Reducing guide price

[Webb27]

I put my house on the market about a month ago and it was valued at £495K and £515K I decided to go with the lower one and I liked the EA. Properties are going really quickly but not mine I've only had a trickle of viewings and only one second viewing. Talking with the EA this morning we've decided to drop the My house price to £450K guide price. Has anyone had any success doing this ? Many thanks

Agree photos are bad & why only of two of the bedrooms & not all four? This would make me think they're tiny/got issues - the two photos of bedrooms also make them look awful - you can't even see the whole room.

I guess it must be an exclusive area for that price or something? Because just up the road (well 15 miles) are houses double the size, with 6 bedrooms…for the same price. I know if I was looking for a family home space would be my number 1 priority…

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/122208944?utm_campaign=property-details&utm_content=buying&utm_medium=sharing&utm_source=copytoclipboard#/&channel=RES_BUY

Probably not a comparable property. There’s an almost 100k price difference for houses the same size, age and style of mine that are in the next town 15 miles away.

That’s what I mean, she must be in a “good” area (like you 😉) But majority of people I would suspect want space more than anything 🤷‍♀️ Maybe why she’s not getting any offers?

The description also says in the bullet points

• in need of updating

I agree with everyone else Op.
The photos are shocking.
I’d seriously reconsider reducing and would insist on professional photos that show your lovely cottage off to its best, instead.
WTF are the terrible angles all about, the steps, why no pics of all the bedrooms or the bathrooms? The garden where it’s just pebbles and wires.
And review the wording in the description too.
Sort out the damp patch, stage it a bit and voila! 🤞🏻

Does the agent offer a "deluxe" photo pack? We paid £250 extra for a professional photographer instead of the agents quick snaps. It honestly made all the difference to the appeal on the Internet.
Does the agent have the client base looking for this type of home on their mailing list?
I would also contact the other agent and perhaps get some feedback from them, use the situation and poor performance of your current agent to your advantage.
Is the home correctly priced for the Internet search brackets too, i.e. if you priced at 449k it would be in more searches perhaps.

I’d agree in this instance these are some of the worst photos of a property I’ve ever seen, honestly it looks like a tiny dingy basement flat inside, you’d never know that was a four bed with two reception rooms, a utility room a downstairs loo etc and half the rooms are missing, and the room images they have taken are cut in half, need lightening and don’t show th full room. You can’t even work out the grounds and the front elevation image is awful.

the photos need redoing and something like “new photos” added to thr listing or take it off and relist with new photos.

id not view based on those photos, they need doing urgently, the photos are why folks are not viewing.

Good agents will include professional photography, floor plan and EPC as standard in their fee – you’ve been ripped off if they’re charging you for decent photos.

OP, I agree with everyone else – terrible photos, terrible listing! I was shocked to click on the floor plan and see it’s a double-fronted four-bed cottage, that’s the dream! Sell the dream!

Theoretically I am your target market as looking in Somerset and I have seen your house on RM. DH would pass out at the EPC so I didn't show him.

This is going to sound rude and I don't mean it too but your worktop stuck in my mind and not in a good way. I'd buy a cheap sander and get that sanded , see if you can get the black off then coat with a hard wax oil and definitely deal with the damp in picture 4.

I think guide price 450k is probably fairly sensible given it is 4 beds (was a surprise when I looked at floor plan). Agree you need to do some staging. On some threads you see various suggestions and I think they often will make no real difference but I think there is a lot you could do with this one along with new photos and a change of description.

Glastonbury and East Harptree simply not comparable. Easy Harptree is good access to botb Bristol and Bath and your place with some work and plants to make garden attractive should appeal to someone who wants to be out in the country . You're now the same price as a 2 or 3 bed terrace in BS3, possibly cheaper.

This might seem a strange suggestion but I saw this morning that a guy who has a lovely show garden at the Malvern Show is selling off his plants. They would be brilliant for immediate impact in your garden and great quality as show garden grade - from a fiver. Happy to point you to where he is if you are interested - send me a PM and I have a few suggestions for cheap places to buy various bits for sorting other things in the house. No worries if not, just a thought.

We found that people didn't make offers and did a reduction that then got 3 offers quickly in the region we were hoping . I think a lot of people have heard how difficult the market is and think it isn't worth trying with lower offers, though I think that may well change soon.

Can you sand back your kitchen worktops as they look very stained? I had wooden worktops inn my last house and with a bit of graft they came up well. Agree about the pictures, the first one is of the brick wall at the front of your house. Also the damp patch would be hugely off putting to a lot of buyers - can you get it sorted out?

