No viewings/offers since failed open day - What would you do?

[rosemarycait96]

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/144690626#/?channel=RES_BUY

Here's our listing ^^

A fairly normal house for our village which has a lot of cottages of a similar size or bigger. The ones that are on the market all are priced £385-£450k ish.

We started on £425k with an open day as per recommendation by our EA. 3 viewings. 2 of the parties were extremely interested and gave good feedback saying it was well presented and lovely etc. But no offers.

Thought the price may be the issue, so we reduced to £415k. No offers and not even a single viewing since then.

Other houses in our village seem to sit on the market for weeks too, and our house had been on the market for a month when we bought it in early 2022 when homes were flying off the shelves in days! So I wasn't expecting a miracle. I was, however, expecting at least some viewings.

Anything we can do to help speed things along? I'm getting a little impatient now - we're viewing a lovely house tomorrow that, if we had sold already, I'd be very confident putting an offer in on. I'm thinking we could reduce to 399k to open up a new band of buyers on rightmove, but it would feel so demoralising as we'd barely make any profit then!

I know the area (and live fairly close). It’s the price. The rooms are small, perfectly formed though. We bought in 2021 and we won’t have made anything on ours either. Nitpick things: prefer room dimensions on floor plan, don’t think the photo of the outside is great as can hardly see the house.

To answer some more Q's

Our house is south facing and the photos were taken on a fully sunny day. Garden is at the front of the house. At the back is a very steep slope, hence there being less light inside. I get the dingy comments - it was one of my concerns too.

Being picky, the stairs plus lack of light might be putting buyers off then? And potentially the astro turf too.

We were originally going to rip up the astro as soon as we moved in but we have a greyhound who likes to zoom and skid all over the garden, and I quite liked the idea of not cleaning up muddy floors every 5 minutes.

Will likely be contacting the agent to reduce our asking price.

It's the price. There are lots of aspects of the house which make it quite 'niche' - eg. the stairs. You can basically discount families or couples intending to have a family from your potential buyers list, which leaves a very small pool of people. They may not be happy with some of the other niche issues eg. Split level living, plastic lawn etc. With one of the niche issues you'd struggle to sell, but with multiple you really need to make it worth their while as a buyer, price wise.

I would list for the price you bought for. One of the first things I (and my friends) do is look up when the property was bought and how much for. There's very little to justify you making a "profit" from a very niche home in 2 years in a falling market.

It comes down to whether you actually want to move - if you do, drop the price and remarked with a new listing and get on with it. If you're not bothered then stick to your guns and your house will be sitting on RightMove in 6 months time.

I would be suspicious of you selling after only 17 months. I also don't think you are being realistic in thinking you can make a profit on a house you have owned for 17 months, bought in the house peak, and that has previously struggled to sell. I suspect you need to drop the price significantly

At your price point you’re competing with spacious 4 beds.
It’s price.

Where do you live ?

Round my way they have these people called carpenters who could fix a banister to that staircase in less than a day for probably a couple of K.

There are still people out there though that think woodworking is some sort of witchcraft.

It's lovely
First thing I thought was....only one sofa in sitting room is there room for another or a chair

Lovely house but bedroom 3 is very small - I would consider a room of those dimensions to be a nursery or study really rather than a bedroom.

Can't do anything about that but it may explain why it isn't selling. And plastic grass isn't popular anymore.

But mainly, you didn't reduce it enough. No point reducing 10k on a house on at over 400k, I would have reduced it the first time to 400k but you should certainly do that now.

It's pretty. And most of the houses on RM in your area that are similar price or just under it are hideous in comparison.

But the bedrooms are small.

And I found a cottage within a 1 mile radius, similar in style and size for just 335k. Unless someone has a strong reason to be in that particular village, I'd go for the similar house at a fraction of the price.

Also, if not a lot of people want an inland village, there just won't be so many buyers as there are for the nearby towns and sea view places. You may have to wait for a buyer or put it on with a few agents in Weston/Bourneville to attract a wider potential market.

It's lovely and characterful, the rooms are all good dimensions (I think the third bedroom is fine) and the garden room is a nice extra. I imagine it would appeal more to a couple or single person than a family, which will limit your market. It sounds like you're very keen to move on - unfortunately, lowering the price will be the best way to do that as there's nothing wrong with the house.

Does the area flood? A steep bank behind a house would make me worry about rain run-off. You say the garden is at the front - is the garden office set back from the road?

I thought there must be clear glass or perspex instead of banisters. There's no safety at all on the stairs? Please put some in. It could take you a year to sell if the local market is quiet. You can't have that danger with two small children.

That would actually give me the creeps and put me in the wrong frame of mind to fall in love with the house.

