House too small

[Emily2023]

So I've been searching online and this group seems to come up on this topic.

Me and my husband put our house on the market this time last year, sold the first day of viewings but then the buyer pulled out after a month as it was supposedly taking too long but we'd had an offer accepted on another house who also needed to look for another house.

We resold in May last year (again within the same day as first viewings) but again, once the chain was all sorted in September (5 houses), our buyer went AWOL a week before completion on 13th Jan this year. It turns out he used cheap solicitors that outsource to sri Lanka and they didn't deal with something from the searches properly (or at all).

Now we've have had to remarket again, we've dropped our price by £10k already and absorbed another £20k to the mortgage as the original buyer offered £11k more. However, after 16 viewings, one really low offer £30k below the price which we declined, everyone is saying it's too small even viewers where it is just one person. Prices for other 2 bed houses near here without a garage go for more than ours and some a lot more. It's really frustrating us as we don't know what more we can do, we've decluttered and tidied as much as possible.

I wondered if anyone had any ideas?

There was also a 3 bed detached that went for about £300k (with a VERY dodgy looking ceiling in the living room and right next to an electricity substation) as well as another one at the far end of our cul de sac the same design as ours, which was on for £265k but I don't know what it actually sold for.

I agree that the construction of the conservatory/ lean to doesn't look very good but it still has extra sq footage so I would have expected it to be valued higher.
The other one I linked to is the same and sold for considerably less in 2021 when the market was red hot.
Anyway, I hope you manage to find a buyer and don't lose your onward purchase.

I haven’t read everyone’s comments but the big thing that I notice re space (and as a Londoner, I wouldn’t be picky) is whether there is enough space for wardrobes. I can’t see the wardrobes or am I being stupid? This is something I always check.

Your desks are the problem. You could either spend a small fortune on a Studybed for your second bedroom or you could hire some office space for a few weeks to get rid of the office furniture so you could style the bedrooms as bedrooms. The house isn't selling so you either need to wait out the current unstable market or you need to make your bedrooms look more attractive. It's not really the downstairs that is the issue.

OP, you have to seperate what your home is like from what Ms Average is looking to buy.

And... it seems like you maybe bought when it was a sellers market and are trying to sell when it’s a buyers market. Unfortunately life does that sometimes.

It probably is a first time buyer house, so I don’t think you need to worry about decor - it’s presentable and nothing scary to change (so someone sick if renting can choose their own stuff without having to remove woodchip or get a plasterer in).

I know pianos are big and look dominant in a room. I’d not be worried about the size of a living room if it had a sofa and a piano with seat. It doesn’t sound feasible to store it anyway. So move on.

Is there an oil filled radiator behind the door in the living room? If so get rid. Anything that makes the house seem like it could be cold or damp needs hidden away.

I like scented candles, but get rid for the pictures/veiwings as they scream “nasty smell to hide” to a nervous buyer.

I’d hate my bed to be against walls on both sides (in an alcove). You should try and address that.

And Id want to be certain I could use Bedroom 2 as a bedroom. Put in a single bed and just deal with having to use the dining room as home office space or having dining room chair and plank of wood as your desk.
Unless your bed fit in bedroom 2, move desk to bedroom 1? Noone is going to think your decent-sized main bedroom wouldn’t fit a bed.

The back garden is in total complete shade on what looks like a sunny winter afternoon. That would completely put me off viewing. Can the ea take pictures at a different time of day, or if it’s never sunny, get the pictures on an overcast day?

But the reality is the market was crazy high and it’s fallen since: also people are scared of overpaying where a year ago they were scared of missing out.

@doormattt if its any consolation, we have just bought a house where the whole kitchen is painted bright yellow! It didn't put us off, it just needs repainting which we'll get round to eventually.

If you read my comment above about us changing our bedroom, you'll see that we had a similar experience and I couldn't believe how much of a difference changing the bed made, but it did.

It is very odd that people can't see past the furniture to the structure of the house, but we found that was the case. I'd seriously look at renting some office space for a month or so and restage the 2nd bedroom as a bedroom. In our area there are small offices you can rent on an ad hoc basis, including monthly. It might be worth the cost in the scheme of things. Then get a bed from FBMP and put really nice bedding on it.

Good luck!

Thanks all, moved the main bed around last night, swapped with the desk and drawers unit at the other end of the room, the drawers unit is now in the spare room and I need to remove my two drawers from the spare room into the garage today and get some dust sheets to wrap them.

For us to rent an office (or to go to our companies offices to work), we'd also need to rent a storage unit as we don't have anywhere to put the two desks, and hiring a van etc to move things there, on top of the costs which are what they are, sadly it's time we don't have considering our onward house wants to remarket already today. So i think it's a case of doing it what we can in the time available.

