Advice on our house listing please

[LancsRose75]

Hi all, I’m looking for advice from the MN property experts on our house listing please.

It’s been on the market since beginning of March.

We never actually wanted to move, we loved the house and had long term plans for it, my my husband got offered a job we couldn’t say no to so had to move. We are now no longer in the country.

The feedback we have had is it’s too expensive. We listed it at the agents recommended price which we thought was a bit ambitious and dropped it £15k almost straight away. We are reluctant to drop it again, but are still being told it’s too expensive and needs too much work doing. It’s £45k more than we paid in 2016

We’ve done So much to the house since we moved in, every rooms had new flooring, levelled out uneven floors, new internal doors, added a bathroom, opened up the loft and had it boarded, new plumbing and heating, extra powerful boiler, new kitchen... I have added the link from when we bought it and there is a very good reason there are no kitchen pictures, it was so bad we actually went without one for 4 months rather than attempt to use it.

The biggest job that needs doing is new windows and doors. There is nothing wrong with the windows other that they look old. We weren’t planning on replacing them until we had the money to renovate and extend the back of the house. I asked my husband to paint the front door, I stupidly assumed he’d just give it a coat of its original colour but he decided to paint it blue, although our plan was to do this colour eventually, it looks completely out of place the way it is now 🤦‍♀️

There are a couple of areas not covered by the agents, I’ve added pictures. I also hate the green in the agents pictures, it looks nothing like the actual colour.

Location wise, the house is on a main road but in a very sought after area, it’s a couple hundred yards from an outstanding primary school. The council actually block the road so parents don’t block resident parking so that’s not an issue, it’s with in walking distance to the township, other outstanding schools in the area, train within walking distance, within walking distance to a holiday village with lots of facilities...

Here is the link and the link to what it looked like when we bought it.

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/103572305#/

Original listing

www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/detailMatching.html?prop=37356456&sale=87986772&country=england

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. My husband is going to go back in a few weeks to check in the house and do some jobs. The garden will be over grown with weeds by now so he will sort those out and anything else he can.

You probably paid too much in the first place. It's irrelevant how much you have spent on it. Perhaps you spent too much and had no hope of returning that profit. Getting rid of a bedroom is a mistake that always reduces the value.

Are people honestly put off a house if there are bath stickers on the wall and they don't like the curtains?!

Absolutely bonkers.

@JackieTheFart

Are people honestly put off a house if there are bath stickers on the wall and they don't like the curtains?!

Absolutely bonkers.

Isn't it? 🤣

It is lovely but I think it's the price. And in my recent experience the estate agent.

I would use the photo of your lounge with stuff in it. Drop the price, change estate agents, borrow some furniture and get professional photographs.

I like the backyard.

With my most favourite house they literally put a sofa in the lounge, dining set in the family room and a double bed in the master bedroom. It was just to show how your things would fit.

I sold our last house with a significant price drop and it was gone in days!

Might it be worth having a house 'staging' company style the house for sale? Costs about 2% of sale price but could help.

I do wonder if the condition is not as good as first appears from the photos. I had a closer look and the doors of the kitchen unit in the middle of the photo aren't properly aligned and there's wallpaper above a radiator that's lifting. I think you need to go round with a critical eye and fix these things and look at the price. You must be paying a mortgage therefore as long as you can repay that why have it languishing on the market while you hold out for a sale at an unrealistic price?

"But op has had feedback from potential buyers telling her just that, denver. You telling her it's not true won't get the house sold??"

Oh really? Well I missed the bit where she said potential buyers had told her she'd overpaid originally. I know the area and the market and disagree.

OP they don't all have vision and unfortunately you've stripped it bare of everything. This thread proves that people can't see beyond a bath sticker.

I'm afraid it's always price that will make the difference if everything else is okay. The photos are fine I think, no real problems with them at all, though your kitchen is a really nice feature so it should have more than one photo I think with maybe some nice close ups to emphasise. Reduce down to the next Right Move price bracket.

@user1471538283

It is lovely but I think it's the price. And in my recent experience the estate agent.

I would use the photo of your lounge with stuff in it. Drop the price, change estate agents, borrow some furniture and get professional photographs.

I like the backyard.

With my most favourite house they literally put a sofa in the lounge, dining set in the family room and a double bed in the master bedroom. It was just to show how your things would fit.

