Please can someone tell me why my flat isn't selling?!

[Puffykins]

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-84873916.html

Price-wise, it's appropriate - even cheap - for the area. I know that it hasn't got it's own garden, but there is a huge communal garden which, in central-ish London, I'd argue is better than a tiny garden.

Admittedly I don't like the estate agents pictures much. It's really light in real life, but they always seem obsessed with turning on all the lights.

Anyway, any tips would be hugely appreciated. Thank you!

@Puffykins

I had genuinely never heard of Dunelm before starting this thread. They've got some really nice velvet chairs. For the next house. As I'm meant to be decluttering this one 🙈🙈🙈.

I don’t get it either, as said I do t have anything from there but I have a friend who has some gorgeous tan leather kitchen bar stools from dunelm

And ignore the poster saying you’ve had saying you’ve had several hundred posts saying it was squalid or awful, I think you know that’s not the case, you have had a lot of posts saying it’s cluttered due to the volume of books and artwork, but I think you knew that anyway.

I am curious about this thread (Op is a writer after all). I would seriously worry about fire risk etc though with the amount of magazines and books ( and the propped up glass frames against the children beds that could easily get fallen on in night)

If you do take it off the market to do some work on it, OP, it might be worth taking a look at The Modern House estate agent? A friend of a friend had over 100 enquiries for her house and literally had a waiting list of people wanting to view. She said it seemed like there were a lot of people with a lot of money who wanted to 'buy style'.

I object to curiosity. 😞
This thread is great.

Dunelm is great. They have excellent lighting and our spare room curtains came from there & look brilliant - thick & hang beautifully. You don’t have to embrace wooden Live, Laugh, Love signs or grey velvet bar stools.

OP - finding the buyer who really understands your aesthetic is trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack. It’s a buyers market for flats in central London. If you want to appeal to a broader audience in order to give yourself the best chance of a sale then it needs to be toned down.

She said it seemed like there were a lot of people with a lot of money who wanted to 'buy style’.

Discerning individuals, clearly.

The clutter amd the bathroom!

What really bothers me is the huge number of people giving their 'expert' opinion that cluttered homes without fitted cupboards and fitted kitchens don't sell. That's not an expert opinion. It's not a fact. You've possibly watched tv programmes about it years ago or read a newspaper article about it. Some 'expert' will tell you that you need to do x, y and z to style a house. These people are not actual researchers who have established exactly what sells. It's just an idea circulating during this period of time about the 'right' way for people to live which has gained traction because sponsors like Homebase or Ikea put money behind it.

It's absurd to tell the op or anyone else that their lifestyle doesn't sell. In the case of this OP she lives in a fashionable area in a fashionable building and she has a great sense of style. Telling her she lives 'squalidly' says many more things about her than you.

I'm still trying to get my head around the suggestion upthread that adults should need no more than three books each. Think some noughts must have been missed off.

@callmeadoctor neither DH nor I smoke and the flat doesn't have an open fire so I'm not overly concerned about the fire risk of books and magazines. (I mean, are they truly a fire risk?)

Also, just so everyone can stop worrying about the pictures stacked against the children's beds, they're no longer there. There're in storage. They were always going into storage, but hadn't yet been packed when the photographer surprise arrived. They had been taken out of a cupboard though, into which I had just shoved a basket of teddies - so that's how those pictures ended up where they did.

Missing plaster on the walls in the kitchen. Have times fallen off? Gives the impression that the property not cared for. Too much clutter.

912 messages on one of these type of posts. Got to be a record!

This is on for £25k more and looks a lot more cramped than yours (and certainly more clutter and not to be mean, but a lot less style) Yes, the exterior is slightly more appealing, but still... I think your property is well priced for the space.

@Plunger when we bought the flat it had been totally stripped as it had been repossessed - there was no kitchen - there were even holes in the floor tiles. We retiled the floor and put in a kitchen, but because I genuinely like the blue and yellow tiles that were left (I think they're original from when the block was built in 1970) and liked the look of the raw plaster we didn't re-tile the walls. Also we were young(er) and broke.

However, having taken on board what everyone has said about the kitchen, I do realise now that I need to retile it properly. And lose the bookcase, which is a shame, as it holds all my recipe books. But I'm sure I can get all the recipes online.