I think we have a trip to Dunelm this evening to get a valance and some bedding. Other than that I think the best we can do is hide more bits and bobs and try to make the stuff we have got look even more organised.

I've seen a few people mention not looking like there's room for wardrobes, I think that's just the photos - there's a built in double wardrobe in the main bedroom and a freestanding one in the spare room. In the case of the spare room is difficult to get angles which cover all sides of the room but it's roughly 2m x 3m to give some perspective.

Agents are going to reduce the price for us and upload some new photos at the same time to make it look like a fresher listing and to appear in the "last 24 hours" search but they can't come until tomorrow. It sounds like our onward house is going back on the market tomorrow so even though they probably won't get what we offered, I expect they'll have plenty of interest as it's bigger and cheaper than the neighbouring Bournville houses, has the school catchment, etc etc so it may well be over for us before we even get our new photos done and the next viewings undertaken.

Strangely I don't think 2021 was the boom year around here, it was more 2022 where it kicked off. The Bournville heritage properties aside (they don't really have the ups and downs of typical houses) it was really last year that was more of the sellers market. I work in commercial real estate industry and there are a lot of reasons why directly comparing prices without all the background information is not going to give accurate results (reasons for sale often dictate price for example), but then that's all people have to go on so there we go.

I think we've just run out of luck and we're unfortunate to end up with the agents we did last year who were all talk and very little action and therefore couldn't get us a reliable buyer who didn't just vanish :)

Will see how it goes, thanks again

I do think we have too much stuff due to our hobbies etc, I'm into craft making so I have a number of machines and big boxes plus cake decorating which involves another mixer and two massive boxes and hubby is very musical i.e. 1 piano, 4 keyboards, a number of guitars and other equipment etc so all our storage cupboards are full to the brim. Unless we actually remove everything and reorganise it to declutter properly (which we have been doing for the last 11 months) but we have ran out of space to tidy away more things. We would have done it properly this time round but because viewings have been ad-hoc, we never know if we have time to get everything out and do it properly without a sudden viewing. Ideally that's what we would do. Doesn't help that the stress of all this has contributed to my weight gain so I probably have 4x the clothes I had a year ago.

The photos from your previous listing (showing on the 'sold' history on RM) are much better than the link you added to this thread

Can you have a big blitz (hide all the keyboards etc in the car) and ask the EA if it's possible to book lots of viewings over a weekend, so you get them done all at once while the house is perfect looking?

Yes, it's far too cluttered and honestly it looks a bit tired ( truly just trying to help) so if you can freshen it up with some paint in the key rooms that would help. You need to look at similar listings to yours with a critical eye and compare them.

It needs a huge picture on the yellow wall to break it up a bit.

Put all the stuff from the fireplace and bathroom in big plastic boxes and put them.outside for photos. Then for viewings put your stuff in the car. That's what we did although we had a shed too

The sold thread was from the last estate agent who we moved from as we were trying to keep the chain happy by moving since the new one had 3 of the 5 houses in the chain. EA are taking more photos tomorrow so we can temporarily move more stuff. Although, we have filled the car already, so need to have a think what else we can do. Could be worth asking them if they can do block viewing - last two times we sold it was block viewing whereas now it's as and when. Maybe once we have blitzed it again later, I will add some of my own photos and see if you think it's any better :-)

The old photos show the rooms from more angles which helps with assessing the 'small' issue (kitchen is much clearer). Looking at sold pictures of your close I can see how the bedrooms can be set out better.

Where is the fridge? I can't see one, and that makes me think the kitchen is impractical? There's not much storage in there, which would put me off (or is the door in the corner some kind of larder/cupboard, which would be a big plus for me and I'd show it off!)

The fridge is under the worktop, the units are designed to be the right width for appliances so the fridge and dishwasher are on the kitchen side, and because of the plumbing locations the washing machine is on the table facing side.

The door is an under-stair pantry type space in which we have the freezer, along with a worktop type shelf and several wall shelves, and spice racks on the back of the door etc

Put your doubled bed cantered under the windows facing the door. Leave the drawers where they are. Move the desk to where the bed head is just now.

Move that little white unit thing into the wardrobe for now.

There. Room looks better and you can still WFH.

I can't tell if the sizes will work but that's an idea based on the photos.

I think it's a nice house, just the furniture doesn't work particularly upstairs. I know you both WFH but could you move the bed out of the alcove, at least for photos, and set it up as a bedroom with the bed more central on the opposite wall.

You could either temporarily work from the dining table (I know it's not ideal but short term for viewings), or is short term rental of an 'office' space locally an option? You can often pay for a desk and workspace somewhere. Or does your work have somewhere you can go to (mine has desks we can book on site).

