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Property/DIY

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Why can't we sell our house?

268 replies

Pentiumgold · 07/04/2022 20:45

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

OP posts:
LaurieFairyCake · 08/04/2022 08:46

House is LOVELY (and massive!)

But is there noise from the Bypass directly behind?

stuntbubbles · 08/04/2022 08:46

@BarnDance

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.

Exactly. Clutter draws the eye in photos – for instance in the sitting room all I can think is “Is that a stuffed toy duck in front of the TV?” Trailing wires from appliances are the worst for it – you can tune them out in real life, but they jump out in photos.

You’re not selling your stuff, or even your house, really: you’re selling people the fantasy that if only they bought YOUR house, they too would have shiny, clutter-free surfaces, freshly made beds, neat sofas and flowers on the dining table. Even if normally their sofas have an old duvet with a dog on, and their tables are piled with junk mail and kids’ homework. And we all fall for it: we decluttered our house and sold last week, thinking “Ha, little do they know what we hid in the car!” Now I’m scrolling Rightmove looking at lovely tidy houses thinking “Wow, when we live there I won’t have any mess!”

OP’s photos make it hard to see the size/scope of the rooms in the bedrooms, and show the lack of storage in the bathroom by piling stuff on the windowsill. That kind of clutter is hard to see past: if it obscures what you’re buying so you can’t see size/shape of rooms, where sockets might be, state of walls and skirtings; or if it highlights work to be done – eg bathrooms needing storage units.

girlmom21 · 08/04/2022 08:49

@LaurieFairyCake

House is LOVELY (and massive!)

But is there noise from the Bypass directly behind?

It's not massive. Look at the room sizes on the floor plan.
cupofdecaf · 08/04/2022 08:49

The other thing is a professional photographer can photoshop your photos a bit (they do round here all the time). So even if they don't take the pictures in a sunny day by the time it's online it's the most amazing weather on the photos. They can take bits out as long as it's not permanent stuff (they can remove bins but not a shed next door for example).

Indoctro · 08/04/2022 08:52

Downstairs is lovely just a few things I would say

Remove rug in living room as makes room look smaller

Upstairs bedroom could you change kids rooms to singles beds and declutter them

In garden clean the patio and decking

I think a herbal tidy up would make it much more appealing

girlmom21 · 08/04/2022 08:55

The extractor (I am assuming) looks like an upside down bin and the kitchen is really dark. That would hugely put me off.

Geneticsbunny · 08/04/2022 08:56

Garden and non sealed off conservatory are my worries. That conservatory won't pass planning regs and will make the house super expensive to heat.

elbea · 08/04/2022 09:03

The outside space puts me off, it’s all tarmac, paving and plastic grass. You’d have to spend thousands on it to make it nice.

SkoolShoes · 08/04/2022 09:04

Imagine you have time to visit 3 properties. There are 5 potential properties (right number of bedrooms/right area/tick the non-negotiable essentials list).

What you need to do it make yours guaranteed to be in the 3 that are viewed. Not the 2 that are ditched.

So kerb appeal (toooo much concrete and yes wierd mark on render)/lightness are letting yours slip (downstairs photos do look very dark - but as PP said - just a setting thing would fix that).
Then the impossible to understand garden and cluttery upstairs.

Yours is now in the "Don't have time to view" list.

So you do not have to change everything mentioned on this thread - but you certainly need to up it a bit.

girlmom21 · 08/04/2022 09:08

OP they can photograph the garden from one of the upstairs rooms? Some EA's will even use a drone to get a good garden picture.

CharityShopChic · 08/04/2022 09:08

Can't comment on price as I'm not local. But what would put me off viewing...

Kids bedrooms are really, really messy. Especially the one with the moon picture. Soft toys dumped by the window and trailing cables from the telly. And the rumpled duvet cover.

Bathroom dated - would want to replace.

Pets - evidence of a dog definitely and perhaps a cat too? Animals smell, even if you think they don't. I'd probably rule out buying a house with a cat as I'm very allergic to them.

