House not selling (with listing)

[Housesale2]

Any thoughts welcome - awkward lay out? Decor? Anything else?

To pre-empt a couple of questions; it was originally listed at £400,000, and there is parking for two cars (one on the gravel, one on the right)

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/171873854#/?channel=RES_BUY

From the front, looks like weeds round the edge of the gravel, which makes it look neglected. Photos 12 and 14 could be better, remove all clutter and cardboard boxes. Other than that, it looks very nice, so it has to be either a local slow market or price. How does it compare with nearby similar properties in price?

So as usual there's been pages and pages of people being sniffy about decor and saying that adding few pot plants and moving a few bits of furniture will suddenly make people pay 50 grand more than they would have done for the same pile of bricks

So true

It is not clear from the floor plan if the bathroom next to the master bedroom is an ensuite. If it is it needs to be made clearer, otherwise could you make it an ensuite by moving a door? Yes the buyer can do this but if there are other things they want to change for their preference it makes it less appealing

If you are going to have new photos as suggested can the pets go in the garden whilst these are taken so the room looks a bit bigger and fulfils it's proper function, also some colour in the garden

The fireplace would put me off, getting rid of those bricks. And the garden is small, you need to make the garden more appealing.

Came to say i love the batheooms and the planet bedroom.

Kitchen clock is really overpowering and big - is it meant to be like a dartboard?

This ^

I hate having to walk through a reception room to get to the rest of the house...and particularly the kitchen. We've reconfigured a couple of (much older) houses to get a more user friendly layout when we've bought places like that, so I'd either a) rule it straight out or b) be factoring in the cost/feasibility of doing so.

I agree about lack of kerb appeal. Obviously you're not going to change the windows (although we've previously painted upvc windows/fascias successfully by first applying Zinsser primer!), but I'd repaint the front door in a colour that better complements the brickwork.

Ditto the front garden/parking (the latter really needs making crystal clear on your listing!) - try to add some kerb appeal by adding some big pots of spring colour which can be taken to your new home when the time comes.

Bedrooms 2, 3 and 4 are all small so need streamlining (and that's coming from a maximalist!). Bedside tables are really needed in beds 1 and 2, imo - where do you put lamps, books, mobile phone etc?

Move the caged pet(s) outside for photos/viewings - the idea of these will definitely deter some buyers. When we were selling a previous house our professional photographer wouldn't allow our very photogenic cat to be seen - even in the garden shots!

The garden looks very unloved/uninviting - but as someone who previously purchased a house with 0.5 acre wilderness of weeds and created an enchanting garden from scratch, I'd not necessarily be put off. However, factoring in the cost to achieve privacy through expensive mature planting will cause some buyers to scroll on by. That's why we always make tackling the outside space one of our first jobs - the garden can be maturing nicely whilst we get on with the building work. A photo taken from the right angle showing a welcoming outdoor seating area will help imo.

Your bathrooms and kitchen are lovely @Housesale2, so you just need to do a few bits to bring the rest up to scratch. Then have the photos redone, professionally....and lose the 'guide price' crap!

Unfortunately, things are stagnating in the property market due to the war etc, but at the right price a decent house with some good features that set it above the competition will sell, so don't lose hope!

Yep.

It’s just the market OP. Things should get moving again once Iran calms down.

I agree with the general consensus about bedroom size, kerb appeal, the garden, guinea pigs(?) out of photos, etc.

The pictures are genuinely terrible and they’ve been uploaded willy nilly so that there’s no continuity when scrolling through them. I’d ask him to redo them. Also there seems to be a powder room off the utility that he’s forgotten to photograph entirely? If they’re just flipping through the pictures they’ll probably think that there are only bathrooms upstairs.

In addition, if you can afford it, I’d probably just suck it up and have some painting done. Most people will want all the dark teal gone immediately and there’s a lot of it all throughout. Replacing the grey with a white or ivory (fireplace included) and the teal with a neutral pale blue would complement the floors and kitchen without being so in-your-face. Both bathrooms upstairs are too dark colour wise. The teal bathroom desperately needs a white ceiling at the very least. I think this would be an easy way to make the house more neutral and keep viewers from immediately thinking that they have to repaint everything before they can unpack.

Back garden looks really unloved and scruffy. The dreariness of the scruffy lawn is a bit depressing.

Quick mow and plant some new and cheap lavender bushes or an Asda flamingo tree.

The blue tarpaulin is very ugly & messy (looks abandoned and uncared for!)

Take new photos on a sunny day!

I am house hunting at the moment and have been turned off by wall panelling. A lot of what I've viewed has been badly done and one of the estate agents said buyers are actually asking for it to be removed in non period homes.

It’s beautiful , where I live it would be worth around 250k . Is 400k normal for your area?

The inside is really nice. But it’s not a ‘pretty house’ on the outside and the windows are very dated. I would say the main reason is the tenure which says ‘ask agent’ which I would then assume is leasehold, I would then not consider it at all and it would be filtered out of all my searches.

I quite like the kitchen clock! It adds a bit of interest to that bit of blank wall. But either the vendors will take it with them, or it's easily got rid of, so it's neither here nor there when considering the house overall.

I wonder if it was originally a 3 bed with an on suite. Rather than a four, something about the bedrooms doesn’t quite look right.

I think some others have already suggested some aesthetic improvements you could make but, it's a lovely house, so assume it just might be priced too high for the area? Maybe sales aren't move that quickly, right now? Could be a few things at play.

It's a nice house, but with 4 bedrooms, I'd want a proper dining room.

For me as a PP said would be the bedroom sizes- i wouldn’t touch a house where each wall of the bedrooms is 3m at a minimum.the rest looks fine to me. Wouldn’t be bothered by tiny messes etc

It's increased in value by over £100k in less than 10 years? A 40% increase?

Can you move the furniture around in the second bedroom to put the cabinet either side of the bed so it looks like a proper double bedroom? Or use one as a bedside cabinet and take the other out. The size of the bedrooms will definitely be putting people off. I’d be tempted to make the smaller room the study and dress the downstairs study as a bedroom.
i don’t think the layout is awkward but I’d worry about keeping the kitchen /snug warm and would prefer the utility to open to outside,

It's a lovely house. I think there needs to be another photo to show the other end of the double bedroom. Maybe try to make the floors of the bedrooms and office appear more spacious by decluttering a little bit. The photo of the garden is an odd angle and doesn't give a true indication of its size.
Generally I think the market is slow anyway.

I like the colour in the kitchen. I quite like the fireplace too. The garden is bare but id be happy with that as I could plant it up how I wanted.

The layout of the house would put me off though - the bedrooms seem very small and the one is an odd shape. Two bathrooms, neither of which is an en suite, also seems a little unusual. I don't like the fact that the downstairs loo opens effectively right in to the kitchen/dining area. There also doesnt seem to be a lot of natural light coming into the kitchen - just the one small window.

The room with the weights and helmet doesn't match the rest of the house (I quite like the rest of the decor but in here seems quite different) and the kids rooms look cluttered as though there is no space for them in there.

Wow…I cannot believe a four bed DETACHED house is £375,000! You’d be looking at a two bed terrace for that where I live! 😭
Lovely house, ours isn’t selling either - think it’s just yet another rubbish time to move

Because when a room is just the bed, like a London hotel room, it isn't a bedroom.

I would buy this if it was listed where I am! Love your house, OP.

Currently detached in my area is minimum £500k! And it's really not a posh area. I'd snap this house up at this price here tomorrow (not London)!

Rightmove has the old listing from 2017. Beds 2 and 4 were one long room previously with back bathroom (smaller?) as ensuite.