Feedback from viewers - I can't get my head around.

[Downsizingandmovingon]

Hello everyone. Please go easy with me on this, as it's all a bit overwhelming.

I am early 70s and my husband of more fifty-three years died almost five years ago. After a huge amount of thought, I have decided I need to sell my home, because even though it's a typical thirties-semi, it's just too big for me now. I want to move to either a bungalow or a flat (I am very much keeping my options open). It's a huge step, as this is the only house I have lived in since 1972.

My husband used to do all the repairs, and we have all the usual things like central heating, although a part from a lean-to extention to the kitchen, the house is the same size as it was when built. I won't be posting a link to it as I don't want to show the world, and I know it needs some updating, but the estate agent has assured me the asking price will reflect this.

The problem is this; it's been on two weeks and I've had three viewings. The feedback from all of them is that it needs TL and that it wasn't right for them, however, the agent asked one of them to go into more detail, and they said that it's not the work that puts them off, it's the fact that it 'obvious' a lot of it was done by a DIY person and that they are worried about what's going to turn up over time!

I'm horrified, and a bit offended too, as we never had any problems with anything my husband did or repaired, but they've mentioned really silly things, like in the kitchen (which my husband put in) the flexes to the appliances below go through a hole in the worktop and are plugged in above - I mean how else are they supposed to be plugged in? They also mentioned how some of the doors didn't look well fitted - there were several things, but I don't remember as I was too upset.

I feel thoroughly down about it, and I'm really worried that other people are going to pick up on it too, not that I can see a problem, but if this is going to be a thing then how do I make it better? I have three more viewings booked for tomorrow and it's making me sick with worry. I thought people bought houses knowing that problems might show up, but I didn't know some people think the previous owners could leave them a legacy of unknown issues. Please share you (kind) thoughts.

"I have sold to FTBs. Even after a full renovation 3-4 years ago they wanted more. One couple freaked out over a wobbly tap. So I spent extra money on getting a good generalist tradesman in to do all the odd jobs that would get the sale moving, painted the whole house fresh and bought some new rugs and plants. I got that back by not having to drop the sale price."

I cannot quite properly in the app, but as @Nomorediy said above, this could be a very good idea. They could also help you with rebuttal or quotes for any buyers' survey findings

I really can't quote in the app or so late
Handyman for minor jobs
Painting and rugs aren't always necessary

And as another poster said, be wary of leasehold and or retirement flats extra charges when you do get to the more fun part of moving- finding somewhere new you love.

I knew what you meant and that hasn’t been standard since the early 80s. I remember my mum giving my Dad hell for doing that with a microwave cable.

A prospective buyer, seeing that, thinks “amateur DIY electrics that would fail modern standards, so there are probably more repairs and refits needed than the estate agents are telling us.”

Again, it doesn’t mean your house isn’t saleable. But it does mean there’s a lot more work needed to bring it up to par than you think.

We're DIY people too, so I appreciate your husband's approach. We leave the big stuff (plumbing, rewiring) to professionals though, as we don't have the skillset. We recently bought a 1950s house that we knew needed work. We're not put off by DIY and knew a bit about what we were getting into.

Everything that needed to be done cost significantly more than a standard job, and took significantly longer, because the previous owners were also DIYers, put almost no money at all into the house, and didn't get professionals to do the big jobs. The plumbing was all over the place, the wiring was crazy - there were multiple fuse boxes throughout the house - and everything was done as cheaply as humanly possible (one door frame wasn't even made of wood, they somehow built a frame out of old newspaper and painted it. Paper mache doorframe!). This has cost us a lot of money and time. We were prepared for this, as the house price reflected the condition, and we could take our time with the work and save up for it, but it was frequently as massive PITA.

I'm not saying your husband did things as haphazardly as the previous owners of this place did, but prospective buyers don't know that, and I can completely understand why the prospect might put them off.

Your house will sell, the right people will come along and see the potential that it has (our place is absolutely lovely now), just give it time.

In terms of what you can do, I wouldn't put much money into it at this stage (unless you're going to put a lot of money into it!). New buyers are going to want to do a lot of work from the sounds of it so it would just be a waste of your money.

Thank you for this. I won't be looking at any retirement homes, mostly (though not wholly) to the potential complications and costs buying & selling them, but if I buy a flat (and it's still very much an if) it will have to be leasehold due to the nature of what it is - at best I may buy one where each flat owns its share of the freehold, although that doesn't seem to come with a huge number of advantages, having researched it.

