No viewings and I don't know why, it must be the price right?

[Scruffydoggy1]

House has been on the market for just under a month now.

Before the pictures were taken I did a lot of maintenance, redecorating cleaning and made sure the house was as immaculate as I could get it.

We live on a desirable street and we are classed as a new build as we are just under 10years.

Most of the houses in the area are terraced Victorian. Apart from part ownership and our development there are no new builds. Houses that have previously gone up for sale in our development have sold within a week.

The market has boomed round here and we found the estate agents were having a problem valuing our house and they have valued it at the top end of the market and price wise we are on par with the terrace houses. This is due to a few improvements we have made as these houses were basic starter homes. So far we have: added a garage conversion, added conservatory totally redecorated and put a high spec kitchen in. Plus we have ample parking and for round here lots of land.

Our decor is quite bight however it's modern and in keeping with the house.

We have recently put in a big kitchen have extended it by knocking out the wall. It's very modern and clean with granite worktops inbuilt appliances and a breakfast bar.

I'm gutted, before our house went on the agents were bargaining with me over % they all loved the house and said it will sell in no time.

But nothing, I had someone knock on the door Boxing Day asking questions and they never arranged a viewing.

The problem we now face is we are buying a new build off barratt. The foundations will be in within the next month then we have 28days to complete. If the house isn't sold we will need to apply for a mortgage and then rent this house out.

However I have another rental property, very basic ex authority 2 bed house and the rental price is fantastic for it. If we compare my current house to it, it doesn't compare and yet the rental income we are looking at will be lower.

So I'm getting a bit anxious to sell it now. This week I need to submit a lower price to the agents and I have no idea how much lower it needs to go to spark interest well a viewing as over 6000 people have viewed it online. And with the stamp duty prices changing our buyers will be saving about £7,000.

Any ideas?

I may be totally barking up the wrong tree here, but have you knocked out the wall between the hallway and the kitchen? The photo which shows the radiator in it suggests to me that the radiator is in an area that would have been the hall.

If that's the case, then you walk straight from the street into your kitchen, and presumably the stairs are there as well? Some people would really be put off by that layout.

Boring I know but if you can afford to have all the bedrooms and bathrooms painted off-white at least people will be able to imagine the rooms a bit better - the bright pink and blue and the grey are really dominating, old fashioned and hard on the eye.

And the grey laminate everywhere is awful. Can you get a bunch of rugs to warm your floors up visually?

But it is also Christmas when nothing sells.

If you have put a premium price on for having 'modern' decoration, then that is the problem. To me the decor looks like stuff chosen quite a while ago, not like something from interest, which is what I was expecting from your decoration.

The sitting room and bedroom shots aren't doing any favours IMO. The beds pushed against the windows in particular suggest the rooms are really very small. The perspective in the sitting room suggests about 6 feet from your sofa to the TV.

I personally wouldn't worry that much about the laminate being a major show stopper, but I would order a couple of rugs to break it up and create an illusion of more space in the rooms.

The pictures of the front also don't help. It maybe my eyes, but it looks like your house is in the middle of a road/turning area. Get the EA to photograph it closer.

Yes to getting new photos, plus i would get them to try n make the first bedroom look bigger, no reflection in kitchen, brighten up garden with pots?, remove all teddies and repaint pink wall
but honestly, it looks a typical small newbuild. We have similar. They just dont 'age' as well - low ceilings, small rooms, overlooked etc.
So it probably is price ie it needs to be cheaper than a similar bed victorian terrace

And put the bins round the corner before the next photos taken, even if it's usual to keep them out the front.

Sorry, your house does not look "modern". It just looks dark and garish. Can you neutralize the painted walls a bit? Pain the bathroom in a fresh white? A pink wall just shows any furnishing in a bad light.

Your kitchen is fine.

The double bed looks like it is about to burst out of the tiny room it is in.
Your living room looks tiny and dark.

I would buy it - for £245 - £255 K...

The photos make the rooms look long and narrow - more like a corridor.

I agree with the comments about the bright pink and bright blue walls. I am pretty handy with a paintbrush, but would prefer to move into somewhere with decor I could live with, albeit temporarily.

I live in South Yorkshire, so £280,000 for what looks like a new build end terrace house is horrifically expensive.

Can you post a link on here to the selling details?

I agree, sorry. The pictures are quite bad. They are of your furniture, not the rooms.

Try going around with a camera and finding the exact best position to take them from. Then soften the room decor a bit, it is too bare.

My first reaction on looking at the photos was its black, black, black and more black! If you can't change the furniture you need some rugs and cushions to lift the look. It needs to be softer and look like someone lives there. Good idea to check out other local properties particularly ones that have recently sold to see what their decor was like. Buy a house magazine and see what looks are ' in'. If you want to get the best price people need to think they can move straight in and not lift a paintbrush or you need to lower the price so it is a bargain to someone who is prepared to do the work themselves. Good luck

OP - the photos are pretty poor. There isn't one which does your house any favours, in fact many of them are of your furniture rather than giving any feel for the rooms. The lighting is awful too - a decent photographer can sort that out. Your kitchen and family rooms need to stand out and have been poorly photographed, the living room from a dreadful angle, the kitchen with appalling lighting.

Request new photos asap - they will make a world of difference.

If you don't already have one in the details, make sure you have a floor plan with room dimensions included.

X post with Primal!

I like the kitchen. It looks modern and clean. I think the tv room looks rather cold. Some plants or flowers might help.
You also need to remember that I lot of people won't have been looking over Christmas.

As others have said, it's very tight to get it sold in 28 days now. Have you tried one of these 'we buy any house' places?

