House Not Selling - Required for Care

[LostInTheSystem101]

Hello!

We are trying to sell my Grandmother's house. It has been on the market for 8 months, currently with the second agent.

Opening price was £375k, as suggested by the EA. Now offers over £285k.

We are aware it needs modernising, of course, but it is liveable, and soundly built. Garage, driveway, front and back gardens, 15 minute walk from the beach.

Viewings not even in double figures I don't think since it went on, no offers.

My Grandmother has been in a dementia care home since March 2023, has run out of cash, and needs the house sale to pay for her continuing care (she currently owes over £40k). We have contacted the local authority to assist with deferred payments. However, we still need the house to sell!

Any advice?

House for Sale

Is this on rightmove ?

Yep.. Rightmove

Less than one viewing a month kinda suggests a serious problem.

Have you checked out the type of houses this is in competition with and how does it compare?

Could a buyer for instance buy an already refurbished house for the money? Is it priced with modernisation in mind?

I don't think there is much point in pricing it in line, with say, a modern house considering a buyer will have to put in a new kitchen and bathroom at the very least.

Thanks. Yep, it is priced as it should be - we and the agent think that.

The market has really dropped down there, with a lot of houses dropping prices by 20-25%. The pricing each time ahs been suggested by the agent, though this time they suggested dropping to £295k, so we went with offers over £285k.

Really no idea where to go with it! Though, to be honest, it should be a 2.5 bed, as the box room is exactly that (fits a single bed but not much else, has a built in wardrobe).

Combi boiler is around 12 years old, but annually serviced.
New double glazing in 2022, also has additional internal windows, if that makes sense, so triple glazed throughout.
Bathroom in good condition.
Loft insulation and boarding around 10 years ago, loft is empty and could be extended in to (the agents don't use this as a selling point, apparently).
Very quiet at the back as the road there is a cul de sac.

We are at a loss!

I clicked on your first link, direct to the agent, instead of the Rightmove one, and they have an extremely annoying and user-unfriendly website. An intrusive cookie message which is hard to deny, pop-ups for telephone calls, and if you try to zoom in on the photos they go all over the place. They're not in logical order either.

That aside, it seems a very pleasant house with good outside space.

Yep, it's not the best website, but not much we can do about that.

Should we be looking for another agent, do you think? I suggested a break from the market, but my mum who is handling it all (she is LPA) and having to do the legwork by herself (I'm not local) doesn't want to take it off completely.. Plus the home want to know it's actively marketed (and asked mum to ask the neighbours to move the tyres from their driveway!)..

Open to all and any suggestions!

It doesn't really matter about the agent's website though as most people will find it on Rightmove.

It looks a nice house. If you dropped it to 275k it might show up in more searches maybe? Not sure what the price brackets are on Rightmove.

My first thoughts before I looked at the house was, maybe it should be an auction property as you said it needs modernising.

I stopped reading when I read ' modernize ' as used by the EA in the first paragraph, so I moved onto the photos.

however altho it's not grey throughout :) it is actually more than liveable !
a family could easily move in, and do the kitchen when they choose to - but they would need the budget to do so.

but a family may want a bathroom with a bath...

it's clean, it's light and it's bright.

couple of photos that could be better i.e. the row of white goods in the kitchen - or is that the conservatory ?

and i wonder if the bed should actually be on a different wall ?

and to really nit pick, the curtains in the other bedroom really could do with rehanging, simple 5 min job but as i agree I really am not pucking !

it's got good gardens back and front, a garage and a 2nd car can park outside the garage.

I don't know the area, nor why it hasn't sold.
I wouldn't have a problem with any of it if I were looking in that price range in the area.

We are aware it needs modernising, of course, but it is liveable, and soundly built. Garage, driveway, front and back gardens, 15 minute walk from the beach

Does it say in the listing anywhere that it's 15 minutes from the beach? I couldn't see it, so that could be a selling point that's being missed.

Unfortunately, I think once a house has been on the market for quite a few months, it can give the impression that something is wrong with it, even if here isn;t, as people will think 'why hasn't somone else bought this already?'

I'd change agent and relist it.

