do list if the property is badly laid out. We always replace the kitchen (and bathroom(s)) and make sure the garden is one of the first jobs we address as - in our opinion - it's every bit as important as the inside! So, at our last house, we began planting up the weed-infested 0.5 acre garden almost immediately and by the time we sold six and a half years later, it was filled with an abundance of established plants (including 60+ David Austin roses 😍).

At our current cottage (purchased in Sept 2024, with the intention of renovating to sell), we've moved the kitchen to a better location, swapping it with a living room. The old kitchen, utility and lobby have become a cosy snug with garden views (ours is sadly a paved courtyard, done in the '60s, but we've filled it with tons of plants in huge pots, so you'd hardly notice this). Walls have been removed, steels added where necessary and sympathetic improvements made - eg the '60s crazy paved fireplace swapped out for a reclaimed one more appropriate to the Georgian cottage.

We do as much of the work as we can ourselves - at our previous house we constructed from scratch a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows using double glazed panels and oak, saving thousands. We spent around 80k on the reno and that place sold for 400k - we'd paid 160k six and a half years earlier, so profits can be made - if (and only if, imo) the end result is an improvement on the original. Sadly the OP's 'renovation' isn't!