Advice on selling our property?

[betsie123]

Hi all,

I was hoping to get some advice on our property, from those with families!

We have just had our buyer pull out and unfortunately have found our dream house elsewhere :( We seem to be struggling to get people through the door and I just know if people came in they would love it.

I know its a difficult time of year to sell, but I was hoping some of you could take a look at the advert on right move and let me know if theres anything that puts you off? Some honest feedback I guess!

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-54947921.html?showcase=true

Thanks

And consider the price being adjusted.

If you go with a new EA ensure they don't highlight the different price. Just get them to launch the house more realistically and the buyers will come!

i think your house is stunning!

Have converted the bedroom sizes 9ft x 6ft - absolutely a bed 4 not a dressing room!!!!! That also means it's probably big enough upstairs to incorporate an en-suite in the master bedroom. Lack of dimensions means you assume there isn't the space!

Also the fact they say it's a cottage which gives the impression of it being small rooms when they are huge. Absolutely need a different agent who understands the market that property will appeal to and how to market it to them.

Is renting it out an option so you could relocate and sell in a few years time instead?

TBH I think those marketing details are a pile of poo.....

I love the house. My two pennyworth;

Move the table from the sitting room into the kitchen, it looks like there isn't enough space to eat in the kitchen. Is there?
Market the dressing room as BR4 with potential to turn into ensuite.

Is that an industrial estate opposite, not much you can do about it but it would put me off re future expansion plans for it.

I really think it's the time of year. Could you afford to rent it out & remarked it again in the Spring?

Yes, cottage is a deceptive description for this house, the rooms are really big and the ceilings are really high throughout also!

We have spent this morning juggling about furniture, got the fridge freezer out the way and got the dining table in the kitchen to show there is plenty of room in there for a table. & bought lots of colourful things and plants to brighten the rooms up. My other half is doing the photography - he used to do it professionally so we have confidence in his ability to get a good picture.

We are going to do an application for a mortgage and see whether we will be able to have both mortgages at the same time and then look at the options for renting the house.

This is a terrible photo taken with my phone, however this is what we've done. But note, im terrible at photography and its taken on a phone. The room is so bright today but does not look it in this photo!

img.photobucket.com/albums/v224/hattyphotos/Mobile%20Uploads/image.jpeg

I'd get the pics retaken and turn the lights on! It can look quite dark together with your colour scheme.

I'd maybe inject a bit of colour!

It's a beautiful house.

Have converted the bedroom sizes 9ft x 6ft - absolutely a bed 4 not a dressing room!!!!!

That is the size of the 3rd bedroom in a lot of houses. Having it labelled as a dressing room on the plan, and no measurements would make me think it is tiny.
Your EA sound dreadful - no feedback and no measurements. I would change quickly.

The table looks much better in the kitchen. I would put 4 chairs round it, the back one tucked is ok. Have you a brighter picture for the wall. Runner or placemats for the table?

It's gorgeous.
Don't sweat it.

The house will sell as it is.

You've just had dreadful luck with your buyers.

Good luck.

Ditch cottage and have instead "period property"

Def 4 chairs around the table.

Ditch cottage and have instead "period property"

The house is called Victoria Cottage though, it's on the fan light over the door.

But it's not really a cottage is it???

The name doesn't math the house style. The property details are to get people to view.

TBH I'd think wording would be more appropriate if it were along the lines of

"Victoria Cottage is a deceptive name for this period property with large rooms and high ceilings"

I think it'll sell as it is too, looks beautiful and love the interiors as well as beautiful outside

Do you really not know why your previous buyers pulled out?? If it was the week before completion, as you say above, then surely your solicitor knows? Or the agent??

I agree with the point about it not being a typical cottage, although it is difficult with it being called Victoria Cottage......our last house was in a village and thatched, but definitely not your typical cottage as it had very large rooms and high ceilings. One of the staff at our EAs branch insisted on referring to it as a cottage and wanted to use the term in their blurb, but we insisted they didn't as we felt it conjured up the wrong visions of the house. Instead it was referred to as a village house.

IMHO RandomMess has the right idea of how it could be worded better.....

Looking on streetview I was surprised at how the windows at the rear of the house look out onto the drive of the neighbouring property. This would be far more of a deal breaker for me than the internal layout.

Moving the table into the kitchen can only be an improvement - I'd definitely have four chairs though.

New pics, new EA (and possibly a new price) in the New Year will I'm sure lead to a new buyer - your previous ones sound like total loons, btw and reminded me of the couple who pulled out of buying a house we used to own (in a very naice conservation area) because someone was supposedly rude to them when they walked down the road

Good luck

Who on earth pulls out of buying a house they want because the vendors are too young

That makes absolutely no sense at all

I think you house is lovely and the grey decor is very chic and grown up. I like the fact that the rooms are not full of clutter.
However it can look austere in photos. Buy some cheap cushions and throws and inject a contrast of a single colour in each room. Use a different contrast colour in each room to give each a clear identity.
Repaint kitchen door to match front door.

Assume that potential buyers have no imagination to see beyond how your home is presented. Show them the alternatives.