I have to say though, I am much reassured by the posts on here that I will sell. Mentally, I have moved on, it's not personal, and I've removed as many of my things as I feel is appropriate to sell. May be that's what's caused the problem, that things are visible that might not otherwise have been if the place was dirty and cluttered!

Could it be they’re worried the survey will come back and they won’t be able to actually secure a mortgage as there won’t be a safety certificate (or whatever official documents they may need)?

DM worries about this if/when their house needs to be sold. Had a loft conversion done 30-odd years ago. At the time, planning permission wasn’t required, it was done by professional builders though. However, the stairs aren’t in one continuous line, there is a small ‘landing’ where the stairs turn, apparently this isn’t allowed now but wasn’t an issue at the time.

Agree 💯

Don’t take any of it personally it’s not meant like that. It was you and your husbands lovely home. A buyer will come along and it will become their lovely home too.

You need to focus on your new life and your new house.

My mum was the same a while ago when she thought about selling, even though she bought her house 20 years ago and needed the work doing then and just never got around to it. So the comments were about the last owners husband work, someone my mum never even met. She took the comments personally and get really upset and anxious and withdrew the house from the market. Don’t let the same happen to you.

I wouldn't worry about it. I think estate agents push for feedback sometimes and people feel they have to say something.

I was coming here to say this.
I've looked round probably 20 - 25 houses over the last couple of years with 2 of my dc, who were first time buyers.
It really is about "feel" but some estate agents don't get that and try to push for specifics, when there really isn't one.
I think (even more so for FTB, but to some extent for all of us) you can look at the floorplan, you can drive by the property, you can look on google maps, you can inspect all the photos that are available, but sometimes you walk into a house and just 'know'. That can work both ways - you 'know' it "is the one" or you know it really isn't the one, and sometimes you get very different feelings even though you are looking at 3 or 4 very similar houses, on paper.

People will look at things that don't necessarily meet their criteria, to try to be open minded, and it just sometimes turns out that it isn't the one / they don't want to take on that much work / the parking is a nightmare / the garden is smaller than it looked on the photos / or anyone of 100 reasons it doesn't feel right. It doesn't mean there is anything wrong with your home, it just means it isn't the right one for that potential buyer, at that time.

Don’t be disheartened by the feedback you have received.
Viewers make all sorts of off the cuff remarks when questioned by the estate agent.
They have to say something to justify themselves not making an offer.
If your house is realistically priced then it will sell.
I would not spend more money just tweaking things- a buyer is going to update things and your price should reflect that. It sounds like yours already does.

Have you instructed your estate agent to only allow viewings to buyers who are in a position to proceed? This will stop you getting any time wasters.

It’s not a pleasant experience to have viewers picking over one’s well loved home, you have my sympathy.

My personal opinion is a free hold bungalow is a safer bet than a flat.

It avoids service charges and my other horror, residents committees.

I hope all goes well with forthcoming viewings.
Good luck!

You will sell, but it will be to someone who isn’t scared of building work. There are fewer of those, especially at first time buyer level - FTB tend to look at properties priced for their max budget and so have nothing left to spend on work. But there are some out there.

As a PP said, December isn’t a great time for viewings, things are likely to pick up a lot in the new year.

What other things has your place got going for it - location, room sizes, light, outside space? A good agent ought to be focusing on those rather than just cosmetic condition.

Good luck!

Exactly. Your buyers will probably want to replace the entire kitchen, the new one will have concealed power outlets, and the one they're moving into is perfectly serviceable if they need to save up for a year or two.

Reasonable buyers will see all this, and your agent's said you're priced at the right level for this kind of buyer.

I'm sorry you've been upset by the feedback. Honestly, don't worry about it. Enjoy your last Christmas in your well-loved home.

The Mail Online put up desirable homes for sale in Slough.
Have a look at the tumble drier siting in the St George's Crescent one.
I'm sure there isn't such a blunder in your kitchen.
Slough a 'great place to live' argues estate agent after it was named most miserable spot - here's four homes for sale | Daily Mail Online

None of it is personal, it is all a very stressful game on both sides. Prospective buyers will often make 'comments' to negotiate a price down or see where it lands. Real estates can over promise and some people just come to look and get a feel.

