Why can't we sell our house?

[Pentiumgold]

Please see attached link, reduced by £20 last week but still no interest. What puts you off our house? I found this property on the Rightmove Android app and wanted you to see it: www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/121091351

It’s nice overall but:
That great kitchen is going to cost a lot to replace
Bathroom is dated
What us the metal thing in tbd garden

Awful rainy day for pictures

@MySecretHistory

It’s nice overall but: That great kitchen is going to cost a lot to replace Bathroom is dated What us the metal thing in tbd garden

Awful rainy day for pictures

Grey kitchen

I thought that's a nice house, so what's the problem, but then I saw the bedrooms needed a good declutter/tidy up. Also, by showing the concrete area of the garden first, I thought that was all there was and would be put off that. Show as much of the lawn area as possible, with the (cleaned) concrete in the background - no need for a close-up pic! Otherwise, a really nice house, so maybe it's the price. Agree with other pps about making it nearer the £450,000 mark for those filtering by price.

Mainly the outside pictures for me. It probably looks better on a sunny day. Are flowers out now? Tidy up and new picture. Lovely kitchen.

No idea of the area but the only reason a house won't sell is the price. If you then lower the price people think there's something wrong with it and are put off.

I think the downstairs of your house is beautiful but by the time you get to the bathroom and bedrooms they're not presented to the same standard and the bedrooms do look very small - declutter, iron the bedding they'd look so much more appealing. I would add a photo of the home office, that's a massive selling point. And the garden is a bit confusing, it's hard to see how the different photos of the garden fit together. So i would spend a weekend cleaning/staging the garden and another decluttering the bedrooms completely (even if it's just boxed up and put in the loft for the photos) get a video tour done so people can make sense of the garden, then drop the price to a shade under £450k. Change the description, I also agree with the first thing you see being the possibility that is a leasehold, it would put me off. I think it's a lovely house though op. I disagree about grey, Mumsnet hates grey but judging by all the DIY stores it's just as popular as ever.

The open conservatory would put me straight off.

We’ve bought and sold last year and seen the freehold/leasehold thing loads, it wouldn’t put me off and I expect anyone house hunting would see it a lot.

I can’t believe most people commenting on these threads have moved house! Surely most of us can see pst clutter and decor we don’t like.

OP if you haven’t had any viewings it has to be price. I think the house looks fine and pretty standard for a 4 bed detached on a fairly new development. Lots have smaller 3rd and 4th bedrooms. The only change I would make is possibly to reorder the garden photos as I didn’t realise there was a lawn.

To me it's the 'tenure bit'
difficult to type now as an advert is covering what I'm doing.. And it won't go out of the way (it's a little piglet yesterday it was someone in a bra. It's only just starting doing this.

I agree, don’t mention the conservatory being heated, because energy prices are so high now people will look at that and think it will cost a lot to heat as you can’t close it off.

I agree that price is always the reason something doesn’t sell, but in this case I think a lot can be done to spruce it up, which may entice people in.

Inc Pictures of all the missing rooms
Clear and tidy the cluttered bedrooms and bathroom
Remove wardrobe from master
Jet wash outside and take pic from upstairs so that the whole garden can be seen
Make it less obvious it’s fake grass, so a further away shot.
Remove junk from garden
Pull table out on kitchen so people can see you can sit there
Do a better front shot so it’s not mainly tarmac in the pic
Take rug out living room, it makes it look small.
Make the beds properly for pictures
Then Take new better pictures and brighten them so it looks less dark and cramped.

I think you will then at least get people into view.

Maybe get a new estate agent.

Surely most of us can see pst clutter and decor we don’t like.
Some people can't. It's hard to understand when you can do it but some people can't visualise that a study could be a bedroom for example.

And the clutter thing makes people think of where they are going to put their toilet cleaner and their ironing board and it puts them off.

Nobody would bother with all this if it wasn't necessary. In the UK we are content with a stunt pineapple and a properly made bed. My American in-laws put everything into storage and stage the whole house.

I'm wondering if the proposed new household recycling centre could be putting people off? It'll be on the other side of the by-pass (between the Pimperne and Sunshine BP roundabouts, I think that's opposite where the map said you are).

Re take the photos again at good angles after decluttering the house as the photos are really unappealing

. Re make all the beds
remove the rug in the living room,
jet wash the patio and the driveway
take down the metal frame thing in the garden as it looks like it’s been just dumped there
Remove the ivy and the moon from the bedroom picture it makes it look inclosed and smaller.

Overall its a lovely house, but it raises a lot of questions that you need to answer at this point to attract viewers.
Correct the leasehold or freehold confusion.

It's the layout for me. Small living room, massive kitchen-diner, conservatory as 2nd reception (either too cold or too hot most of the year). I'd swap the dining room into the conservatory and make a kitchen-family room, with a cosy sitting room area that links in to the living room.