I think the worry is, at £275k we would might get offers around £250k. Nan already owes £40k+, and is paying £5,450 per month, so assuming minimal fees, she might just have enough for 3 years in the home (if it sold now, that is!). The home she is in isn't an LA one, and they would likely try and move her, anywhere within the county. she is currently a 15 minute bus ride from my mum.

That's why we don't want to 'give it away'.

p.s. no need for it to go to auction, that was only my thought before looking at it !

Looming at other things for sale in the area I think it’s priced too high.

Thank you.

Ah, the conservatory.... It's not!!! My nan just had sliding doors put in as she only ever sat there (the sun through that window is lovely, and she hated putting the heating on!).

We would like to get rid of the white goods. However, in order to have it insured fully we have had to do so as a holiday home (my aunt stays there when she visits), so there had to be signs of it being lived in occasionally.

I will mention to the EA about adding the distance from the beach, and removing 'modernize'!

Will also suggest having a tidy up of e.g. the curtains, too. Yes, it could absolutely be lived in, and done up while you're there (currently doing that myself!). A bath is probably wanted, yes, but not something we will do.

Mum doesn't want to auction - again, too much for her to take on by herself!

Can you link to them? We have only seen properties well over £300k - thank you!

TBH though there seems to be a lot of property for sale of this type

ie this was SSTC £285k as well
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/142541987#/?channel=RES_BUY

but that's modernised already.

I do think people don't mind these blank canvas houses to really put their own mark into it, but I am guessing the sums don't begin to add up at the current asking price.

After that amount of time, I would change to a different agent. Whatever the current agent is doing is really not working.

Another thought, could you try and stage the second bedroom/boxroom somehow so people can visualise how they'd use them? For example, desk/table and chair in the box room for a home office set up. I appreciate you might not have easy access to extra furniture to do this though.

Can you empty out the furniture? Then it will seem more spacious and less dated. At this point the furniture isn't helping with the usual ideology of making it clear what the function of a room is. Paint the pine fireplace wood white perhaps. It will need a lot of cosmetic work, so it isn't worth your time/energy doing anything further to it.

The only family home that sold in my immediate area recently was a very dated property where the elderly owner had moved into care also. It was substantially cheaper than the lived-in properties, which must have helped it sell quickly, and some people do like to do up a property exactly to their own tastes.

And as pp said, change agent and relist.

I don't know if would be helpful for you but there's a more modern style of auction online where you can set a minimum price you'll accept. It essentially works like an eBay listing and vendor are vetted before they can offer. If there is an offer that has met your minimum on the day of closing it sells immediately to that person. The buyer pays fees etc and you get the money quickly after the sale.
I had to sell a house of not-normal construction that way as people could not get a mortgage but there was loads of types of houses on the site. SDL auctions was who I used.

Thank you.. We will take a look and consider things in a week or two.

the town is lovely. There has, however, been an influx of second-home-buyers and so it drove the prices up (of the largely smaller houses less than 5 minutes from the beach), and it seems to have left this odd void for middle-of-the-road properties. Lots of new builds, smaller, over £400k, but need no work, smaller flats around the £300k mark, but 5 minutes to the beach, so the slightly further afield properties are in no-mans land.

should say - nothing against the second home lot, as the town has been vastly improved since their arrival, and various Guardian articles and the like, just makes it harder when you have something that they don't want to buy!

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/144895235#/?channel=RES_BUY

This doesn't have the rear extension, but similar price.

Is the floorplan correct in that the kitchen opens into the conservatory? So to get to the kitchen you walk through the hall, lounge, diningoom and conservatory?

agent number 2 has had it for 12 weeks... I think we should switch, too!

You can get empty home cover - try Intasure. You shouldn’t have to use that reason not to present the house as well as you can.

You could go dual agency - it will cost you a bit more in fees but may create some competition between the agents to secure the sale.

But it’s ALWAYS price in the absence of any other obvious defects. Yes it may mean less time in her current care home but that’s how it goes sadly.

A big positive is the lovely big windows. Many buyers will like the wealth of natural light. So remove the net curtains/blinds as those will be making it feel less bright and airy (and more dated).