I sold our last house with a significant price drop and it was gone in days!

Thanks so much for that. My husband hasn’t been keen on the agents. To be fair when buying we weren’t keen on these guys when looking in the area but there service did seem better when we were looking to sell.

The photos are supposed to be professional. I’m terrible at photos but I do think I could have done better with some.

I’m kicking myself about the furniture, we literally gave everything away for free because we couldn’t take it with us. I wish we had left it in now.

Empty houses always look so sad. I also struggled to work out what room had the funny table in it (I now realise it's a dining table, but that wasn't obvious).

Without furniture I'm afraid it looks tiny and like a rental, so I'd assume everything had been done on the cheap. Can you buy a second hand (even non-working) washing machine or dishwasher to shove in the kitchen? It looks like the wall behind is falling down...

It's a good little house, I agree the price is just a bit ambitious for a 3 bed in this area.

I like the blue door!

@denverRegina

"But op has had feedback from potential buyers telling her just that, denver. You telling her it's not true won't get the house sold??"

Oh really? Well I missed the bit where she said potential buyers had told her she'd overpaid originally. I know the area and the market and disagree.

OP they don't all have vision and unfortunately you've stripped it bare of everything. This thread proves that people can't see beyond a bath sticker.

Thanks. Because we bought it empty it didn’t even enter my mind about not having furniture in it.

Sorry to be brutal but the state of the wall and flooring in the appliance gap in the kitchen suggests that a pretty shoddy job has been done of the renovations. I'd wonder where else corners have been cut and what surprises I could find. Get an appliance in its place, just a cheap 2nd hand one.

The photos with the furniture look so much nicer.

Ultimately though I think he need to be realistic about price and also consider how much not selling it could cost you. To insure it empty must be costing you an absolute bomb, there is a risk of squatters, leaks going unnoticed, damp and disrepair. Personally I would cut my losses and get rid of it.

Is £10-15k extra worth a years potential stress and costs even assuming there are no expensive incidents? The longer it languishes on the market the more people will be suspicious of it too and it will get harder to sell.

@SmallYappyTypeDog

Sorry to be brutal but the state of the wall and flooring in the appliance gap in the kitchen suggests that a pretty shoddy job has been done of the renovations. I'd wonder where else corners have been cut and what surprises I could find. Get an appliance in its place, just a cheap 2nd hand one.

The photos with the furniture look so much nicer.

Ultimately though I think he need to be realistic about price and also consider how much not selling it could cost you. To insure it empty must be costing you an absolute bomb, there is a risk of squatters, leaks going unnoticed, damp and disrepair. Personally I would cut my losses and get rid of it.

Is £10-15k extra worth a years potential stress and costs even assuming there are no expensive incidents? The longer it languishes on the market the more people will be suspicious of it too and it will get harder to sell.

Brutal is fine. We didn’t cut corners on the work, we just didn’t see any point plastering that wall as 1 it was behind the cupboards and 2 the plan was to knock it down and extend the kitchen out. We were close to having the money when covid hit, delaying the plans, then obviously the job offer changed everything.

The floors I totally agree with and was furious with my husband as I hadn’t realised he had not done it all the way to the back. Luckily we have plenty more of the flooring in the garage so when he goes back he’s going to fix it.

I’m not worried about damage, damp etc we have relatives going in weekly to open it up and check on it. The neighbours are also keeping an eye on it. We also have the heating set to come in twice a day. The plumbing is new and we’ve had the roofer out to check the roof before we left.

It’s definitely not idea having it empty and paying 2 lots off bills but we budgeted for at least 3 months so still have time. Letting is also an option as we don’t need to sell this year.

So I’ve found a photo of the kitchen after we started work on it. You can see the floor, it was about 5 layers of different flooring including a full layer of concrete poured over it. The top layer you can see here wasn’t even the original top layer, we’d already pulled that up. Originally we had a step leading into the kitchen because the floor had been raised so much. My DH painlessly chiselled away at it hoping we could take it back to the original quarry tiles, he spent over a week delicately doing it on his hands and knees, just as we thought we were in the homestretch we found someone had completely smashed the original tiles to bits.

It was the same with the walls, not just in the kitchen but all over the house, layers just piled on top of other layers. No one had taken it back to the original walls until we did.

