Why has no one viewed my house?

[CinnamonSwirlLatte]

Previous marital home has been on Rightmove for a month. Thousands of clicks but not one viewing.

Already reduced by 15k.

I'd love to know what's going wrong - although it's going to be very difficult to amend/improve anything as my controlling ex husband lives there!

Thanks

4 bedroom semi-detached house for sale in Maple Avenue, Keelby, DN41 (rightmove.co.uk)

The floor plans say you basically have a 3
Bed, with a large cupboard.

I doubt it. We were supposed to agree on everything - but he went ahead and did it all himself, so one day browsing on RM, I saw our house pop up!

For context, I might sound a bit stressed. But this is the house that he has lived in, alone, for almost 2 years now, while six children and I lived in a women's refuge. He tried to stop us moving away from the area through court. It's been an awful time, and I just want to move on, but still feel so controlled!

I definitely clicked on it and thought it was 3 bedroom - maybe the estate agency could make the floor plan a bit clearer?

I am also struggling to find the 4th Bedroom on the floor plan.

Tbh the photos are not great. Particularly of the bedrooms and the floor plan is pretty useless if it is not to scale. The garden also looks very sad, although most buyers would see through that.

However, your comment about the ex husband rang a little alarm bell for me. Is he doing the viewings?

Years ago we were trying to sell my parents house (probate) and couldn’t understand why keen viewers were rejecting it. It turned out that my DB who was living there and conducting the viewings, was giving each viewer a long sob story about how my wicked sister was trying to sell and evict him from what had always been his childhood home. This story accompanied by copious tears was coming from a 45 year old who stood to inherit a large share of the proceeds but wanted to keep the whole lot.

Once we twigged, I insisted that all future viewings must be done by the agent when he was not at home. It sold within a fortnight.

If I was you I would be considering a decent Estate Agent, new photos snd accompanied viewings.

How wierd, I also struggled to reconcile the number of rooms in the photos to the floor plan, I also thought there were only three showing! It doesn't help that the downstairs bedroom is labelled as a playroom on the plan - could that be changed to "playroom / 5th bedroom"?

Also, if ExH can be persuaded to cooperate, could one of the beds in the funny-shaped room be moved to one of the empty rooms for another couple of photos? It Looks odd the there's barely room to squeeze round the two beeds when there are empty rooms next door.

Beyond those two quick wins, the photos are unfortunately a little dark. Appreciate the difficult circumstances, but they don't give a welcoming impression of the house.

We’re trying to buy a house where the couple are divorced and can’t seem to agree on anything. We’ve offered 5% below asking price, it’s been on the market since spring, no other offers. One partner wants to accept the offer but the other is holding out for full asking price. It’s really difficult in this sort of scenario to proceed if one partner is being a dick and refusing to consider a lower price - a house is only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it. Trouble is if you own it jointly I guess there’s not much you can do to make him set a lower asking price… Good luck

People will assume it’s 3 bed as the 4th bedroom is poorly labelled, I missed it too and so will other people.

I’d also label the playroom as a bedroom, so if people feel the 4th bedroom upstairs is too small they have the option of using the one downstairs.

The photos look awful, it looks really dark and damp… like there’s a grey hue on most of them. It looks like the EA hasn’t cared at all!

It's a strange street. Those houses are either HUGE or much smaller x

It looks unloved and dated. The bedrooms look crammed and with a mish mash of furniture. Photos are dark, maybe the house is too? The back garden is unappealing, no planting or colour.

I'm sure it could be staged better, but there needs to be a willingness from the occupant to do that.

I’d describe it as a 3 bed plus study with 2nd reception / 4th bedroom.

The description says ‘4 good sized bedrooms’ - they aren’t, it’s 3 good sized plus a box room.

Your agents have completely mangled the description and can’t spell ‘accommodate’.

Weirdly, I think there are far too many photos and then you end up with some bad ones. I'd have just 6 photos (front, major rooms, garden view) so you leave people wanting to see more.

And definitely fix the floor plan.

