Tau, we had the whole house painted last year. It cost us a fortune 
. The issue isn't really decoration, it's more that the market here is saturated with high grade vacation / hotel style homes, with granite, wall to wall travertine, gorgeous hardwood flooring and massive feature windows with mountain views, rather than, well, family homes...
So, when you spend all day looking at high end identikit stuff, and then view ours, it looks shabby in comparison. Well, not shabby, but just obviously not as high end. And it won't be, without a good forty grand of improvements to make it as identikit as the rest... and there's no option for an extension or a garden to make it more appealing to the family market. We're definitely middle range...
There are two very different sorts of buyers here - the folk who live and work here, and the out of towners looking for a vacation property. Ours really is the high end of the first market (but it's small for a family home), and isn't high spec enough for the second - although it could be. The market is completely flooded with vacation stuff of a similar size (and I mean flooded) - and we are looking to buy a family house, which are, um, under-represented, shall we say?! Hence, the family homes that are affordably priced whizz off the shelves, because we are all desperately trying to find somewhere and fighting over little available stock.
It's such a small town, and a pretty closed market for residents - there really isn't the option to look anywhere else - the nearest other town is half an hour away, but in order to buy there you need to have a permanent job in the valley (it's inside a national park). And the nearest place in the other direction is an hour and a half to the city. Hence the vacation crowd. Dh actually works in the city, so has a three hour commute every day, and I work inside the park (so we could buy there, but that would add an extra hour of commute on every day for dh, more in the winter, and as the roads in the park are less well maintained during the six months of the snow, lol, I suspect it would be a bit of a nightmare...)
So, we are stuck with looking within this one small town (it's a good stuck to be in, honest!) but it does mean that potential buyers (and sellers) are all looking at exactly the same property... It's interesting!
Well, better get cleaning, I suppose!
Littlecrystal, we've had six or seven in the first two weeks - but it is definitely slowing down... Good luck today! Fingers crossed they love it!
Cuddy - we're in a townhouse at the mo (although the neighbors on one side are vacation owners and never there) and I am always terrified that the neighbors can hear me shrieking at the kids! Most of the stuff we are looking at is detached - but we still have a semi on the list that hasn't moved for months (the EA says it is horribly overpriced, but the owners won't budge on that) - one of the first things I asked was about noise transmission. I am so bored of trying to get the kids to not thunder up and down stairs...