Another why is my house not selling post

[Alldressedupnowheretogo]

I have a mid terraced house on the market in the most desirable street in St Albans. Priced at £600k which exactly fits (sold) comps and reflectsw we I spent renovating it + average valuation gain in the area since i bought it.

Must have had 30 viewings. Two offers on the first open house day at £5k below asking. Both fell through. Another FTB then offered and pulled out.

It’s all freshly decorated and staged. It’s a cottage like most in this area - disadvantages of these structures are downstairs bathroom and no hallway - but with the addition of a fully tanked basement with spare room/reception and home office. The moisture levels are the same on each floor so no damp in the basement. The doors and windows are beautifully re-done. The kitchen is De Vol.

It’s been on for three months. What do I do?

I think it’s my target market (FTBs, divorcees) not being able to get their mortgages as they all keep coming and people are offering and then pulling out.

But these are the things that maybe make it hard to sell?

Lack of parking spaces for residents (city centre issue).

Extra 300 ft of basement space not worth much?

People freak out about basements even when fully tanked?

Can’t do the loft as it’s Grade II listed.

Price??? Not sure about this one as the fallen-through offers were v close to asking.

Viewer feedback is mainly that they think basement will flood (not in flood zone) and the stairs need repainting (yes but srsly??)

Help?

First image is next door, second is OPs I think.

I agree.

I also wonder if the stairs we can see (going upstairs) were added later as they appear to be at a very tight angle to the hallway and overhanging the entrance to the basement. (I know people were shorter and smaller then!) It would make it very tight for someone to go down the coal chute through a trapdoor.

I think stairs into basements were often like this. Ours was anyway! Whether the op has a day bed or not is besides the point, as it’s not a bedroom on the plan and it’s not marketed as a third bedroom. It simply has a tanked cellar so that’s better than not tanked. It’s easy to put a door in. The basement should be classed as a basement as it cannot be classed as habitable. As the huge numbers of loft “conversions” that don’t meet building regs (staircase, fire doors, headroom, escape etc) are labelled as loft rooms by vendors and EAs, it’s up to buyers to know what they are buying. As here.

If you look carefully at the floor plan and the photographs, I doubt it would be easy to fit a door (otherwise it would have been done.)
The stairs go above the basement opening at a steep angle and to me it doesn't look as if a door would fit in that space.

What do you think?

I think the original stairs to the 1st floor have been rotated 90 degrees and tucked to the side when the original front room and kitchen were knocked through. The cellar steps are in the original location, but would have been boxed in with a wall to form a cellar head pantry. The pantry and cellar/pantry door have been removed when the stairs were relocated.

It's a fairly standard 2-up 2-down terrace that's been 'modernised'.

I think you fit a door in the dining room but there no picture of the cellar stairs. It’s difficult without seeing precise layout and dimensions. A wall could be built at the bottom of the main stairs and a door between that and the kitchen wall but I’m not sure of the dimensions and size of stairs to basement is a consideration too. The window could be enlarged but how possible this is, I’m not sure as there’s a street in the way.

However it’s not habitable space but there are two exits on the ground floor.

A tanked cellar is definitely not better than an un-tanked cellar!

I'm still gobsmacked that all this work got LBC, and if done recently would have needed BC too. Perhaps lack of these is what's causing offers to be withdrawn.

Much of that was dirty money being laundered via the UK property market.

Were you in the civil service at the time?

Absolutely. A lot of very dirty money from Russia and other places was positively encouraged into the UK by the oh so moral politicians. I'd say some of that has exited/ reversed now!

Do you need to have been in the civil service at the time to see that Truss was an absolute disaster?

She wanted to sack the leaders of the Treasury and the BofE and abolish the OBR - nothing like a bit of unchecked power eh?

See also the money used to redevelop Canary Wharf....

@Scampuss What are you saying? Tanking is just damp prevention and ensuring the cellar is dry and cannot be penetrated by water. My DMs filled up with sewerage from a broken sewer. Tanking is much better. Building control is not necessarily involved but tanking should meet Building standards. These are strong advisory guidelines. There is no reason why listed status and heritage officers would deny tanking as long as the appropriate BS was followed. Most houses won’t be great with damp cellars, rotting floor boards and mould. Even listed ones!

