Please tell me why this flat isnt selling?

[curiouscat1987]

Posting this for a family member. Flat has been on the market for months and not only hasnt had any offers but hasnt even had a single viewing! The price was in line with the area, but has been dropped twice and agent changed too with new photos but still no viewings. Its a lovely little place, not the biggest but lovely and bright and quite modern. Im not the best at design etc so would appreciate any thoughts on what they could do to improve the desireability or improve for the photos etc to get some more interest?

Obviously they know they can drop the price, however if they drop it much more they'll be selling for what they bought for 10 years ago!

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/156450941#/?channel=RES_BUY

Thanks everyone ☺️

The photos seem very amateur. They are overemphasizing the sloping roof. It's putting people off viewing.

Show less of it to get people through the door and let then make up their own mind when they get there.

While being described by the agent as 'a chef's dream'

The marketing isn't doing this property any favours at all. The outside of the house is right there if you open street view on the map, but as others have said, you'd anticipate it was way up in a modern high rise block. It looks very small and while there's nothing wrong with it, nothing in the photos is particularly enticing.

One thing that's odd is no property sale history and yet others nearby go back to 1996 and 1998.

The photo of the second bedroom is of just a corner with a radiator ?

The headroom looks dodgy.
I'd be concerned about banging my head getting out of the bath.

It looks pokey.

I can't compare it with other flats as there aren't many the same size in that block/road that have sold.

Flats were over-built / over converted during the property boom and inflated in value by developers and artificially low interest rates and buy to let, then overseas investment and Help to Buy.

Now that interest rates are returning to more normal values, mortgages are more difficult to afford for people in their 20s/30s, salaries have stagnated or even declined for those age groups, and the buy to let market has started to collapse. So the buyers for flats at high prices just aren’t there any more. Buy to let kept prices artificially higher than underlying fundamentals would suggest. Now that market is collapsing, the number of young buyers who can afford current prices on their incomes is very few, and prices are likely to decline further.

OP — It isn’t a flat that is suitable for downsizing boomers, either, due to size/top floor, so think about who the likely buyers would be and whether they would be able to pay that price for that specific flat. When you think that a FTB couple buying this would need a joint income of approx. 100k a year between them, how many buyers like that are around, and is this the property they would want/need? And if you want to bag some rare young couple who would like to live in that flat in that area and have the household income to afford it, you need to stage it not in bland grey (ten years out of date), but with lots of plants, rattan, round mirrors, cheesecloth curtains and the like, to get that Gen Z/young Millennial vibe.

Oh for goodness sake. I've just seen the brochure. Your EA has made a pigs ear out of this. The photo showing the kitchen and outside the property should be in the online listing.

It's the price.

In Photo 2 is the flat the one at the back of the building with the lamp post outside- and the more modern grey front door /windows?

It's been added on to an existing property as an extension?

Like pp I assumed it was in an ugly high rise (no outside pics always a red flag) until I clicked through to the brochure. Most people wouldn't bother. It's a quirky attic conversion in an attractive Edwardian house, so they should have shown the frontage in the listing. Time to change agents?

I wouldn't buy it purely because I'm the only person in my family (and extended family) under 6 feet tall...

No enough info, very poor pictures- can’t get sense of the rooms, and it looks like you have to crawl round most of it (I’m sure this isn’t the case but it’s the impression given) Can you get another change of agent/photos?

Maybe potential buyers are viewing this one instead?

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/157777811#/?channel=RES_BUY

You'd have to view it to know where it was in that building.

Is it at the front or the back?
Is it the flat roofed extension?

Everything already mentioned but also the EE rate is only just in the D range so no Landlords looking at new rulings will be interested. The insulation is clearly to a shocking standard for a modern looking flat

The sloping kitchen and bathroom ceilings would put me off. I don't want to be constantly stooping or banging my head. No outside space on the picture's as well. Would be a bit of a trek to put the rubbish out.

I'd not trust the estate agent at all, given the hyperbole in the description - I know they are always going to use dramatic vocabulary, but honestly, describing the kitchen as a "chef's dream" with "plenty of space to whip up delicious meals" or an "equally impressive bathroom" where there isn't even room to stand up in a shower?! Photos of empty corners rather than the proper second bedroom, and no sense of how it all hangs together. It could be fine. I quite like flats, and you can do a lot with small flats - I live in one, and there's no way I could afford a house ever, so there is still a market. But this needs to be shown to better advantage. And the estate agent needs to be a bit more realistic with the descriptions, or no-one will believe anything they say.

A share of the freehold is recognised as the best when buying a flat. It's very very rare to find a flat being sold on a freehold basis. Even if you did find one, it would come with it's own set of potential problems due to it being freehold.

Terrible photos (why 3/8 of roofs??); weird, unattractive diagonal windows; sloped ceilings.

Family member needs to remove crap like random loaf of bread out of the kitchen, make the bed properly and get photos retaken from a better angle. That might at least get people in the door.

It's the entire roof, so front and back. The sloped part and the flat roof bit.

Photos of the view make it seem like it's a tower block and very high up. Combine this with the new looking window frames...

Show a picture of the outside of the property like in the brochure.

Omg wasnt expecting the thread to take off quite so much!

Thanks so much everyone for your thoughts, some really useful points here for them. I cant respond to everyone individually, but heres a few answers:

• its in a victorian converted house, not a purpose built high rise. Agree it definitely needs a photo to make that clear from the front!

• agree the photos make the sloping ceilings look far worse than they are, and dont give a good sense of the layout, e.g. dont make clear the kitchen and living room are open plan

• its share of freehold (was purchased whilst theyve owned it), so the price is inline with other equivalent flats that are also share of freehold rather than leasehold.

• agree also that stuff looks rather grey and needs a bit more colour

It looks like you can't stand up in half the house. Half the kitchen work surfaces are unusable and there's limited space for storage. It's massively over priced considering you can't make use of the entire floor space. The pictures need to be minimising this issue to get people through the door, not focusing on it.

Only 8 photos, 3 of which aren't of the flat. I would want to see the rooms from all angles, preferably giving a perspective of the entire room, and to know how many floors up the "top floor" is, whether there is lift access etc. You can't tell whether bedroom 2 is big enough for a double bed.

Looking at other listings, you can get similar size or larger flats closer to the sea in Brighton so if they want this price they really need to tell people why this property is worth it. At the moment it isn't even clear what you are getting.

Parking? Outdoor space? Ground rent? Communal access? Outside Photo of front? Photo of back? How many floors? What do the access stairs look like - carpet/vinyl/wood/steel...how many turns etc.
Too many unanswered questions, I'd scroll on past.

Having lived in the area for some years - now moved away - they spent way too much on that when they bought it. They paid way over the odds.