The storage and office are obviously a converted garage. No photos of these? If the garage door still opens get it marked on the plan, otherwise I think I've got to drag my bike or lawnmower through several rooms before I get to an external door. Is the office well insulated and cosy? Converted garage rooms are often cold, so I need a ppic to see it really is a proper room and you haven't just chucked chucked up a wall in the garage. Work from home space is such a benefit now, but not if it might be grim (and I'd assume it was as otherwise why hide it?

Consider getting 4' beds for the small bedrooms. I've got one in my spare room,, it's still big for 1 person and OK for visiting couples as long as they get along, isn't really obvious and the gain in floor space makes a big difference.

Garden needs better photos. The metal thing needs turning into a nice obvious pergola, or removing. At the moment it is confusing, and if I had little kids I'd worry about them treating it as a dangerous climbing frame. The plant pots all look a bit sad in little rows, get some colour in them, and group them rather than line them up. Get rid of the bollard that's dumped in one of them. I know they aren't permanent features but they make the garden look neglected. You need a more cohesive photo of the garden to show its size and layout.

The bedrooms and clutter don't put me off in the sense I can see past them but they don't give it the wow factor either which automatically starts drawing you in and making you want to view.

Unfortunately it's the kitchen/diner and conservatory/garden which would put me off and those aren't easy to change. The open conservatory would be a problem from the heat point of view, I don't like the kitchen (very little work surface, grey and I don't like the hob on a peninsula design) but could live with it for a few years. And the garden - too much patio and not enough actual garden for me.

I'd have to cost in getting the conservatory converted to a proper roof and the garden landscaped.

One thing that isn't clear from the photos, is there a path access to the rear of the house on either side? It looks as though the conservatory might go to the boundary on that side. Is the path on the other side yours, your neighbour's or shared?

We specifically kept our external doors to the conservatory because it changed the building regulation requirements. Make sure you have the paperwork for all the permissions in place.

Our conservatory is heated too but we can close it off and not heat if we want and I think that's a big worry for people buying currently.

What does your epc say, I've not looked. I'd imagine people are looking at these nowadays.

Photograph front and back yourself with the sun on them ie at different times of day. Also photograph the garden yourself. You know it best so will know where to photograph it from.

I don't know why but estate agents seem to have a total blind spot when it comes to exterior shots.

Actually, why not go through and photograph the whole house yourself? Then look at the photos, what jumps out at you? For me what jumps out in all the bedroom shots is that the duvets haven't been smoothed. A small detail which can make a room look cluttered when it really isn't.

Same with the bathroom. Clear all the normal bottles of shampoo, toothbrushes etc then photograph. The bathroom will look quite different.

Basically stage for the photos more than for viewings. Photos are what will get people through the door. Once they are through the door then they will see your home for what it is (and it does look nice). But it is the photos which they will go back to after the viewing.

Ride your Estate Agent like the devil. Make them earn their money.

Good luck.

Photos make the house look very dark
Take the stuff off the walls especially whatever that thing is on the dormer ceiling
That scaffolding thing in the garden needs to be dismantled
Front of the house is very undefined and concrete looking. - a row of plants would help

The lack of doors from the kitchen to conservatory would put me off massively.
I agree with PP's - the bedrooms look cluttered and the garden photos are awful!!

Move agents. Ours sent a professional photographer who decluttered (and we thought we'd done some extreme decluttering) and set up the rooms to look their best.
The photos look dark downstairs, it's off putting in the kitchen especially. The bedrooms and bathroom look messy. The garden also looks messy, as others have said take the metal frame down to start with. Think of it like dressing a show home.
When people come round have it smelling nice, beds made and looking neat. It's amazing what a lack of imagination most people have. They assume no clutter means good storage / clutter means lack of storage. You're selling them a dream basically and it's not a doer upper so it needs to look amazing.
I'd sort the render as well it looks like you've not maintained the property or it takes a lot of maintaining.
I think previous people are right about the price as well a lot of people will put the limit at 450. A decent agent would have told you that. A decent agent would have also put freehold, on fairly new estates there can be an issues with sort of leasehold houses so people might be filling in the gaps and thinking there's huge services charges.

It's a lot of money to say a lot of the decor is dated. Id probably have to spend 20k to get it up to date.

Based on the comments that already read I was expecting it to be a lot worse when I clicked on the link it’s not terrible. Things like making sure the duvets are smooth and Ironed I think are important, the fact that every light on is in the house in the photographs really put me off because I would think it was dark and dingy.

FitAt50 has given you some great staging advice. My husband thought my efforts to stage our previous house were a waste of time until it went for 28k over the asking price (12 offers after 2 days of viewings).

It's the bathroom for me. It looks dated.
And the garden looks really small.