Been on the market for over 18 months now...

[openerofjars]

Okay, so here are the downsides of our house:

It has a shared yard, no garden
It is in a horrible area where shootings happen
It has no potential to extend as it is a mid-terrace
It has 1 bathroom and no potential for an ensuite
You can hear next door brushing their teeth through the bathroom wall

On the bright side:

It has a new bathroom and kitchen
It has a brand new central heating boiler
It is has two good reception rooms as the kitchen is an offshot
The property is freehold and owns half the shared yard
It is stupidly cheap (£70k)
It has great proportions - you can get a double bed into each of the 3 bedrooms
It is slightly set back from the road, unlike many of the other terraces round here.
It is the only house for sale in its price range in our area

Why won't some muggins lovely person buy the bugger and let us move?

And if no muggins is available, are those companies who buy your house any good, or are they total sharks? We have already dropped the asking price by £20k so are massively unwilling to drop it any further.

We had a buyer once, in the spring. It was lovely.

How desperate are you to move? If you can i would take it off the market now until about March, people looking to buy will have seen that it has been on for a long time and either think there is something wrong with it, or think you will take a big price cut.

I've got a baby due in March and a 3yo DS who we want to start school somewhere without razor wire on the playground wall. So we have less than a year...

We had a viewing this week and one no show.

The one who actually came said in his feedback that he wants a 4 bed. Did he think it was a typo?

The no show won't return the EA's calls.

Thing is, we only just put the property back on the market after doing the kitchen up - we had to take it off as it was back to bare brick at one point.

And we already paid the EA £600 for marketing fees. Hmm. Am weighing it up.

Ok, if you have only just put it back on, and the photos look different to before (make sure EA has taken lots of photos of the kitchen) then you will have to give it a while. This is a difficult time of years for house selling, people know they won't be in before xmas so they slow down the search. In the meantime try and make the outside look as good as possible. when I was looking if I sawomething i liked the look of my next step would be to drive past it, if the outside looked tatty i crossed it off the list.

June, not March. Wtactualf?

{grin} at least june gives you abit more time to move house!

Did you really have to pay the ea £600 for marketing?? What commission are they asking for the sale?
Would it be at all possible to keep your house and let it and move into a rental near a school youre more happy with or remortgage it and buy another?

Why are you paying the estate agent upfront? I have never heard of this.

Dunno why re upfront fees (it was 18 months ago) but the deed is done now. I don't fancy renting after the house across the road was trashed by tenants - not an upmarket rental area, really.

Plus, we can't afford to keep two houses going, even letting one.

We had one couple round who knew the area, had been on a few other viewings nearby and were still surprised it was "so small and only one bathroom". FFS, what did they think £70k was going to get them? In a terrace?

There are houses in disgusting states a mile up the road, similar area, similar price, same general lack of amenities (no jacuzzi, garage or orangerie etc) and they have sold.

Oh well, it could be worse. I could be a first time buyer trying to get a mortgage.

Are you brave enough to link it on here and see if we can have a good look help?

It's so horrible you've all gone away to vomit.

Have you considered putting it up for auction?

it is lovely - and am amazed at price!

My only suggestion would be to declutter some of rooms and paint bathroom when over morning sickness - and these are tiny requirements..

18 months not unusual op - we have relatives house for sale for same amount of time

have dropped price loads but people make silly offers - seems to be the way it is at the moment

Thank you ZZ Mum! The bathroom is much less green in reality, honest.

We seriously need a declutter. The reason the attic bedroom isn't in the photos is because it is the box room but it looks like hell at the moment. However, I think we need photos of all the rooms as if I see a house on Rightmove with some of the rooms not pictured my spidey senses tingle.

Auction, eh? Can you put your asking price as the reserve?

The problems with new houses, waswondering, are twofold: we don't want to live in any of the areas where they are, locally, and we can't afford a 3 bed new build anyway, even in those areas.

I would love a nice, extendable 1930s semi, or a terrace again at a push, with a bit of garden and there are some nice ones in the areas we want on Rightmove. We just need to sell this house first.

It is lovely but the photos could be tweaked to make them just a little better:

Picture 1: move the black chair entirely out of shot (so you get a clear view of the window) and put a living plant or flowers on the mantelpiece.

Picture 2: move the bath mat out of shot, tuck the shower curtain into the bath, put a full toilet roll on the holder, put a colourful vase on the window ledge and a posh soap dispenser on the sink.

