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

I couldn't comment on the price as don't know the area, but it looks very pretty from the outside.
But it does look more like a modern show home on the inside, not a period property. I quite like the kitchen, but feel the house as a whole needs an injection of colour and cosiness, the grey is quite off putting for me, it makes it look cold. Could you add more colour with accessories?
Someone suggested reorganising the rooms so that the dining room is next to the kitchen- sounds like a good idea.

I've just been reading your post on MSE and it seems the big problem is what you and your partner have convinced yourselves this property is worth.

He has repeatedly mentioned a 13% price rise in the area in the last year but it's not at all clear how he's arrived at that figure.

It's a very small area, if you look at sold prices within a mile of you, there have only been 15 in the last year and the variety of property types makes it difficult to apply any meaningful extrapolation to your purchase price.

Also, the reason you need such a high price is that your onward purchase has increased in price but your really can't compare markets that are 40 miles apart.

If you paid £285k and have spent £20k on it you can cut your losses at anything over £305k- anything else is blind hope greed based on a very limited pool of recent sold prices.

I genuinely can't see why, if this house is affecting your health, you wouldn't be prepared to sell for less.

I genuinely can't see why, if this house is affecting your health, you wouldn't be prepared to sell for less

This ^

As Bear says, surely your health is more important than any profit? As I stated upthread, we were in a not dissimilar position in 2011, although we had owned our house for three years and had only got about two thirds through the refurb. We would have loved to recoup the money we'd spent on the new kitchen, bathrooms, rewire etc but my parents' well-being meant more to me tbh, so the 'loss' was one we felt prepared to make.

Our EA confirmed the work we'd done had made the house infinitely more saleable coincidentally we ripped out a 1980s pine kitchen the PO had painted in an a attempt to update the place when selling and this was borne out when we went SSTC within 10 days.

As an aside, the new owners loved the kitchen we fitted three years before in 2008 - classical bespoke painted units that suited the character of the Tudor building - and said it was this that sold the house to them. It's still there now they've been trying to sell at a vastly inflated price and 18 months on have failed to do so as I've seen it on RM.

We did have to lower our sights on our onward purchase, but along with the 60k+ we 'lost', this was a trade off for getting a quick sale and being able to move on with our lives! It's not all about making a profit.

Regarding the OFSTED thing, where people say they wouldn't even bother to read the report or look at a school graded 3. A village school where my friends with their kids live had been rated Outstanding consistently for many years. People with children probably snapped up houses there up to yesterday, confident their children were gonna go to an outstanding school. Yesterday new report came out, and it requires improvement. I'm curious, if you were a parent mid-purchase, would you pull out of the sale just because of the new Ofsted report? It's a "posh" lovely village, there hasn't been a massive change of any kind, so it's roughly the same old locals attending/teaching, would you not give the school the benefit of the doubt, or compare the reports, talk to the parents? What if you already bought the house in the summer, secure in the knowledge that the local school had always been outstanding, would you be looking to move again? Or to take the children out just because of the report and move them to a different school?
Likewise, when you reject the area on the basis of the local school not being good enough, and then discover new inspections graded them much higher, would you not have wished you had gone and seen the school for yourself before putting all your trust into the mark the OFSTED gave the school as a result of aa (potentially) three hour visit?

A visit, not aa

I think if you're mid purchase that is different - it would depend whether it would be the dream house except for the schools, but for me personally, I would certainly consider pulling out if it meant my children would have to go to a sub-standard school.

I think the issue was just flagged in answer to the OP's original question though as to why she wasn't getting viewings. The perception (whether that's right or wrong) that schools are not very good locally would put some potential buyers off.

OP, I've also read your MSE post. You and your partner seem to be quite fixated on getting back the money you have spent on it and the apparent 13% in value on account of the market. As lots of these threads point out, a house is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Whilst you had a buyer before, the fact that they pulled out means they weren't prepared to pay the price you'd agreed in the end.

Lots of people have suggested on the MSE post that the £20k you have spent on it (insulation / re-wiring / replastering) may not have added £20k in value, and there may not have been the 13% increase in the market that you think there has. The fact that you both keep referring to putting it on for £345k for a "fast sale" is obviously not working.

I think the choice is to wait for the buyer who will fall in love with the house, not be bothered about paying an uplift of £60k in 17 months, and you can move into your new house (if its still available). The difficulty with that is that if you're not even getting people through the door, you might have to wait a while.

Or if the commute is affecting you so badly, you lower the price to at least get some interest and take it from there.

Your home looks absolutely beautiful and is presented as so online. I would either introduce a price reduction or bring another agent on board in a winner takes all to get them more motivated

Lovely house.

I think what is letting it down as a couple of people have said is the rather strange arrangement at the back. Do those ground floor windows feel exposed. Could you put up a fence with trellis along your boundary to make it feel a bit more self contained.

Also one of the details says it might be possible to extend the plot. Where would that be and could you make more of it - that might be appealing to some people. For me though it is the back that would be the problem. Otherwise lovely.

Oil heating would be a no-no for a lot of people too.