Please look at my house and give me your opinion

[Jellyshoeshurtmyfeet]

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-62009282.html

Hi,
Our house has been for sale for about 5 weeks or so now and we have had one viewing. Please have a look and let me know what might be the problem. TIA.

Oops. Posted too soon. Nice kitchen and lovely wooden floors, but the tiny garden (especially without grass) would completely put me off; as would the tiny bedroom with the sofa in. Removing the sofa and re-jigging to make best use of the space would really improve that though.

Also as a prospective buyer I would look at it's sold history and seeing as you'd only bought it about a year ago for £280,000, I'd really resent paying you a profit of over £100,000 as I'd struggle to see how you'd improved the property in that time. Also, imho it's a 3 bed with a small study or walk-in closet, not a 4 bed, as I consider that last room too small for a bedroom.
Overall, the house is beautifully decorated though.

Also, from looking at the photos and description of your property, you don't appear to have a downstairs toilet, which would be essential for me and, tbh, I would expect one at that price.

Its a lovely grey house, much like my own (how does it happen? all of a sudden you realise its grey!)
I think its beautiful, my only think would be garden staging to show its potential which can be harder in the autumn/winter months
Serious question though, where did you get your living room curtains they are lovely
Maybe you should change them for a bright colour to counter act the grey and send me the old ones

Maxwell having a valuation does not ,sadly, tell you what your house is worth . Only selling it will show that. Most agents over value or even under value sometimes for a quick sale. The best guide is to look at other houses in the road(s) or similar and see what they have sold for lately. You can compare % increases by looking at the LR sold prices, but unless there are amazing changes, the trend of -3% for the NE is right- I know people who can't sell there and are dropping prices like crazy.

Apart from the mystery student room and the brick yard, it looks fine to me.

No viewings means just one thing - overpriced. Sorry. And if you have put it up £100k from.last year's purchase price then that is a definite.

You have a beautiful home that could appeal to many. The reason why I wouldn't consider it is the fact that there's no grass area in the garden. Turn half the drive into grass patch perhaps if there's insufficient garden space?

Good luck - I'm sure someone will fancy it.

Well the house opposite went for 132 thousand 6 months ago and our friends just bought one in the next street for 138 thousand.
To be fair we bought ours at the bottom of the market but like I say the area is desirable.

Sorry pressed send too quickly.

Is desirable for first time buyers and has good links to schools, town, all the houses have gardens etc.

My point was merely that there are some pockets of Newcastle that have been growing in value faster than the average.

Serious question though, where did you get your living room curtains they are lovely
Maybe you should change them for a bright colour to counter act the grey and send me the old ones

On reflection, I think your yellow arm chair is the issue. I can look after it for you if you like...

Has the door from the dining room to the hall been blocked off when the room was broken thru with the lounge? A house of that age would normally have a doorway from the dining room into the hall. I see you now have a door into the garden from the dining room. I'd put the doorway back into the hall because anyone is going to have to carry food right thru the hall into the lounge to reach the dining table.

I also agree with another poster that putting back the wall between the lounge and dining room and knocking down the wall between kitchen / diner would be nicer.

😊 I love my yellow armchair! Curtains are Dunelm. I do think that maxwell is right, certain bits of Newcastle are bucking the trend with prices. Heaton, Jesmond, Gosforth are very popular.

There is no door directly to dining area. We really can't start putting up walls unfortunately but I do agree that it might be better if they were separate.

I could swap the rooms over though so that the dining area is where the living room currently is.

The biggest issue for me is that the ensuite isn't off the room I would want as my master. I would therefore be trying to work out how I could configure the other rooms, to have an ensuite off the master.
Downstairs is lovely and a buyer should be able to see that they could knock down walls to make more open plan.
The garden is small but could look lovely is staged differently, possibly even with a bit of artificial lawn to look greener?
Usually though it's down to price and potential buyers will be looking at the cost involved to change it to suit them. This may mean it's too high at the moment

There is no door directly to dining area. We really can't start putting up walls unfortunately but I do agree that it might be better if they were separate.

No but you could presumably break open the doorway to kitchen that was there in the first place? You see, people are going to think about the cost of doing stuff like that and factor it into their offers.

My MIL had a house similar to yours and even when they combined the dining room / lounge they retained the door from the kitchen.

I think it would be helpful to know what you have changed and what was there when you bought it.
If you bought it with the lounge / diner as it is, then someone else will I assume.