Picture 3: put a plain white bedspread on the bed and move whatever it is off the mantelpiece (doesn't look very pretty) - again replace with attractive pieces, or books, or flowers or plants.

Picture 4: straighten the cushion on the chair, move the plastic storage boxes in the foreground out of shot, move whatever it is in the corner on the floor (looks like a black and white toy?).

Picture 5: hmm. Would it look better if the view was from the house out on to the yard, rather than from the yard back on to the house.

Picture 6: prob not much you can do, although the windows look bare, like there are no curtains.

Picture 7: is out of sequence, should come after picture 1. Put a plain white tablecloth on the table and have a larger more colourful vase of flowers in the centre.

And, finally, obviously, you need pictures of the new kitchen!

All good ideas. I'm going to ask the EA to come and redo the pics after the kitchen repaint anyway, because I think the fact that my son is no longer in his cot may also be an issue: you can't tell that it's possible to fit a real bed in there.

We can't do pics of the yard: it is grim! It's shared, crumbling and grey. I may stick a fence down the boundary line this winter anyway, while the children aren't playing outside together as much (DS plays with neighbour DCs there). Even with a fence, it blatantly needs bombing to smithereens, quarantining and paving over after a respectable mourning period and we can't spend that kind of money: doing the kitchen has eaten into our savings horribly as it is.

Thank you, all of you.

We have the same desk!

If you've done the kitchen, shouldn't there be pictures of that?

The sitting room is really lovely- I would have thought it's exactly as you'd want it to market the house. Wish I had 3 bedrooms

I think it looks in great condition. You can mess about with decluttering this and that but no viewers shows that there probably are just not people with the amount you are asking, looking in your area. Who is your target buyer? Not older people I'd presume because of the stairs up from pavement level and not growing families. So if it is a young, first-time buyer type couple, what is the average salary in your area and how much can people borrow now that banks are going back to sensible rather than subprime lending levels?

Looking at the sold prices for your street www.houseprices.co.uk/e.php?q=rising+street+s3&n=50
There was one crazily high sale of 105k at the top of the market in 2007 and a couple of high ones in the near top of 2006 of 92k and 90k but those times are long gone, so, saying that we have already dropped by 20k means nothing really.

You say you are massively unwilling to drop the price further. Is that because you cannot afford to? If it is important to you to move, dropping the price is the only way to be sure of a sale, otherwise you are waiting to get lucky with someone who, for some reason, is very attached to that street. The market is dropping. Sheffield is down 4.4% on last year according to Land registry figures and prices in the North West are back to about 2004 levels outside of the most desired areas.

I agree - great house, but I would also declutter (esp boxes from the wadrobes) or it will look like you do not have enough storage space.

Lovely decor. Kitchen picture is a must.

I am also with euro on the price action. If this lovely house does not attract viewers it is because of the price. Is the location responsible for you loosing out when similar properties sell in the same range?

I agree - it is lovely but the shootings would put me off, sorry.

What's going on with the guttering at top right, on the front? Is it leaking? Can it be fixed cheaply, cleaned and re-photographed?

I came onto this thread having read the OP and thinking 'what's the world coming to when 70k for a house where shootings happen is called stupidly cheap'. I still think that.

However, your house looks absolutely tremendous. If others are selling round there in worse states and similar prices, then there's something about your location that must be putting people off.

Looking at the past sales in the street - 60K in 2009 (bought for 90K in 2006 - a 50% drop!!) and 75K in 2011 - I wouldn't say its stupidly cheap. It looks to be a classic case of chasing the market down - problem with this is by the time you've reduced your price, the market has fallen further and the price is no longer competitive. Being a less desirable area in a Northern city prices are probably falling faster than most areas so you need to be 'ahead of the curve' ie priced a bit lower than anything similar before the market catches up.

Hi, I think it is just how it is atm, and the pitsmoor location probably doesnt help. We have friends who sold in crooks/walkley (nice areas) recently and it was also on the market for well over a year and then only sold under the asking price and after reduction of 20K, and that was really nicely decorated etc. 70K asking price puts it in first time buyer territory and banks just arent lending mortgages out in the same way they used to, and requiring huge deposits etc. I think the market will only change when banks get less scared about lending.

Its a lovely house, btw. I would keep it on the market, even if you dont expect any viewings before the new year, because people do have to move for all sorts of reasons and you only need one buyer. Bludells tend to be quite agressive though - that probably explains the upfront fees and they would probably charge you more for taking it off then on again. If you do drop your price, then you can expect a similar price drop in whatever you buy, so its not all bad. Good luck.