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

Hi there’s a really helpful YouTube channel called “moving home with Charlie”. I recommend watching it. You can also message him on his website and pay for a consultation if you want it and he does live Q&As where you can get questions answered.

Sadly he will probably tell you that 2021 was a higher market than 2024, despite how estate agents are overpricing houses right now. So the chance of you not losing money from when you bought it in 2021 is probably low (depending whether it was early or late 2021 (peak of the market was March 2022)). However better promotion and online presence can help.

I guess at that price range the market is smaller so it’s about attracting that small pool of potential buyers.

Not rocket science is it ?

It is overpriced, otherwise it would have sold.

I see you've updated the listing and put in the floor plan. To me, I would think of that as a two bedroom plus mezzanine that you are using as a bed space. Not a private space you can enclose yourself in?

The mezzanine is part of the third bedroom. It's a mezzanine within an enclosed bedroom. That seems pretty clear from the floor plan to me?

I thought it was clear too, but a number of people on this thread have had the assumption that the area with the stairs is one bedroom and the mezzanine is being counted as another. I think labelling the photos may help with that.

Ah, get it now. The stairs confused me in the pic as to how open that was. In that case, that's a pretty cool room for someone. I'd have loved that as a teen.

Yes, I thought the bottom might have been the landing, but wasn't sure how that worked with the bedroom on the plan having a door to the landing. (Conclusion drawn before plan went up). I actually quite like that arrangement of room.

Firstly, I really like your house and can't understand why it hasn't sold. It's quite beautiful and you've absolutely made the most of it.
However the fact that you're not getting viewings at this time of year makes me think that it must be over-priced, possibly because you've spent too much on it, making it too expensive for your area.

Obviously this is difficult for you, but if you are really determined to move I'm afraid that you may have to bite the bullet and reduce the price. Otherwise you might have to wait until local market prices catch up with yours which is not what you want to do as prices will have risen where you are going.

The fact that this is not selling at the current price does not mean it’s not true that period properties with character don’t command a premium.

I would never choose a 30s semi over a Victorian house, I hate them. Some semis are badly, cheaply built with poor insulation. And they’re all ugly. With good insulation a solid Victorian cottage like this shouldn’t be expensive maintain - the rooms are small and the ceilings low. It’s large rooms and high ceilings that make some period houses expensive to heat.

I think you have misread or misunderstood my post. As I have already pointed out, and a couple of other posters have said the same thing, this trend may well have turned in any case due to current high costs. The bottom line is that this beautiful house hasn't sold in 9 months on the market and is apparently not even getting viewings now because it is over priced.
The fact you hate 1930s semis and think they are ugly is irrelevant. Clearly, others don't have the same aversion to them or other newer homes and are choosing the extra bedroom, front garden, etc instead. Most people need to be pragmatic when buying nowadays and don't have the luxury of not doing their sums properly.

This is a family house which is competing against other family houses which have off street parking and maybe an extra bedroom, more floor space, bigger gardens front and back and are significantly cheaper

Whilst the house is absolutely stunning, in today’s market people are looking for the space for as cheap as possible and aren’t particularly interested in whether a house has beams or is beautifully presented. They might be a consideration if it was on a short list

Firstly the house looks lovely decor and layout it will appeal to someone: however if it's not selling it's normally price. I don't get why the agents aren't saying this. Of course parking and bathrooms important. New agent with fresh perspective.
We dropped ours under what we bought it for in the end to sell it. Depends how important it is to you to move and if you can buy in new area for less you can drop.
Good luck to you.

Many mentions of the lack of floor plan, but there is one on the listing, not included in gallery. lower down the page On the photo of the front it looks like there's a much taller property to the side, and its not possible to tell what it is I would find this off putting in tempting me to view could the photo be redone to exclude this? Or include more of it for context? Could you switch agents for better marketing? Internally I would say its fine please don't paint that historic wood as someone suggested. Parking/transport links are important to most people info that should included in the grab headline.
Another possible cause is interest rates the cheap lending rates of 2021 (and the mass moving lockdown frenzy when house prices went crazy and stamp duty was temporarily abolished) are history people can't afford what they could and its having a knock on effect on house prices depending on yhe area.

The floor plan was added on Monday. There was no floor plan on Sunday when those posts were made.

@CatMum000 there was no floorplan on the listing when the OP first posted it. It has been subsequently added.

The price seems reasonable to me, but I'm in London so not familiar with prices there. The property looks beautiful, I love your decor (do NOT paint over any dark wook beams as someone earlier suggested!). Maybe there is a general slump in property buyers around there? The only thing that appeared a bit 'off' to me is the big area on floor plan described as 'hallway' - shouldn't that be called a reception room area instead? Perhaps you could also put a wall up to give it a proper division from the front door entrance?

Other than that, I can only surmise the price is too high for the area or your EA isn't doing enough to sell it. Good luck!

I honestly think that what beds go where and hanging baskets are beside the point.
If people were still viewing, maybe there would some merit, but if people aren't even viewing then it's the price.

Your previous EA was much better, I'd go back to them.

EAs may have told you to go for £600k+ but they have a vested interest in keeping the prices in the area high and rising.
The truth of it as you've been told is it's too expensive and no amount of rearranging is going to get away from that.

I know people are throwing around varying rates of reductions but I really don't think it's worth significantly more than what you paid for it 3 years ago.

I think the £560-£575 range is probably more realistic

Agree with this. I was always a lover of period properties but once I had kids having a drive and being energy efficient were much more practical and realistic considerations.
In the current COL crisis the pool of people who have money to spare in order to appreciate period features is narrowing ...

Of nearly 800 replies ‘ooooh my giddy aunt’ has definitely made me smile the most so thank you! Great expression I haven’t heard in ages! Definitely when we change EA (we did like our original local one but a few seemingly good suggestions have been made on here too so need to investigate) we’ll definitely suggest an open house as again, people have given examples of them working on here.

Good grief, I advised the OP to reduce the price 30 pages ago, as has everyone. This is not rocket science.

I’m aware there are plenty of people content with 30s semis and new builds, but you don’t seem to be aware of the number of people who would much prefer a character period property to either, hence the premium.

Running costs in this case are not relevant as, as I said, with small rooms and low ceilings it will not be expensive to heat - the exception to that is actually the orangery which will leach heat - but plenty of modern houses have extensions with lots of glass built before the utility crisis.

So am I and I brought children up in a period property with a drive. They’re not mutually exclusive.

Some of the most popular roads in my area of London are the ones with Victorian cottages, much like OP’s, which sell for 1.5million+ and continue to be snapped up despite CoL crisis.

Despite or maybe because of the CoL crisis people still want to live in nice houses - if they’re having fewer luxury treats and foreign holidays a lovely home becomes more important.

Small rooms or not, an EPC of E would suggest otherwise. I suspect the issue is the single glazing, which will be expensive to rectify in a manner which preserves the period character.

E is in the middle of the spectrum. 60% of U.K. homes are D-G. It’s likely to be the insulation (25% of heat is lost through the roof, 30% thro walls), windows, inefficient boiler, lightbulbs. Loft insulation doesn’t cost much and can be DIY.

Either way it’s a small house so even at E the energy costs will be reasonable.

Looking at the bedroom images I don't think there is much (any?) loft space to speak of.

Roof insulation then, there may already be some. The extension can easily have insulation added and OP is planning to change the glass roof anyway, which will save heating costs as well as making it cooler in summer.

If I were the buyer I’d take out the mezzanine which would mean you could do without the Velux windows.

More heat will be lost via the orangery + Velux windows than any of the other small windows.