But be interesting to know what changes you made. From what you have said, you have built the garage and the first floor extension above? Is the garage usable- can a car fit in it? Because if not you might like to think about putting in a downstairs loo that would take a portion of the garage away.

I agree with what others have said. It looks like you bought the house last year, haven't done anything to it and are asking for a third more than you bought it for. It takes two clicks from your listing to get what appears to be the photos from when you bought it last year showing the house to be exactly the same (they're actually the photos from when you marketed it back in August which are much better photos that what you have now). You should see if you can get Rightmove to take those photos down altogether or replace them with the photos from when you bought it. If not, then you need to use the photos from August so that people will realise that they're not photos from when you bought it. You also really need to stress in the listing that you've done a lot of work to it.

On top of it looking like you are being massively greedy with the asking price, I'd be wondering why you are wanting to move after only a year. I'd suspect horrible neighbours and not bother viewing it to be honest and I don't think there's anything you can do about that.

It's very nice, but everything queen ^ just said about the price. The garden would put me off too - I'd turf it.

I don't understand the history of the sale on the Land Registry.

There is one entry in 1998 or something when I assume it was sold to someone else, and not bought by the OP from an owner who'd lived there since 1998. Where are the details from the sale to you in 2015? The photos on the LR show it now (or in August) when you'd done work on it. This sometimes happens- when a house is currently on the market, the only photos on RM are the current ones, not from when you bought it in 2015.

I think the OP has added the garage and upper floor - have you OP? But it won't have added £100K to the value. A garage doesn't add much value - maybe £10K, and on top of that you have only got a small bedroom and an en suite for it.

Im fascinated by this thread.....:)

OP- the plans from the LR entry when it was marketed with another agent show you have a downstairs loo. The current plans don't. A few posters have picked up the lack of a loo- so is there one or not? .

The other thing- and you can't change this now- is that the brickwork of the extension appears to be visibly different from the original. Is it? Cos that would really put me off.

The extension would be better if you put a stud wall up to make a bedroom at front. Move ensuite door down the wall and put a walk in cupboard between that room and the bedroom. This means you can access the shower room and the bedroom from the hall. Yes it won't be an en suite but I'd rather have a good size single bedroom with proper upstairs storage and a second shower/bathroom.

First thing that google brings up when you put your address in is the schedule from when you bought the house. 2 questions, first one is were is the main bathroom window ? As you appear to have blocked both of them up. And secondly, why did you paint the kitchen cupboards ? The kitchen when you bought it was lovely.

I think what Giselaw suggested is the best idea:

1/ flip your bathrooms- make current family bathroom ensuite and make that adjoining room your master.l bedroom. But I would take a bit off and add it to the current ensuite to make it a bigger family bathroom. I'd expand the study room by knocking into the long narrow bedroom chopping it in half. So your study becomes a good sized 3rd bedroom (not a narrow long one) and your current narrow bedroom is reduced to a box room. Divider wall so the landing now extends to new family bathroom at end and the study. Bonus points for not having 2 other bedrooms share a bathroom wall and hearing the toilet flush.

I know it would mean more work, but really, the long thin room just doesn't work. I would also seriously consider installing a downstairs loo in part of the garage.

It doesn't look like you have put in a new kitchen, you've just painted the one that was already there, so again, if I was a prospective purchaser I would feel a little cheated that other than the extension at the side, all you had done was really give the place a lick of paint (lovely that the paint is though).

I also can't work out how the door to the long thin room goes from the landing? Is it not immediately above the stairs?

I can't find the photos on zoopla. Have they been taken down?

The old kitchen was hideous and dated, and the OP did very well to bring it up to date with the grey.

Give that a) 3 estate agents have all said 390 and b) that this which needs a helluva lot of more work sold for 359 in Jan 2015, I reckon it's a fair price.

With luck you should get offers around 360-370.

Count yourself lucky, around me a 4 bed house is 1.7 million.

I don't why people keep suggesting complicated renovations, they're aiming to sell it!

It looks lovely.

If I was being a picky buyer the things that would put me off are the sheer number of chairs in picture 2, it makes the room look smaller, in picture 8 that there is no lawn, picture 9 the brown laundry basket n X to the bath, picture 10 is a bad last impression, can you take out the sofa and turn the bed round so there is space either side ?

It's only really the lack of a garden and picture ten that would make me think twice about viewing.