Kitchen - a personal hate of mine is a hob on an island with the extractor dangling from the ceiling.

Is the grass plastic? It's hard to tell from the photos.

I'd be wondering why there isn't a picture of the fourth bedroom, and the office/utility downstairs - my immediate impression is that you have something to hide which is probably very unfair. Also missing a picture of the ensuite to the main bedroom, and the downstairs loo.

Baconking · 08/04/2022 09:10

You could try another EA but I would go with the recommended advice on here to declutter the children's bedrooms as it makes them look too small.

I would also definitely try to remove the extra wardrobe in the master as it points out lack of storage and doesn't fit the space or decor

ScurryfungeMaster · 08/04/2022 09:14

You've got a lovely house but I don't think that the photos are great. Especially the photos of the garden, it's hard to tell the size or layout of it. The colours in the photos all look a bit drab and don't make it stand out on the website.

SimpleShootingWeekend · 08/04/2022 09:24

So many awful photos. I would take it off he market, stage it and relist with another agent.

The extensive parking is great, but the photo of the driveway is awful.

The render needs to be painted. Personally I would change the door and garage colour too (not to grey!)

I can tell you are a tall family by how high all your picture are hung but there is a lot of ceiling in some of those photos and it does your rooms no favours.

I would repaint the sitting room in white, including the ceiling which looks badly done (you probably can’t tell too much in real life) and make it look less dated. Some decent pot plants and pictures may help and ditching the rug and changing the light shade. The black text rug does nothing for your (probably very lovely) hallway. Your hallway floor is very nice.

Lots of your rooms have both grey and brown in them.

You kitchen looks VERY dark. It needs some colour and light.

The bedrooms need smartening up. The master bedroom has clashing walls/curtains, a messy bed, a white door (en-suite?) and cream door (wardrobe?) then the oak floor with a walnut/black melamine wardrobe which doesn’t fit in the space. The curtains are neither open or closed and your eye is drawn straight into the windows of the opposite houses. The other bedrooms - cables, clutter, rumpled bedding, the ceiling rug…

They’ve somehow made it very obvious that they’ve needed to turn the lights on for photos on a very sunny day. Some rooms don’t get a photo at all which is always a bit suspicious.

I don’t understand your garden AT ALL. The photo of the abandoned naked gazebo taken to highlight a dead shrub in the foreground is worthy of inclusion in a buzz feed article. A couple of the other photos are lovely but it’s somehow confusing. Where is the grass? How do you get to it?

The open conservatory would put me off, and the grey kitchen and dated bathrooms would make me think a lot about what it would cost to bring it up to date but overall I think it’s a lovely family home sabotaged by the photos and lack of staging. No point pretending people should be able to see past “clutter”. People like to think there next house will be easy to live in, there is somewhere to keep the jif and enough wardrobe space to meant they don’t have to turn sideways to get through the en-suite door. They don’t want shabby render, dark rooms and no storage at the end of a concrete runway.

PatientlyWaiting21 · 08/04/2022 09:30

Decor doesn’t bother me, I find it odd people don’t want to put their own stamp on it.

Did you take the photos yourself? They aren’t selling the property, I would get a professional
To do them. If you did use a pro get a refunded and use someone else.

From the photos upstairs looks cramped. Bathrooms are dated and they are expensive to replace. Haven’t looked at home report but if you’ve lots of 2s and 3s I wouldn’t buy.

Good luck

RatherBeRiding · 08/04/2022 09:39

As a keen gardener I'm not sure I'd bother viewing even if all other boxes ticked - I appreciate that there's not a lot you can do with masses of paving/pebbles/astroturf (If that's what it is - looks as though it could be) without a major overhaul, but at the very least get a decent garden layout picture - it's impossible to get a sense of the layout. Plus the rear patio is really really grubby - quick jetwash would work wonders, ditto for the steps down. And a thorough tidy up - it all looks very uninviting and far too much work to even get it to the blank canvas stage.