It is defintely presented as a 2 adult home, and you should be aiming for a family market.
My ideas: restage the far end room as your main grown up living room. remove computer.
Label the room beside kitchen as dining / family room. Have table set for 4, plus an informal sitting area. Make it clear that this room is big enough to both eat and sit in it.

Market 4th bedroom as a bedroom- you need dimensions in either details or plans. What's in there at the moment? Unless it is full of wardrbes, can you borrow a single bed, stage it as a child's room just for photos then return it to normal. Or maybe call it a study and put PC in there.

Get some graph paper and draw some decent scale plans on how you could convert that big bathroom into a small bathroom and an en-suite. Show these to viewers say "we were planning on doing this before we decided to move". I've done similar the last 2 times we moved- presented "plans" which we were going to do but couldn't be bothered

A friend lives in a massive double-fronted Georgian/early Victorian (don't know exact date) property called local-river-name Cottage (it has a distant view of the river).

I don't think a house called Something Cottage would necessarily mean tiny proportions to most people? (esp if they have pictures and dimensions - I have never seen property details completely lacking those before, whether in the floor plan or the description - that's just weird)

Yy to what Alison said about staging - I forgot to say this is what our EA suggested when we sold last year. We had two attic bedrooms - as well as two on the first floor and an annex bedroom that we used as an extra sitting room on the ground floor - with a small space (7' x 6') in the eaves between the two. As there were just the two of us and we work from home, our set up was to use one of the attic bedrooms as an office with the space in between as storage. The other attic room was laid out as a bedroom with a king size bed etc.

Before we went on the market our EA showed us pics of a similar period house in a nearby village that had a layout much like ours, but they had the two attic rooms dressed as childrens' bedrooms. This house had sold within a couple of months for close to asking price.

Therefore we decided to invest in a Laura Ashley cream brass bed (eBay), some bunting (a quick task on the sewing machine!) and a couple of ikea rugs. I painted the floorboards cream and dressed the room with (tasteful!) dusky pink accessories.

We moved the office into the small central space which meant buying new office furniture, but TBH it was a far better use of the space.

This meant we had four obvious bedrooms plus the flexible space on the ground floor which did have a newly installed bathroom adjacent should future buyers want to use it for that purpose.

You really do need to spell it out to some buyers!

When the house was under offer we resold the bed for a profit

I should point out that despite being in 'popular' Wiltshire, houses in the mid price range as ours was tended to hang around on the market for upwards of six months. We achieved an asking price offer within five weeks, although we did drop the price after the first month and if we had put the house on at the (considerably higher) price several of the five EAs we had round suggested, it might well still be for sale now over 12 months later......

I would definitely consider exploring the letting it out option, OP, assuming it's affordable and your lender gives you their consent of course.

At least you don't come across as desperate - ie, slashing your price drastically in order to achieve a quick sale/not lose your onward purchase, something else we unfortunately have experience of after we had to relocate 150 miles in a hurry when my ageing parents became ill in 2011. We 'lost' 65k after spending 45k partially refurbing a 400 yr old house (new kitchen, two new bathrooms, rewire etc)......we achieved a sale in ten days, but seriously hope we're never in that position again and hope things don't come to that for you!

I think this is half the issue with why we are so desperate at the moment - the commute is making me ill and my job is important to me. I don't want to change my job, but we have to do something to change my commute.

Relocating to where we are trying to go is actually going back to our home town on the outskirts of Birmingham. Where all our friends and family are anyway. We moved out to the country thinking it would be great to get away and it wouldn't be too far from home, plus we didn't have the money back then to purchase in our home town.

We love our house, if we could pick it up and move it we would! It's gorgeous to be in and so peaceful. But we have very much learnt that location is everything and a house we love in the wrong location just isn't good for us!

I think people have become a bit obsessed with wanting to make money out of a house move.

Given you paid £285k for the property a year ago- I suspect you haven't spent anything like £60k on it so you wouldn't lose out if you sold for less than the asking price.

Given that living there is making you I'll- What price your happiness?

It is quite a strange property, from the outside it looks like 2 houses, it's very close to the road and doesnt have the outside space the photos indicate it might have plus the inside being all modern, doesn't match the period outside.

On top of that it doesn't have great schools and is in the middle of nowhere so commuting to any major city is very difficult.

All of this cuts down the potential market but that's not to say there's not a buyer out there- it's just that they probably won't want to pay the price you want.

I disagree with those saying it's over-priced. The sold prices in the area are in that region for similarly sized houses. The OP got it for a good price because of the work that needed doing. Prices have risen and it's in move in condition.

What about swapping the living room and dining room? Honestly that would hugely put me off the way it is now, that and the fact bedroom 4 is listed as a dressing room as it immediately screams that it isn't big enough for an actual bedroom. The rest is stuff that can easily be changed, decor and that. But those 2 things plus room sizes should make a big difference to get to people through the door. Where is your fridge now? You said you moved it but to where? I hate not having a fridge in the kitchen so if it's not in there that may not be so great.

Your previous buyers sound very rude. Refusing to come in because they thought you looked young! Be glad you don't have to deal with people like that anymore. Their actual reason for pulling out can't be because of that.