I know all that's disruptive but hopefully only for a few weeks for photos and viewings. We put a load of bookcases, their contents, armchairs and other stuff into a storage unit for 6 weeks at this point to make our house look less cluttered.

We also put loads of hobby stuff and out of season clothes into storage just to get it out of the way. The storage unit had a half price offer on for the first 3 months which was more than enough time for us and it was relatively cheap to get a man and van for a couple of hours to move it.

It’s great that you’re taking on board the feedback. I am sure the bedroom looks much better. I do think that I would, in your position, try to get a bed in the second bedroom (even if it’s just for the photos- I know some home stagers have used boxes with bedding on the top), paint the kitchen wall and dado (the yellow and that brown are really dated), and put some nice furniture in the garden. I do also think the piano is still a bit of an issue- is there any way you could move it, even just for the photos, so you can fit a sofa, arm chair and coffee table into the lounge? If it’s just for practice, could you manage with a keyboard for a few weeks? Or put it along the radiator wall but keep the radiator off until you’ve moved it back? It’s a hassle I know but you’ve got to think of it looking it’s absolute best in the photos and it would make a real difference (hopefully short term too).

Looking at Rightmove sold, I think the interiors of no 6 look great (especially bed 2 and the lounge), I like the layout of the lounge in no 1 and the garden of no 28 is absolutely beautiful.

The garden looks very shaded. The room with the bed coming out from the space it fits into the room makes it look small, and there's an extension cable draping on the floor. The bed coverings make it look a bit drab.
I honestly think you need to make a house look like somewhere the buyer will be proud to live. I think dress it up a bit more so it appeals and feels aspirational if that makes sense?

Honestly, to me it looks old fashioned in a way that doesn't scream it's a project, nor does it look done and ready to move into

We are trying our best but with limited time before our onward one sells, there's not much we can do. I actually injured myself the last time we moved the piano (for the decorating) so it's not that easy to move about, also that radiator I reckon is the main one for heating so if that's off, I dunno if it would be practical really. Setting up a keyboard instead of the piano I think would look worse and wouldn't really save that much space, only a bit of width - it would be on a metal looking stand which isn't very attractive. To set up and pack it away for every little 20 minutes I get to practice during the day would be a pain and we've nowhere to store it as is, i'd have to dismantle the whole setup etc.

Also with the limited time, getting a bed, second sofa or chair and a coffee table in for photos and then back out again I'm just not sure, also piano removal and storage is very specialist and can't just be done at a moments notice so I dunno.

I think the changes we've made already and the general fluffing up of everything, along with a reduction in price, will be our best bet in the short term. If we lose the onward house then we have more time to sort things different if we decide to try again at some point, although there's been nothing worth looking at since our onward house came on last April

Meh, i think we are just tired of it all now. At least I've learnt I'm not to have any input whatsoever on any decorating ever again

Lovely house, nice inside. But seems a bit overpriced in my opinion. Might be looking at more like £215,000. You may be lucky if you get that even actually. It's a fairly ordinary 3 bed semi in Birmingham. Sorry, no offence.

Thought I'd give some info on some of the other points as well by the way. The garden is shaded because it was January in the morning, so the sun is pretty low and shines on the front of the house in the mornings, which you can see from the super reflective windows. The garden had some taming work done to it last year (and we did the fence, which isn't even ours but there you go) with a view to leaving a blank canvas for the new buyer - hence not a lot going on and, it's winter so yeah, a bit blank.

I do like the living room of number 6 on the sold listings, though can't see any of the other rooms are better than ours really - other than having the bed in there for visualisation but as we say, we wrongly assumed that people would be able to see it's an office/spare room currently and would be empty when they bought it anyway. Silly, perhaps.

The garden of number 28 doesn't look like that now, that massive budlea bush was the bane of my life during covid until they finally cut it down and let us have some light in the window! Looks more or less like ours now, with a few more bushes because as I say, we tamed the garden down last year after selling.

The bed under the windows idea doesn't work, it's not wide enough and looks weird. In fact, looks smaller that way, and almost as if the house has been rotated 90 degrees but the bed hasn't.

If we need to remove more things from the house our only option is a storage unit because we literally have everything else taken up at the moment. There's a couple of cases in the loft I could give back but it's a drop in the ocean :)

I think we've learned in future to do easily reversible decor, as I don't like most of the things people suggest myself (for example. coffee tables in the middle of the room are only good for toe stubbing!) but am willing to accept that I'm a grumpy old man in a thirty-something body so other people will think differently and they are who matters. And as I said in my last post, at least I know my role in decorating going forward should be restricted to "operations" and not "design"

Decorate your new house however you want . We did with our old house and happily lived in it for over a decade. The same with our furniture. It wouldn't have been to most people's taste.

We just repainted and shoved a load of stuff into storage in order to sell it.