For a start I would forget the idea that the house owes you some kind of profit. It never did, but it especially doesn't when interest rates are 5% and nothing is selling.

There seem to be houses for sale around it that are much better value (or have more potential for improvement - like the one that is over £100k cheaper) so you'll either have to wait for those to sell first, so that yours is the next best option, or forget the money you sunk into improving it and put it on for what you bought it for (and even then I think you'll be lucky to get it in this market, maybe in 3 or 4 years time).

Anyone looking at it is going to say "fake grass needs to go, stairs need sorting, skirting needs painting" and then in their head adding a few grand of improvements that need doing, they don't care that you spent £5k on it recently, and then a lot of people aren't going to want to pay £400k+ for a house they have to trip up the steps into the kitchen and down the steps into the sitting room.

I's also be very suspicious of a house that was being sold within 2 years of being bought. I know you have very good reasons, but if I were looking I would assume there was something majorly wrong with it (or the area) if the seller wants to leave that quickly.

What I would do:

Get the stairs sorted, get the fake grass ripped out, paint the skirting board.
Get the dimensions on the drawing
Add the dimensions of the garden room etc to show there is more space than it seems overall.
List it for what you paid for it or less (assuming that was under 400)

I think you’re being optimistic expecting a price rise in the last two years. Some places yes, but overall market hasn’t moved much.

Lovely house apart from the staircase and that would be a big no.

Would the (lack of) bannister really be the biggest sticking point? It was more of a question for us rather than a huge drawback. With a toddler, I've found all I need to do is help him up the stairs or carry him.

As we're competing with larger houses with more potential at better prices, I suppose we need to make ourselves more competitive.

The EA didn't point out any of these things to us when we were listing - were they glossing over it to butter us up or something? They gave the impression that our house really stood out to be honest.

My issue would be that it's small and a mid-terrace (or looks like). Obviously nothing you can do about those things, but it's a lot of money for small rooms. To an outsider who doesn't know your area at all, there seem to be detached and semi-detached bigger houses in the same price range.

Hi OP,

I think the price is probably 50k too high when compared with neighbouring properties and what they have to offer.

Also, the open stairs is just an accident waiting to happen, imagine what would happen if a toddler fell off that! The kitchen steps are the biggest issue, no handrail and all three steps are a different height, it would be lethal to carry a saucepan full of hot food to that table. It might seem like a small issue, but if you had an elderly person visiting and they tripped on those steps, you really could be looking at life changing/fatal injuries. And that's not being dramatic, a broken hip could literally kill. I think you are underestimating the danger of the layout. It would put me off straight away.

Were those steps there when you bought the property?

The astro turf is an issue but what's under it could be a bigger one. If I was viewing your property I would be concerned that I would need to bring in huge quantities of fresh topsoil to fix that "lawn".

The price is a major issue though, it needs to reflect all the building work which would need to be done to make the property safe.

We bought at 395k after it had been on the market for a month in 2022. The steps, lack of bannister, astro turf, all were there when we purchased. Honestly, I wanted a characterful cottage so badly I was prepared to ignore all of those things. It was peak times for people like us moving away from the city to the countryside idyll, so I was desperate for all the character our tiny new build could never have.

We literally cannot afford to reduce below what we paid for it as we need the sale to finance our moving costs.

But the market doesn’t care what you can afford.
If you can’t afford to take less and nobody wants to buy it at that price you’re stuck.
I’m sorry, I know it sucks.

I can't believe you fret about your toddler on that stairs instead of getting bannisters/wooden cladding installed on it in a couple of hours. It's about £100 in materials.

The downstairs layout is tricky. The only sitting room appears more like a corridor with no windows? Also a lot of people don't like floor tiles and there would be a lot to take up. The different floors downstairs make the rooms seem smaller.

It’s not child friendly at all. The stairs is a big issue, not just no banister but no protection against falling off the side. The stairs from the kitchen are a big no too, especially onto a stone floor. The big slope in the back and the raised garden in the front also not ideal for children. You will have found it fine so far with only a 12 month old but an older toddler of 2 or 3 running around wouldn’t be good in this house.

You bought close to the peak of house prices, they’ve been steady or dropping depending on area since then. It may be unrealistic to expect a higher price than you paid for it.

I agree that the open staircase would put some people off. And I'm not keen on beams and low ceilings. But everyone has different tastes. The house is very nice inside and looks well maintained. You are selling very quickly after buying. That might make folk wonder why. All you can do is stay positive and look at other houses to compare if your price is too high.

It’s beautiful but you bought at the peak of the market, as did I in 2007. Didn’t get out of negative equity until 2013…