No interest in 5 days - and there’s a rightmove link!

[Helpmyhouse]

Hi ladies. As the title says, no interest in 5 days, so would be grateful for your feedback. Be as honest as you like!

www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/131461400#/?channel=RES_BUY

I’m a realist so will be price dropping if it hangs about, but just wondered if there’s anything ‘changeable’ that might rustle up some interest before we go down that road. Please note I can’t do anything about the size of the garden, nor will I be able to do anything big like replacing the bathroom suite, hideous as it is.

Thanks in advance.

Agree with many of the other posters. Lovely house but you just need to dress it to make it a bit more appealing. Go to ikea (or similar) and buy a few large pictures/mirrors for the dining room, bedrooms and study. The walls look very bare and don’t cultivate a lived in vibe. Definitely should be marketed as a 2 bed plus study. It’s actually a very appealing study. The garden definitely needs the paving cleaned and you should buy a table and chairs plus some cheerful potted plants and hanging baskets so make it look like a place you could hang out. The dining room table - remove the cloth and put some nice flowers in the middle. At the front some colourful plants by the door would be very cheerful. There is a slight drabness to the photos so they need a professional finish to brighten them up.

Why can't some of you see the dimensions on the floor plan? The 3rd bedroom is only 5 foot wide.

if you took it out, the master bedroom would be a fantastic room

I think the first impression photos that show the outside, kitchen and back yard aren't the best first impressions of the house. I would swap the 2nd one to be the living room as that's also what displays on rightmove summary page when people do a search. It definitely needs something to make the back yard look at bit less stark and useable but I think the rest of the house is fine.
It's maybe a bit over-priced when you look at similar properties which are around £295, although that's not to stop someone making you a lower offer. I'd put it down mainly to the fact it's winter and the cost of living and mortgage rates are making people uneasy about moving unless they really need to.

Op take a look at the photos of the more expensive house on the same road. It's bigger because they've done the loft but the angles of their photo's and the amount of light make their rooms look larger. You could get the photo's re done on a sunny day and possibly add some large light rugs in the rooms with dark carpets.

@Hollyhead I agree - if you reduce too much people smell blood. We were one of those buyers. Our vendor put our flat on at the height of a silly market, by the time we saw it a few months later it had been reduced by 30k, so when we offered we beat them down a further £10K

Totally agree.

Houses never show themselves in a great light (literally) at this time of year and coupled with the economic situation, it's tough out there. Now is not the time to be ambitious with your asking price. If you know it is worth £310k, maybe £315k at a push, then price it accordingly and get it gone.

Pictures on walls will help but I think it’s presented well. Do you want a quick sale? If not, you could paint in 50 shades of grey, add lots of cushions and artfully arrange some throws and you will appeal to those with no imagination

House looks lovely but I think the photos are not doing it justice.

The measurements are missing from the description not the floorplan but it makes you question why they've missed it out there.

Inside lovely - outside, get some patio cleaner and give the tiles a clean (front and back) and then get a few plants, it just looks a bit dingy.

Lovely but definitely not a 3 bed!

It is a lovely house. But If a courtyard garden is full of plants, I can picture myself in it, if it looks like yours, it’s just a bin space. I would buy a couple of trees, in pots, fruit trees are often cheap., and some evergreens, lavender, rosemary, hebe, a few larger shrubs, you can take them all with you. They don’t need fancy pots, you just need something green and alive. Some of the online sellers are ok. Go for size.

2 bed plus study. No garden and no parking (is that a problem in tourist season?) which stops it being suitable for a lot of families.

Agree with all the comments about the third bedroom. If i needed a 3 bedroom house, i definitely wouldn't view. The office space doesn't look as if it's possible to fit a bed in (although the measurements indicate that you should be able to get a single in) so it is appearing to be an expensive 2 bed with an office space. Can you set that room up as a bedroom until it's sold ? I appreciate it might be a nuisance having to work in the dining room for a while but if people can see the 3rd room as a bedroom, you may get a bite. Otherwise i think you need to drop the price and market as a 2 bed with study. It looks nice otherwise. The dining room could maybe do with a light coloured rug under the table to lighten it up a bit and the bookshelf could be staged a bit better , but otherwise it's a nice inoffensive blank canvass with a decent bathroom and kitchen, all ready for someone to put their own mark on it.

I've no idea what the prices are like locally so I won't comment on that but usually the price is a part of the issue.

The things I noticed were

• the freestanding dryer in front of the radiator sticks out like a sore thumb and makes it look cramped.
• the back garden looks like a prison exercise yard or - more politely - a landlord's garden. A concrete wasteland either way. Obviously, the new owners can take up the flagstones if they wish but I'd try softening the effect with some plants in containers.
• a lack of off street parking would also put me off, but wouldn't be as important to others, and there's not much you can do about that anyway

I realise that I am totally missing the point, but don't you have a toilet roll holder? I couldn't see one in the photos? The last house we lived in didn't have one, and that is something I always look for now.

Having read your update, and PPs comments, I think ultimately it is probably just a difficult time to sell right now. Mortgages are more challenging and uncertain to secure now than ever and people are short on money.