The downstairs looks fine, but the bathroom is dated and the children's bedrooms are very off-putting, messy and cluttered. As others have said, if I had half a dozen possibles and the others were better presented, yours would drop off the bottom of the list.

Dumblebum · 08/04/2022 09:45

@Geneticsbunny

Garden and non sealed off conservatory are my worries. That conservatory won't pass planning regs and will make the house super expensive to heat.
I don’t think that’s fair. It only needed to pass at the time it was built, it doesn’t need to pass future or current regulations.
SimpleShootingWeekend · 08/04/2022 09:49

Decor doesn’t bother me, I find it odd people don’t want to put their own stamp on it

Bathrooms are dated and they are expensive to replace

^^this is the problem

Everyone thinks they can see past things, they know it won’t look the same with their decor, their things, their taste, their duvet…but people don’t think “I don’t mind mocha as a drink but it’s a bit much in matt emulsion so it’s a no from me”. They think/see “dark” or “small” or “dingey”. They don’t think “well, I’d keep my bleach in the cupboard and I don’t have a dog so there won’t be a bowl in front of the fridge or a duck in front of the tv” they think “oh, there’s no storage, the kids won’t have space for their stuff in those bedrooms and that’s not really a proper double” They don’t see “oh, I can put my own stamp on this bathroom” they see “it’s going to be an expensive ball ache to change this and we are already top of budget”.

Kindlethefourth · 08/04/2022 09:55

The first photo is what needs changing tbh. It needs to focus so much more on the house and less on the driveway. I am sure your kitchen isn't dark but photos don't do it justice. And as others have said, either photograph the patio on a sunnier day or jet wash it. Photography as a whole isn't great. Your ceilings might not be low but photos make them look so.

LookItsMeAgain · 08/04/2022 10:06

Some one up thread asked about the metal frame outside the conservatory and from what I can make out it seems to be the frame for a gazebo. So my advice would be to make it up as the gazebo, even if it is something that you can take with you. It shows that one fits where it does and you can entertain outdoors too. Put the roof on it, put the sides on it and move the rattan furniture under it so it looks inviting.

Agree with the bedrooms. Beds HAVE to be made. The ivy and pictures and clutter there just make it look messy and not like something that I could see myself moving in to.

My advice - try and stage each room like a posh AirBnB. We realise that someone has to be living in the house at the time but for the photos, it has to look like no one is living there and prospective buyers can see themselves moving in and rejigging the furniture to suit them. There is still far too much of your family in the photos for that to happen.
Declutter, and when you think you've done enough, get fresh eyes to take a look at a room and perhaps declutter some more.

Best of luck with it.

starfishmummy · 08/04/2022 10:11

I dont know if its the photo but the outside render looks like it needs attention. Remember your kerb appeal!!

Dumblebum · 08/04/2022 10:13

I think the other question is has the photograph of the front been stretched? It looks about three car lengths long in the image, and massive, but street view doesn’t really show the same thing, and the description has fudged it saying numerous vehicles. It looks like it can take eight to ten cars, if that’s the case I’d say so.

girlmom21 · 08/04/2022 10:20

@Dumblebum

I think the other question is has the photograph of the front been stretched? It looks about three car lengths long in the image, and massive, but street view doesn’t really show the same thing, and the description has fudged it saying numerous vehicles. It looks like it can take eight to ten cars, if that’s the case I’d say so.
Do you drive an old mini? I'd say you could fit 3 cars on that drive based on the picture on the advert
girlmom21 · 08/04/2022 10:22

OP the other issue you have is you're nowhere near a train station. 11 miles is really far when you're in such a built up area.

WhatWouldTheDoctorDo · 08/04/2022 10:25

Agree with everyone else on the photos, they're not great. Declutter the rooms, tidy away toiletries on the side of the bath, open curtains fully and get new pictures taken on a bright day. I'd ask them to get a different photographer. Also, I can only see pictures of 3 bedrooms, not 4 and no picture of the downstairs office. And definitely cherry pick the garden photos.