Your agent needs a good talking to...those photos are awful! It looks like a cramped 2 bedroom property from the photos and not worth the price. If someone is scrolling they would see the photos and not bother with the floorplan. It also is lacking any homely character and looks like an unloved rental.
Do not reduce the price. Spruce up as previously mentioned, add some homely touches in keeping with the cottage character and get all the photos redone with a wide angled lens. Remember you are selling the cottage dream via the photos and that is what will draw people in.
Good luck!

do you have any money to spend on it op, or the physical ability? Honestly I’d sand back the kitchen work top as folks have said and paint the kitchen white, it won’t cost much but will make it seem a lot better. I’d also paint the canopy above the front door black, none of these things cost much or are big jobs, but will habe immediate impact. Picture 14 of the kitchen worktop looks really very bad indeed.

are the rooms not photographed, in a bad way? Is that why they are missing?

I think if you can spare a little money and time, remove the listing, do a little sprucing up. Then relist with new photos that shows all the rooms and also to their full potential.

posters are right, it does look like damp or a leak by the front door, but I’m guessing you can’t paint it out without doing the full room.

the issue is I think the photos make it look like a small two bed, when in reality it’s much bigger, and it makes it look like a proper renovation project when it might not be anywhere near as much work as it looks.

I think if you can do that then you will save yourself a lot of money as not doing it is likely going to cost you at least fifty grand.

Thank you everyone. The feedback is incredibly useful and I really appreciate it.

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the dark shade across the patio area. Is there not a time of day that you could catch that side of the garden in the sunshine?
I'm only looking on a small phone screen so can't see the detail of kitchen worktops etc - and I haven't looked at the floorplan - but that was my first impression - a pretty cottage with a dank, dark courtyard out the front.
The photos need retaking and reordering and I would try that before you drop the price. It's a lovely cottage but you're not showing it to advantage.

Also I don't think the pin point location on the satellite map is right. It's showing as the back garden of a farmhouse. Agent has used zero care in the listing or the photos and you've shown zero care in staging it for sale.

Just echoing others really, no photos of bathroom, missing two bedroom photos.
The angles of the photos int he bedrooms are ridiculous tbh

The description says something about a lovely view from the bathroom - if that’s a selling point why no photo of it?

i am speechless after looking at those photos. They are not even in focus - my 5 year old could take better photos. What on earth is your EA doing? Are you happy that they are selling it as a doer upper?

What are all the overhead cables in the garden? It looks like there's loads and the would put me off tbh. If they aren't that bad irl leave them off the photos and let people see them when they view the house.

It's the photos not doing your house justice.
First photo is all about the EA board, NOT the front of the house.

You need a combined Photo 1/Photo 9 to show your nice front garden and the front door/front of the house to best effect.
And the angles used really make the rooms look small, tiny small not just cutesy cottage small. Photo 3 Sitting Room shows the door making the room look barely big enough to go in. Etc

Hey OP - we've been through similar with my DM's house recently. I put it on here and had a barrage of tough comments, but they really helped and thanks to all the help I got from MN we found a buyer. Our original photos were crap too.

Just wondering though, what feedback has your EA given you after the viewings, especially after the one who came back for a second look? That should be pretty revealing.

We changed our estate agent, dropped the price a TINY bit, better photos and we sold instantly.

Very poor photographs. Look into home staging, particularly staged beds to make the house look more luxurious. Get rid of the power pole photos with all the wires, that was what really put me off and i wouldn't even view but might have without those pics and still decided that i loved it.

Who said mine was the expensive side of town?🤣
I personally think most prioritise location over size but who knows I’m house hunting at the minute and there’s no rhyme nor reason what I’m liking or dismissing!!

Honestly I think it’s a shame you reduced to 450 op, I can see it’s in need of some signficant cosmetic renovation and potentially has a damp problem or leak, but you could have defintely done some quick and cheap things, as previously mentioned, like a lick of paint on the kitchen walls, sanding the work surface, and I mean this kindly, cleaning the room doors and the kitchen cabinets etc, using a carpet cleaner, giving the outside canopy a coat of black plastic paint (and painting the wooden struts inside white), you could even get some silver paint and do the letter box, clean the garden furniture.

These things are cheap and quick, jist a bit of elbow grease, and would have made a huge difference. Literally it could be done in a weekend and for a couple of hundred quid.

I am guessing there is issues in the other rooms which is why you are not showing them, but likely in not doing so it makes people think it is going to be worse than it is, a clean and a declutter might make a difference.

then get some new pics and you’d be good to go. I still think it’s worth doing, if only to attract more people in.

it’s a very pretty cottage and not remotely as small as it looks, the pics make it look like a two bed, literally half the house is missing from the pictures.

I'm looking at the moment but haven't tried to knock the price down on any of them because all the EAs spend half an hour telling me that it's a seller's market, lots of interest, nobody needs to take offers in this market and just generally look like they'd die laughing if I offered a farthing under asking price. There are a couple I've got my eye on. If they reduce, I'll go for it.