Cellars in traditional solid houses do not benefit from tanking, it almost always fails, and in the process it forces water up the walls and into the main fabric of the building. Such cellars were never meant to be habitable spaces, they should have permeable surfaces and be well ventilated as designed, and are a crucial measure in keeping the rest of the walls dry.

Modern living, roads nearby and poor drainage means what something was meant to be is no longer relevant in many houses. Yes you can say people should put up with smelly musty cellars, I guess you have never owned one! Having lived in a house as a child with wet rot, it’s very difficult to ventilate and keep a cellar healthy. You don’t need to keep a cellar damp if a house has a dpc and it’s working.

Water finds the lowest point so how does tanking force it up, thus defying the laws of gravity and physics? Modern tanking systems allow moisture and water to flow (not really the right word as it's not going to be a gushing torrent unless you've got a leak) and be directed to a sump pump and out of the building. Most "rising damp" is caused by a leak of some sort.

This sounds a bit like the myth old houses need to breathe.

Because cellars are supposed to breathe, making it water tight, means moisture has no where to go and travels up. It’s a known and evidenced fact it older properties tanking will cause rising damp in many cases.

If there’s no working DPC, damp rises anyway! If there is, damp stops at the DPC. Ground level around the walls is a major contributor to damp in a house. Not a tanked cellar. In a Victorian house there should be a DPC of some type. It’s perfectly ok to allow a cellar to breathe but as it’s underground they struggle! If you cannot keep it dry then it’s a big problem. Often remedial work is needed as a house 120-160 years old is not perfect for life today or conditions today.

Thanks everyone for the advice so far! To those who’ve understandably asked me to confirm which house it is, I’m so sorry i felt unable to. There’s a personal reason for that.

What’s been really helpful is hearing everyone’s thoughts about the general pricing in St Albans and SE commuter belt.

Actually that advice makes complete sense just on the basis of price and location. And I really appreciate it.

I agree with the poster on here who asked will a tiny mid terrace 1 hour from central London go to £1m? Will a studio flat be £500k? I don’t know what will burst the bubble or whether we just have a dip back to 2019 prices but I realise that for many first time buyers this market is ridiculous.

Similar to what a few have said on here I got my first home on a 100pc mortgage 20 years ago at 4x salary. Impossible these days. Someone like me in a professional job but without family money would be flat sharing forever. Those few FTBs who have £300k deposits have absolutely loads of choice - though in their position I maybe wouldn’t spend it right now

I wonder what the Budget will bring?

@Alldressedupnowheretogo I do wish you luck OP- it's a perfectly nice area to live ( I've lived there twice) Like others I just wanted to maybe mention that I suspect that area isn't as buoyant price wise as it once would have been on small houses , for reasons that couldn't be predicted- and that i don't think it's 'your ' house specifically.

It sounds as if you are realistic and sensible. It's true that St Albans is lovely and has been super desirable for a long time but I think it's helpful to point out that nothing ever stays the same and it's possible that it may have reached peak desirability, at least for young, child free singles/couples wanting a starter home. I hope you manage to sell soon, whichever house was yours!

what I don’t understand is that the rental market here is even more bananas. Tiny tiny 2 bed near me just rented for £1.9k. 2-3 bed terrace near station just rented for £3.8k pcm. I imagine the mortgage of £450k on that modest 2-3 bed could be £3.4k atm tho (say its ‘worth £800k) and at least you’re not tied into it for 2 years with neg eq later.

The rental prices are crazy but it does at least give them lots of flexibility. I guess many people can't afford to or are too uncertain about taking on a massive mortgage at present. It's understandable!

@Alldressedupnowheretogo the rentals will attract people too with relatively high earnings but not the deposit size needed to buy. We pay 'a lot' here in Bath but have a biggish house in lovely area. Problem is if you are self employed for instance it can be hard getting a decent sized mortgage unless you have around 30 to 40% deposit. Or like us, earn well but too old now to get mortgages. We were not earning at this level till around early 50s, now early 60s - we could easily pay a huge mortgage -