At the end of the day it comes down to price. Lots of older houses that need lots of work are bought and sold, ( not saying yours is, just as a fact) it comes down to price, location and the market at the time. It really is all the most stressful period for many people, spending the most money they will ever spend, so lots of poker faces, lots of comments that may or may not be true and negotiations behind the scenes with banks, families and potentially the sale of their own place at the same time. Your wonderful memories of this house will always be there for you, but now, it is a place for sale, which is something totally different and will be somone elses to do something totally new to it.

Have a look at the tumble drier siting in the St George's Crescent one.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

"Ideal for purchasers with very thin arms, who don't do much washing".

Thank you for this. Location is good for schools, it's a good area to live in (and a very nice road, with houses much more opulent than mine - I'm in the cheaper part!), a good sized & very well maintained garden, off road parking, and the whole house is immaculate & clean. We never had children, so the place has not seen a lot of wear & tear. It's just a bit dated, and clearly has signs that my husband did a lot of the work himself, from what's been said. Although when I say dated, it certainly doesn't scream a particular era, for example the kitchen is all white with a blue laminated worktop...perhaps the blue surface does remind some people / indicate to others that it's been in a while, although the cupboard doors are gloss white, which I thought was in fashion how, at least the gloss finish if not white.

Also the walls all through the house are what we used to call Anaglypta, and have been painted over and over again over the decades, although I confess all of that was put up within the first few years of moving in. I had everywhere repainted in 2021 - woodwork and walls, it's the same in every room, white paintwork and ceilings, with very pale cream walls. I'm very conservative with decor, I'm afraid.

We bought our house as a project, it was covered in anaglypta, artex we uncovered lots and lots of DIY some of which just wasn't safe, (20ft crazy paving shelf thing with mahogany stained top that was just glued to the floor anyone?) , but we were limited by budget, the house had good bones and we were willing to take time to have it all done. We moved in seven years ago and we're just about to have the kitchen replaced, the rest is finally done (we were delayed by an unexpected baby and mat leave). Over the years we've found and restored the original Edwardian floorboards, had the fireplaces restored, found the original solid wood Edwardian doors under 70s faux wood laminate pinned on! (Surveyor tipped us off with that one). The house is in a lovely area, the schools are good and our garden is over 100ft. It's been a slog but worth it.

If we move I won't be buying a project again. Every time we've started a job we've uncovered so many issues and to be honest if I saw signs of dated DIY I'd be put off, but my budget and income is bigger now so my expectations are higher. You will find first time buyers or like we were first time buyers together (I'd owned a flat before) , who are willing to give it a go and their budget necessitates work if they want to be in your area.

We have owned a few houses which turned out to need more work than we anticipated. I would rather know upfront that rewiring etc was needed and I think anyone buying your home will see that things need updating, although it has been well cared for. If it is sensibly priced, in a good area, I'm sure it will sell but probably not until the new year. Hopefully you have a good agent, to take stress off you.

It's interesting that @BreatheAndFocus and @JingleB have more or less said the same thing here - fact is, if a flex to an appliance passes up through a hole in the back of a worktop and the plug connected to the end of it for plugging in at counter height (and I have seen this countless times over the years - not "standard" by any means, but for me it's been a common sight), this does not actually constitute "wiring" as is, rather to me it says that someone did not wish to interfere with the wiring by moving or extending a socket, so they found a way of running the flex to the socket as safely as possible.

When I was growing up in the 1980s in a working class but home-owner area (and I say that for context and not for snob value), I remember the kitchens of that of my parents and other children I visited having a very limited number of wall and base units, hardly any sockets, and often appliances such as fridges and cooker stood alone, almost like a piece of furniture, with no worktop above. As such, there was no issue with flexes as they just ran to the nearest socket. I can remember in my aunts kitchen that the flex to her new automatic washing machine (which was under a worktop) was coiled up and stored in the gap between the top of the machine and the underside of the worktop; when she wanted to use the washing machine, she just pulled the flex out and plugged it in to the socket above - funnily enough, I can still hear her bitching to my mum about the fact that my uncle had never drilled a hole in the worktop to push the flex through permanently.

But aside from this, about ten years ago I bought a flat, built in the early 60s. I knew from the inspection I'd had done that it was going to need a rewire, as rubber cables had been detected throughout. What I didn't expect to find was that the kitchen (which had been professionally fitted only a few years earlier) had sockets both above and below the worktop joined on to the existing wiring in the most appalling fashion. As I say, I was expecting to have it rewired, but I couldn't believe what the sparky showed me - cables with joins covered in tape behind the units, and those plastered in the walls run diagonally, the list went on. At least if you can see a flex above a worktop going to the socket, there's a good chance it's because the DIYer who did it was not wanting to touch electrics !