The tiles on the far wall where what covered every wall that you could see from floor to ceiling.

I appreciate you've now moved out so staging it with furniture possibly isn't an option so it would be useful to have the photos labelled so they correspond to the descriptions on the floor plan e.g. lounge, bedroom 1 etc.
I personally wouldn't be put off by the colour of walls but the stickers make it look a bit grubby and there's a couple of bits of skirting board that look like they need a coat of paint and the one in the room with the butterfly curtains doesn't seem to join the wall at the end?
Could you frost the window that looks into the lean to as that's quite unsightly.
I don't know if it is overpriced, this is on the same road and £14k more. Although it's nicely presented it has less garden and is mid-terrace. www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/87251503#/

Do you have a photo before you started work in the kitchen, though? Obviously there's a major difference between that and the finished product.

But to be fair, potential buyers just see the end result, they've no reason to care that it could have looked like that picture had you not renovated it; it's just not relevant.

It’s a bummer you gave away your furniture. Can you possibly borrow any of it back, even just for photos?
Or as @Handsoffstrikesagain said, find a local staging company and pay for furniture. Looking at the other house for sale on your street, it makes such a difference.
And defo fill in that gap in the kitchen. Even with some cheap / second hand. It’s the first thing you see, and it looks terrible.

[quote emmathedilemma]I appreciate you've now moved out so staging it with furniture possibly isn't an option so it would be useful to have the photos labelled so they correspond to the descriptions on the floor plan e.g. lounge, bedroom 1 etc.
I personally wouldn't be put off by the colour of walls but the stickers make it look a bit grubby and there's a couple of bits of skirting board that look like they need a coat of paint and the one in the room with the butterfly curtains doesn't seem to join the wall at the end?
Could you frost the window that looks into the lean to as that's quite unsightly.
I don't know if it is overpriced, this is on the same road and £14k more. Although it's nicely presented it has less garden and is mid-terrace. www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/87251503#/[/quote]
That house says freehold.

Just remember if you decide to let it out that you also need to take into account capital gains tax depending on how long you rent the property out for before selling.

[quote emmathedilemma]I appreciate you've now moved out so staging it with furniture possibly isn't an option so it would be useful to have the photos labelled so they correspond to the descriptions on the floor plan e.g. lounge, bedroom 1 etc.
I personally wouldn't be put off by the colour of walls but the stickers make it look a bit grubby and there's a couple of bits of skirting board that look like they need a coat of paint and the one in the room with the butterfly curtains doesn't seem to join the wall at the end?
Could you frost the window that looks into the lean to as that's quite unsightly.
I don't know if it is overpriced, this is on the same road and £14k more. Although it's nicely presented it has less garden and is mid-terrace. www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/87251503#/[/quote]
My husband is going back and going to be doing a lot of what’s been recommended, including the window leading to the lean-to. Agree on the stickers, if he has time he’s going to repaint that room entirely, we still have the bunk beds that went in there so they are going back up and we are going to get something to fill the gap in the kitchen, after he’s fixed the floor. I don’t even mind if we buy a cheap dish washer and leave it behind. I’ve already order some bits online.

I agree on the pictures too. When my DH goes back I’m going to get him to take new pics and get the agents to switch the photos out. The current pics are supposed to be professional but I don’t like them. My DH isn’t a professional photographer but he has the knack when it comes to taking a good photo.

is the garden split in half with an alleyway or access for other people through the middle of it? that would be VERY off-putting for me, but it is not easy to work out on the photos.

if you have people who view the house but then don't offer, that could be why.

@parietal

is the garden split in half with an alleyway or access for other people through the middle of it? that would be VERY off-putting for me, but it is not easy to work out on the photos.

if you have people who view the house but then don't offer, that could be why.

Why would you think that?

@parietal

is the garden split in half with an alleyway or access for other people through the middle of it? that would be VERY off-putting for me, but it is not easy to work out on the photos.

if you have people who view the house but then don't offer, that could be why.

Yes it is. There is a right of way for the house next door. It was the biggest thing that put me off when we looked at the house. I got use to it though. The neighbours are lovely and not intrusive at all.

Oh, it is?? Oh. That's not good. It really needs to be mentioned upfront because it will put a lot of people off.