Name changed for this.
I’m selling a house that has been rented to tenants for ten years.
It’s a fixer upper. The estate agent has been told to market it as a fixer upper, to people who want a project. The EA put it on for an unrealistic price this summer, claiming that there was “plenty of interest at that price”. It’s a 3 bed Victorian terrace in a nice village in West Yorkshire. I made him drop the price a couple of weeks ago, by £30k, despite his protests that he was “confident of selling the house this year”. The low number of viewings, and the feedback, suggested otherwise. It’s still not shifting, even at the lower price.
It’s not a wreck, but it’s tired. Of course it is: it’s been tenanted for ten years, that’s why we’re selling it as a fixer upper. It’s on for £45k less than the top price that houses on the same terrace have sold for this year. It’s on at offers over £220k. Done up identical houses on the same terrace have sold for £265k.
My question is this: do buyers really want a true fixer upper, or do they expect to buy a house described as a fixer upper and only have to spend £500 on it to make it perfect?
Our experience suggests the latter, and that the House Doctor (Anne Maurice…yes, I am old enough to remember her) was right all along. In other words, forget showing a house that needs a bit of work, because buyers can’t be arsed and you’re going to have to do it yourself so that buyers can “imagine themselves in the house” blah blah.
That’s an outcome I was kind of dreading because I’ve got no time for supervising effing house renovations. I don’t need to sell, just can’t be bothered with being a landlord any more. I’m flexible on price, hence the £30k reduction, but I don’t want to sell for a derisory amount, less than what I paid for it in 2006.
The feedback since the price drop is that, despite more viewers and the house being explicitly described on Rightmove as ‘in need of modernisation’, the viewers are all carping about “having to do too much work”, and that they wouldn’t make an offer at all, even below the reduced asking price!
The house has a damp cellar, like all of the houses on the same terrace. It needs redecorating and recarpeting. The kitchen is original (as in Victorian cupboards, not avant garde). The bathroom is early nineties, and is quite tired. I can’t see the value in redoing a kitchen and bathroom just to sell the house, because surely buyers would want to fit their own, to their own taste?
What do you think? Is it worth doing up a fixer upper yourself to shift the bloody thing, or persevering in the hope that a buyer comes along who understands what the phrase ‘fixer upper’ means, and is prepared to do the work in exchange for a good price?