Viewers do say some rubbish in their feedback so it’s best not to take it too personally.

The real reason your house is not selling is that it is a bad time of year to sell and the decor is dated. People will be costing in a new kitchen and possibly other rooms like bathroom. They will be costing in removing that wallpaper which is no longer fashionable. The house needs to be priced competitively to reflect those things.

As you’re in no immediate hurry to move, you would have been better advised by the EA to not list it until the Spring. I would think about removing it from the market and relisting it in March, say. In the meantime keep a keep eye yourself in what is selling in your local area and what those properties are listed at. Look at Rightmove for this information. You may need to reduce the price to compete with properties that are the same size as yours but have newer kitchens and decor.

My parents's home is covered in woodchip wallpaper, painted over five times since the 1970s. My parents have left the major projects to professionals, but there's still a few DIY horrors that frighten me, but they say it's fine, love. They are the generation who learned how to rewire a plug or do their own carpentry & not "get someone in" because they kearned basic skills at school. I can paint a wall but that's about it! Times change! The woodchip gives me nightmares, though

I am trying to sell my flat and omg, there's so many unserious people who aren't actually interested in buying. Or they make an appointment, I make the effort to clean up, only for the EA to call an hour before, saying "I'm sorry, they've cancelled". So annoying.

There are some things I haven't bothered to correct because I can't be arsed now, I just need to move asap, and the price reflects that. However, buyers make such daft excuses. One said the block was the wrong way round. Another said it's too far from the shops (a mere 10 minute walk). Yet another said it was too dark despite my huge flipping windows. I ignore it now.

What FTB are after is not a fixer-upper lije mine or yours OP, they want everything to work and it to look nice ready to move in with no hassle. I bought my flat off plan and had to do a lot to make it habitable, but the kids don't want that. Don't lose heart, the right buyer is out there somewhere.

It's nothing personal and it is still sellable house so don't worry.

As some pps my family had house by avid DIY and... We still wander why there were certain items in the wall. Like as a part of wall like brick and mortar... My own first house had so many small but very annoying DIY issues.
It can make some people qorry what they will find once they go deeper in, but some people will be absolutely fine with it if the house is right.

Good luck!

@Downsizingandmovingon firstly I’m so sorry for your loss. I can’t begin to imagine how hard it is to lose your husband of so many years and then be faced with moving house. My mother is in the same boat, but admittedly not interested in downsizing yet.

A few questions from me (that we go through in our family)…

1. do you need to downsize? It doesn’t sound massive, could you alter the downstairs to make it accessible as you get older?
2. it is going to hit hard hearing feedback about your beloved family home. None of this feedback is personal, imagine you were supporting a young relative looking at houses and think whether you would have similar concerns. It’s the biggest purchase most of us will ever make and we want to get the best value for money.
3. as above, houses are expensive so might not sell instantly. Unfortunately estate agents can be a bit smarmy and make the process challenging. Can you take a step back from hearing the feedback until you have interested buyers?

sending you lots of love 💐

Try not to take it personally. Most young people don't have the diy skills your husband did, and many of them would be put off by diy things that wouldn't bother my husband and I if we went to look at a property.
It all comes down to money, someone will make you an offer eventually.

I'm sorry this is stressing you out, OP - selling is a horrible process.

Your house will sell, I'm sure, it just needs the right audience. Not every property is for every person and despite being advertised as in need of some upgrading there will be people who come to view it who won't have understood what that means in practice.

Having bought and lived in a house where a previous owner did a lot of major DIY with ambition but not necessarily a huge amount of skill, it did end up costing us a lot of additional money whenever things needed fixed or replaced because the methods he had used weren't always conventional. I remember when we tried to get three of our upstairs doors replaced - carpenter said it would be a one day job but it turned into three days of him sweating and swearing because nothing was level and he couldn't figure out how the original owner had got the door in. When the person we sold that house to had their electrical survey done (something we naively had skipped), there were two issues which were picked up which the electrician fixed for us without charge before he left because they were so dangerous that morally he didn't feel he could leave without resolving!

But none of this is insurmountable (and I'm not suggesting that anything your husband did was as bad as our previous owner) - your house just needs to be priced correctly and marketed to the right audience.