Rent storage. You need to DEpersonalize as much as possible, make this a space that others can see themselves living in. I realize that this is your home, but...when you are trying to sell, you are not talking about your home, but a commodity. It needs to present, not your tastes, but a blank canvas of possibilities for potential buyers. Right now, your flat, which seems to have some good bones, is overwhelming views with your life, and they are unable to visualize their lives in the flat.

For instance, let's do a hypothetical. A family who loves vivid colors has painted their sitting room a rich purple. People who view the property ONLY see, "OH MY GOD, THAT COLOR!" If that room were a boring white, they would think, "OH! I could paint this room a lovely sea-foam green!"

The Modern House have amazing homes. I remember falling in love with a fab St Ives style place on there last time I looked. Just had another look now and really love that martello tower property they've just sold. (A fair bit of, ahem, french chalk paint there, mind you...)

This thread has been addictive. Thanks for sharing your home with us, @Puffykins and chapeau to you for dealing with all the comments so gracefully. Good luck with everything, and wishing your son continued good health.

@ConquestEmpireHungerPlague the Modern House really does have beautiful homes - I follow them on Instagram and, because of them, frequently consider moving to places I would never have thought of before!

Thank you for your lovely comments.

And lose the bookcase, which is a shame, as it holds all my recipe books. But I'm sure I can get all the recipes online.
Don't do that! Especially not on the say so of a philistine someone who thinks more than 3 books per adult is unwarranted greed.

@ConquestEmpireHungerPlague

The Modern House have amazing homes. I remember falling in love with a fab St Ives style place on there last time I looked. Just had another look now and really love that martello tower property they've just sold. (A fair bit of, ahem, french chalk paint there, mind you...)

This thread has been addictive. Thanks for sharing your home with us, @Puffykins and chapeau to you for dealing with all the comments so gracefully. Good luck with everything, and wishing your son continued good health.

The Modern House is my property porn website. I've mentally moved into a few of the properties already

I have lots of recipe books, but as I don't have room for them in the kitchen I keep them in the lounge. Could you not put some of your other books into storage and move your recipe books elsewhere in the flat?

@martysouth

What really bothers me is the huge number of people giving their 'expert' opinion that cluttered homes without fitted cupboards and fitted kitchens don't sell. That's not an expert opinion. It's not a fact. You've possibly watched tv programmes about it years ago or read a newspaper article about it. Some 'expert' will tell you that you need to do x, y and z to style a house. These people are not actual researchers who have established exactly what sells. It's just an idea circulating during this period of time about the 'right' way for people to live which has gained traction because sponsors like Homebase or Ikea put money behind it.

It's absurd to tell the op or anyone else that their lifestyle doesn't sell. In the case of this OP she lives in a fashionable area in a fashionable building and she has a great sense of style. Telling her she lives 'squalidly' says many more things about her than you.

Hear hear.

I am genuinely shocked by the number of people commenting negatively about the quantity of books, by the way. Yes it could do with more shelving (I would do floor to ceiling shelving across the whole of the wall which currently houses that red Ikea cabinet in the sitting room, for example) but the quantity per se is far from excessive. I have many more. What kind of world do we live in in which adults may have three books each?! It’s laughable.

@Misandrylovescompany

I am genuinely shocked by the number of people commenting negatively about the quantity of books, by the way. Yes it could do with more shelving (I would do floor to ceiling shelving across the whole of the wall which currently houses that red Ikea cabinet in the sitting room, for example) but the quantity per se is far from excessive. I have many more. What kind of world do we live in in which adults may have three books each?! It’s laughable.

Really? I'd say you read a book, keep it for a while, get more books, run out of room on your bookshelf so get rid of the old books and keep the most recent ones. I love reading but since I got a kindle, the books have gone - more room/easy reading = win win! 👍

What kind of world do we live in in which adults may have three books each?! It’s laughable.

It's actually quite depressing. I mainly read off a kindle now but have loads of books, which have been in boxes since I moved but I'm tempted to get them all out and display them. Fuck only having three books. Dd has tonnes of books in her bedroom, too. Depressing to think that children might not have more than three books.

@MrsJBaptiste but what if one day my children want to read the books? Or my grandchildren? I discovered Agatha Christie while spending Christmas at my grandparents house one year, Georgette Heyer via my mother's library, and Graham Greene, George Eliot, Evelyn Waugh via my father's. It's harder to find out about books if they're not physically there to browse and decide to read.

It's a moot point right now though as (nearly) all the fiction is in storage - what remains is what I've read since August/ am about to read/ books I need for the bookclubs I host.