But price is the major factor. From the photos it looks like a fixer upper which means people want £50k off the price

Like others I think the floor plan isn’t an accurate representation in that it makes the 4th bedroom upstairs appear smaller than it actually is. And the photographs are awful.
would you ex consider moving some of the furniture around in the children’s rooms, particularly the twin room, to make the rooms appear larger/more practical? The way the twin beds are positioned just doesn’t show off the space that is actually available.
clearly he is not invested in selling - it’s like no care has been taken to present the house in the best possible light. But the estate agents haven’t helped - they could stage the photos and floor plan much better.

I can't think of a great way to say this but it looks like a house where something sad happened, or the set for a bleak drama set a couple of decades ago. I'm not woo and I'm sure it is just the lighting and artex ceilings, but nothing about the inside or outside photos warms the heart.

Is it possible that your ex also doesn't want to sell and is interfering with the process?

I think you need to ask the EA to remove some of the garden photos at the very least. The garden doesn't look great, but just the one photo showing how it backs onto fields is all it needs, rather than emphasising how bare it is with so many photos. The internal photos are also not showing the place very well, but if your ex is being uncooperative, then I would guess you are stuck with those.

I think you need to address the strange shape of the house in the first photo or two. I was completely confused by photo 14 (the twin bed room) and the picture of the garden. At first I thought it was a shared garden with next door (with all the issues that can cause). I just wasn’t expecting a triangular house, with the rear being bigger than the front.

Maybe your first photo could be an aerial shot?

Also, market it as a 3 bedroom, 3 reception rooms (which it is) and you will better meet people’s expectations.

I very much doubt he'd agree to the EA doing viewings as it would be more expensive! But we have to pay half anyway so that's ridiculous.

I agree. Difficult if your exH won't comply. It has zero kerb appeal and gave me a 'gloomy' feeling looking at the photos. Sorry.

Floor plan unclear, rooms small and or awkward shapes (bedroom 1 especially), photos dark. Suspect you had the house laid out to work for a large family which might not be what suits everyone. You need something to convert clicks to views if it is a house which needs to be seen in real life. Either you need to persuade your ex to let you in to stage it and do new pictures or you drop the price so that it sells to someone who doesn’t care what it looks like because they will do it up.
At a minimum put the double bed into bedroom one in a position that you can walk round.

I’m so sorry that you and your children are in this dismal situation. it looks as if your ex is not serious about trying to sell the house. Could you get legal advice about forcing him to, or else getting him out so you can live there and arrange the sale?

Yes purple bricks are notoriously shit and I wouldn't view any property with them unless it looked amazing which sadly your property does not due to terrible photos

You find it strange so many people on a property forum miss the 4th/5th bedroom but guess what? The general public will be missing it as well. It's labelled as a 4 bed but straight away I glanced at the floor plan, saw 3 upstairs bedrooms and the downstairs playroom and took that to mean that's the 4th bedroom which imo unless you have a downstairs bathroom to go with it I don't think you can count it as one. So if I was looking for a 4 bed I'd be thinking no it's a 3 bed + playroom. The general public don't spend ages looking at a floor plan, they'll glance for a couple of seconds and move on. The floor plan needs changing.

I have just read your latest post @CinnamonSwirlLatte
It sounds so difficult for you. Well done for getting away, and I hope that things improve soon

I'm afraid that unless you get a decent estate agent this house isn't going to sell.

Sorry @Tulip8 I haven't had my coffee yet.

@CinnamonSwirlLatte you need to get the EA to address the issues with him because you obviously can’t. They won’t be keen to still be forking out for a RM listing that has no hope of selling..

For me:

1. remove one of the twin beds in the twin room
2. Get someone in to tidy up the garden
3. remove the photos that show the rooms poorly (the box room one that shows it is a box room) the twin bed rooms.
4. ask the EA to do a better job with the kitchen photos - they should be selling the house
5. Rewrite the blurb yourself (you can include the fact that the rear land cannot be built upon etc) mention the flexible living space.
6. redo the floor plan. No need for sizes on the WC and bed 4 should read as bed/study and the playroom bed5/ playroom.

Obviously the biggest thing will be the price. How much work did you do since 2017 to justify the £60k uplift?

Well, surely you can see the issue that the downstairs room the OP is claiming as a bedroom is labelled ‘playroom’, needs to be entered via the kitchen and utility, rather than off the hall, for no obvious reason, AND is being claimed in the Key Features as a second reception room? And that labelling the fourth upstairs bedroom as ‘very spacious’ is delusional?