House has been on for sale for nearly a year with no offers. Would love some feedback and advice!

[Veebie86]

We bought our 1850s 3 bed cottage in 2021 and although we absolutely love it, we got pregnant last year trying for our second and ended up having babies 2&3 in January! We have no family too close by (my parents are an hour away) so we sadly put our house on the market in early August last year to move closer to my family for support and to have more space than what we have currently for 3 under 3. In 9 months we’ve literally had just a handful of viewings with no offers. People constantly tell us how beautiful our home is (and we honestly love it, just wish it was bigger and closer to family)! We’ve tried two EAs who have both said it’s priced right for the area and the market and we can’t afford to drop any lower anyway to avoid making a loss (we’ve done work since moving including adding a downstairs toilet). We’re honestly getting so down about it now as our babies are just getting bigger so quickly and starting to feel like we’ll be stuck here forever. Link below and if anyone has any tips or feedback I won’t take anything personally and would just appreciate the help!
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/146014529#/?channel=RES_BUY

If you are desperate to move and have more space, and you really can't drop the price, then have you considered renting it out and renting yourselves in the location you want.

Loft lagging

What loft? The bedrooms go up to the roof.

Just had another thought... Jet washing that front pavement would help. It looks quite mossy and gungy. The type of path that would very quickly get very slippy in the wet/ice.

Oh my! Now the truth is coming out!

This is a far better listing. I'd go back to this agent with the £600k price.

It’s a lovely house, OP, and you have had some great advice on this thread.

I will only add that through no fault of your own you bought at the top of the market and then undertook improvements when the costs of building and labour were at a peak. I am really sorry but the urgency with which you need to move means that you are very, very unlikely to recoup those costs in the selling price. I think you need to prepare yourselves to swallow a loss this time and plan your onward move accordingly. Sometimes it can’t be helped. You have to think of the property as your home first and as an asset second.

I've got nothing sensible to add @Veebie86 but I just wanted to say your home is beautiful! You have such a lovely eye for decor. It looks idyllic :)

I know, cheeky fucker 😂

The house is almost a 'mews' house and is down little snicket that is one car width wide. So no parking outside your house either.

Cheadle Hulme is a very naice place to live with corresponding prices. The Midlands equivalent purely in terms of pricing would be somewhere like Solihull or Sutton Coldfield.

Change agents. If it’s been on for 9 months and their advice is it’s priced right so wait, they’re not doing their job. Plus they haven’t done a floor plan and keeping early viewing advised on the ad when it’s been up for 9 months seems silly!

We sold my partner’s flat a few years back and had only a handful of viewings with no offers in the first 6 months. We changed agents and redid the ad with them (I gave them bullet points of what needed to be in the text) - accepted an offer within 6 weeks.

I also wouldn’t get hung up on making a loss after doing work, focus on what you need money wise for the next property. Houses are worth what the market dictates and, if you did the work a while ago, it was an investment in your time living there as well as the property.

It may be 'naice'....but for £600,000 you don't get to park outside your own home (as it is a 'mews' house), you don't get a garage either and you don't get a front garden.

It looks like a large Georgian fronted property from the outside, yet has small cottage sized proportions inside.

£600,000 may be the going rate for 3 bedroom houses in the area, but for me, this property has no pros - only cons.

I think you're going to have to reduce the price considerably, by at least £50-80K, if not £100K.

Obviously the bloody floor plan needs doing.
You should clean up the front but that’s not a deal breaker
The photos could be better - but they aren’t dreadful
It looks quite big to me, but you are struggling with a family of 5 so maybe other families think it’s not suitable for them too.
I don’t quite get the mezzanine room- better pictures needed.
Some people have said it’s on a busy B road, others that it’s down a quiet side street - it should be immediately apparent as it is important.
The parking is important. Crucial even
The energy costs are important.
On a personal note I hate the cooker. I cook a lot - I couldn’t bear to be in that hole with nowhere to put my things and have to clean bare brick and ancient wooden beams of cooking grease all the time. The problem is, in a period house you feel you can’t just rip things out.

I really like it (apart from the cooker). I think it looks a good size, I like the layout, the aesthetic etc. I would view. But then I would think about the parking, the cost to heat (the heat zooming out the door to the orangery and the energy rating), the lack of space at the front, the problems reselling, the additional costs in maintaining a period home, and I’d look to see what else was available and buy that semi for ££££ cheaper. It’s not as nice, but my life would be easier in it than in yours. I could build either a single storey or 2 storey rear extension, I could turn the kitchen and downstairs loo into a downstairs shower room and utility, and the dining room into a kitchen/living space, I could extend into the loft, or I could just paint the kitchen cupboards and keep my £140k for cream cakes and champagne. It’s the price. You aren’t going to get £635k with better photos, power washing and pots. I do like it though, but most people buy with their head when over £100k is at stake.

I agree - if you scroll up a few posts you’ll see I have specifically said to the OP that she needs to prepare herself to make a loss.

I was explaining the profile of Cheadle Hulme
to the pp who though that ‘The North’ is a homogeneous mass where every house costs 50p.

I don't know the area but looked the houses shown underneath. There's a lovely semi-detached at £350,000 and lots of others at the same prove. Yours is detached but is is worth nearly double the price?

I agree with all those points, but a few additional areas for concern:

• the wall on the far side of the mezzanine bedroom in photo 12 looks like you have a damp problem (where the ceiling starts to drop). It could be nothing, but visible signs of damp immediately puts me off no matter how lovely the house
• switch photos 14,12,13 around to that order so it's more obvious what's going on (I absolutely adore it!)
• get a soft wash done of the front of the house, pavement and windows plus the paving on the back garden etc, it'll completely change the presentation of the house
• avoid any photos which suggest the double garage next door is part of the house, as that was my immediate impression
• ultimately it's the price. Other 3 beds full of character are being priced around £500k in your area, but come with driveways and / or garages... They might not be as old a building, but there are original feature for the era of build which are still beautiful
• no mention of sash v double glazed windows, heating system (gas boiler, water heater, electric heating?) and so on...

I guess the litmus test would be current sold prices in the area as opposed to listed prices. Houses generally are not selling for anywhere near the listed prices in England at the moment. I do not know this area though.

This can be helpful.

I agree, and as the house remains unsold obviously so do potential buyers.

People are prepared to overlook problems like the lack of parking and a house that opens onto the street, but the price has to reflect these.

You need new pictures and a new agent.

Things might pick up in the Spring.

It’s a really stunning house.

It’s (almost always) the price & here, it’s the fact it’s right on the road.

If other similar houses are priced similarly, but have parking spaces and are not right on the road, then they would always be preferable to most people.

It does seem very expensive though... I've no idea what the housing market on the Manchester outskirts is like generally - but I thought up North was supposed to be cheap!

Haha @zingally. Pop SK9 or WA16 into your next RightMove search and see just how little half a million gets you in parts of the north-west!

The Spring?! Spring has almost been and gone!
The Spring starts in March ..... it's May in 3 days time!

Also you still need to declutter further for photos

• the pics on the fridge
• tables with stuff on them
• kids stuff
• coal bucket etc

Get it looking as spacious as you possibly can given some spaces are small

Hilarious what people believe isn’t it. If this house was a few miles away in Didsbury it would be £700k easy 😂

But yes THE NORTH is dirt cheap guys keep on believing it

p.s. YES I KNOW THIS HOUSE IS OVERPRICED

Exactly! I was born and bred in the south and even I know some parts of the north are enormously expensive!

Parts of Cheshire, Derbyshire and North Yorkshire to mention a few!