Do you really have to complete 28 days after the foundations go in? Rather than exchange in that time. Seems really tight.

Faced with the choice of a Victorian terrace or a house like yours OP, I would always choose the Victorian house......but if I did want a new build, that's exactly what I'd buy, not one that was a few years old and had been 'improved'.......

I certainly wouldn't pay a premium for a newer house unless it was brand spanking.

I agree with other posters that your living room looks small - possibly due to positioning of furniture and the grey flooring makes the spaces look cold and unwelcoming.

We found when selling previous homes that EAs are quick to tell you to paint everything in neutral tones, but that isn't always what every buyer wants. We love colour and buy large period houses that have been neglected, then restore them to their former glory. That usually involves injecting lots ofsome period colours.

Last couple of houses we've sold the EA has trotted out the old chestnut about blank canvasses and being able to visualise yourself in the house, but having taken their advice (in a couple of rooms only!) we later found out from the buyer that they would have preferred us to leave things as they were.....often it has been the overall presentation - that includes the colour schemes chosen - that has attracted viewers in the first place and painting something magnolia makes everywhere look the same.....and usually boring!

That said, I would shy away from bright pinks, oranges.....in fact anything garish/marmite-y. If you do need/want to decorate neutrally, warmth needs to be added by means of injections of colour in items such as rugs, cushions, accessories that can be taken with you to your new home.

The pics really don't sell your home in a good, aspirational way and need to be retaken. Our last EA used a professional photographer who didn't hesitate to retake any that we or the agent were dissatisfied with.

Outside should be treated as you would another room - even in winter it's possible to add interest with planters containing some colour!

However, it is still early days and things should start to pick up soon - we had a very small window of opportunity to sell our house last year (put it on 1st Sept) and knew that if we didn't get an offer by mid Oct, it would most like,y be took late to get it sold and complete on our new home by Christmas (we managed it, just!), but being on the market now you get a whole raft of people starting to look now the hols are over.....good luck with it!

likely be too late

Where in the country are you OP?

I like your kitchen but agree it might benefit from a brighter picture. Your bathroom is nice too. Your garden is a good size but agree with OP who said add some colour/potted plants.

I also agree that the decor is a bit divisive - I don't think the black and grey is doing you any favours. I didn't like the room with the dining table at one end, the wall mounted tv and sofa at the other end - it looked very narrow and a bit miserable (sorry). Any chance of moving the L shaped sofa from the conservatory in to give perception of width? And moving the tv off the wall? I know twigs and pebbles get mocked on here, but I did think that room in particular seemed quite bleak.

Agree with a pp re the bed in front of the window - is there anything else you could do in that room?

On the other hand, I think nearly-new builds DO sell. I bought one and sold it 2.5 years later, making about £30k. The people who bought it off us sold it for a whopping £40k more than we sold it for three years later so not only did it sell, it massively increased in value too despite being a 2 bed starter home that I assumed would have a ceiling price.

I wouldn't even go for a look, even at £240, and I'm usually pretty good at looking past decor but I do like light and your house looks dark.
I'd definitely do as others have suggested and move furniture around especially in your bedroom and the living room, put a few rugs and cushions around (again the the bedroom and living room).

I wouldn't bother with painting the bathroom and girls' bedroom unless you have the time but I would change your bedroom walls from grey to a lighter colour as it just absorbs light.

I would also consider getting some cheap voile curtains in any colour other than black or grey to replace your black curtains wherever you have them.

The only room which looks warm and lived in is the kids' room. I know they say declutter but you have completely depersonalised which doesn't help when you have very monochrome decor. A bowl of fruit, some mugs, a tea towel, some aspirational toiletries etc etc might make the place look more homely and enticing to people looking online.

Then get new pictures taken and drop the price to 270k at the most.

I think its lovely but needs a bit of soft furnishings as its all very modern and harsh. The kitchen looks empty and could do with some character to soften it. The house looks unlived in too.

I think it's pushing it a bit to describe a 10 year old house as 'nearly new' though. I've just had a quick browse on RM at houses within 1 mile of us. All 4-bed detached.

One built three years ago - 440K
One built 10 years ago - 400K
One built in the mid 70s - 350K

Guess which is the biggest by far?

It's amazing how quickly the fashions for fittings and house layouts change in a relatively short period. The newest house (smallest) has 2 en-suite shower rooms, but only one reception room. It, like OP's house, has no footpath in front of it. It does have a very trendy open plan kitchen/diner and ultra-modern bathrooms. The 10 year old one is looking just a tiny bit dated.

My bet is that the 1970s house will sell fastest, followed by the 3 year-old one and the 10 year old one will hang about on the market for ages.

OP, I think you need to drop the price significantly. My grandparents house sold in less than a week back in 1992 (right in the middle of the slump). It hadn't been redecorated for 20 years and both grandparents smoked 20 a day in the house. The asking price reflected this.

Agree with what a lot of other pp have said OP - tweeks needed here and there but nothing massively wrong that can't be quickly remedied.

Re: bedroom - is the footboard lower in height than the headboard? If so it might be worth taking the headboard off and turning the bed around so that the footboard is the headboard and might not block out so much light from the window. And again as other pp have said the photos show little/no evidence of your storage - maybe a blanket box at the end of the bed might help to illustrate that there's room for storage.

EA need to send a proper photographer round and on a brighter day - I never understand why alot of EA are lazy about good photos - don't they want to make money?

Forgot to say good luck and you're very brave for putting photos on here - I'd rather put photos of my face on MN and have people critique that!

Do you have a floorplan? I know lots of people dismiss immediately if there isn't one. It makes you think the layout is flawed in some way.