I've been searching for, viewing, having offers accepted on and then losing out on houses for about a year now, and touchwood we have now successfully secured a property, and in my personal experience, people in the area or looking to move to it will still view properties that don't look perfect on the listing, because most rational adults know that photographs are just representations, not reality, and also that we all put our own new stamp on a place when we move in anyway, so I'm not sure how much point there is "dressing" the house and garden more than you already have. I could be wrong of course, but personally if I'm interested in an area, and I see a decent looking house listed, I'll view it to see for myself in person.

So perhaps the issue is the price; even if it is competitive generally, right now is a scary time money-wise for people. That doesn't necessarily mean you should lower the price now (it's still early days), but that could be a factor in the lack of interest so far. Maybe decide what you'd be happy to lower the asking price to in the event that you decide to do so if you don't get any interest soon.

The house is lovely, but they’re really bad photos. They make the place look really tired and drab. Can photos be taken with more natural or artificial light? Can they be warmed up a bit with filters? Other than that, maybe a few pictures or rugs might help, and a few more plants and patio set in the garden - you can pick all these up on Facebay for not very much money.

It's always the price.

Having said that, and being brutally honest, I don't think the pictures are doing the house any favours.

1/11 - OK, would have preferred a more frontal view
2/11 - Declutter the work top even more, image seems blurry, not the right angle, should have shown the ovens more
3 / 11 - I actually don't mind this too much, could do with a jetwash
4/11 - fine , woudl have liked to see more of the high ceilings
5/11 - Remove the personal pictures and the bottles of booze
6/11 - Duplicate? Or at least too similar to 2/11
7/11 fine but normally these photos show the bed, not the wardrobes
8/11- fine
9/11 - fine, does indeed not look like a single bedroom
10/11 fine
11/11 I'd remove this one and just have 3/11 at the end instead of 11/11

Good luck with the sale!

I also agree about the third bedroom. At 2.82m x 1.6m it's 4.5m2 it's below the legal minimum for use as sleeping accommodation for tenants (4.64m2 for under 10s and 6.51m2 for over 10s) so claiming it's a bedroom is cheeky tbh. commonslibrary.parliament.uk/does-the-law-set-a-minimum-bedroom-size-in-england/#:~:text=The%20minimum%20sleeping%20room%20floor,the%20age%20of%2010%20years

Angles are terrible - you'd get more viewings with proper photography than lowering the price. Even if you did NOTHING else, get it reshot.

Can you "furnish" the garden? Buy a table and chairs, an outdoor rug, a bunch of potted plants, fairy lights, strings of lanterns etc. (it's possible to HIRE these, btw), lay the table for an alfresco lunch and so on. You should make it a feature, not a negative. I'd love an effortless courtyard garden.

Take the dryer and black plastic box out of the kitchen, photograph again. Take everything off the kitchen counter, replace with some plants. Loads of them maybe. Don't have that poinsetta dead centre on the windowsill. Replace with a bunch of trendy ferny plants.

Sitting room - maybe take out the sofa facing the fireplace and put an armchair where the lamp is or maybe put the lean-to shelves where the sofa is instead, and get a nice rug off ruggable or similar. It would give an illusion of even more space. Large monstera.

Take that cover off the table, replace with daffodils. Look at how tables are styled here - no covers, always flowers or a plant - www.instagram.com/themodernhouse/?hl=en

In main bedroom get a cool large framed art print for the chimneybreast - it looks bleak. www.juniqe.co.uk/schiele-two-friends-premium-poster-portrait-4761754.html#step=design&productId=4761754

Plants.

Get another one of those things you have in the corner for the kids room and put away all the crap that's on the floor. It just screams "THIS HOUSE HAS NO STORAGE" to me.

Plants plants plants. Buy a bunch of them, move them around the house for each photo.

Home office - more plants.

I'd do that before dropping the price, which seems fine.

I think it would benefit from a bit of big leafy greenery indoors (lounge and bathroom) and also out in the yard. Maybe a small coffee table or side table in the lounge with some lovely flowers ?
Otherwise I think it looks great !

For me, it's the garden area. It's a bit miserable looking. I know it's not really the right time of year but it needs some plants, greenery, maybe some furniture. So it shows what it could be, rather than being reminiscent of a prison exercise yard.

Otherwise, it looks like a lovely home.

Jet wash the patio and add some nice big pot plants such as olive trees.
Take out the tumble dryer & bin for pics to make the kitchen look bigger.
Remove the table cloth
Retake all the pics as the angles are terrible!

@Helpmyhouse

Have you recently looked at the photos from when you bought it & the ones from 2013 (as linked above)? The ones linked above, the exterior patio/balcony was much nicer how it was, can you do something like that?

Yes! You need much better photos of the front garden, like they had!

agree the tumbler dryer needs to be moved for photos!

and whatever the shelf thing is in front of your bedroom window!

what's with the fireplace in the second bedroom? Both lots of photos are trying to hide it. Either hide it better or make it a feature.

third bedroom, do you still have a fit? Or could you borrow one? Make it a nursery. Or advertise as 2bd plus office.

can you 'make more' of the lovely bay windows?

& while you're taking new photos...close the front windows for the photos!!

It's a nice house, Good luck!!