House what should we do to sell

[Vs123]

Hi,

We want to sell our house. We have been there 15 years and the house has lots of good memories. We now want to sell it but not getting a lot of traction. The houses in the neighbourhood have sold for similar price or more. Any suggestions of where is it We are missing the trick here?

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/159203675

Thanks
Vanya

In my previous post I mentioned that the 4th and 5th bedrooms were the same size. I was looking at the second EA details. Are the room sizes correct op? Also what would look nice is your garden furniture and umbrella out instead of underneath the covers. The leaves unswept immediately say troublesome trees. New photos definitely needed! Someone said that it would be costly to remove the artificial turf, don’t you just roll it up and advertise on Freecycle?

Regarding pp linking to a new build for the same price, I wouldn’t even look at it! Semi-detached, no garage, three floors (meaning no loft). It seems that lots of bathrooms are the attraction these days at the expense of family living. Just my opinion though.

What is the EPC rating?

The bathroom looks hideous. You should clean it deeply and re-grout.

The astro turf in the garden is off-putting also.

Drop the price.

Someone said that it would be costly to remove the artificial turf, don’t you just roll it up and advertise on Freecycle?

That would deal with the ‘turf’ but my understanding is that it is laid on a bed of sand that has to be removed before you can re-turf?

Gosh you’re brave op! It isn’t as bad as some people are making out, some right states are listed and this isn’t one of those!
I do think the garden could be staged better than it is currently though, get the furniture out, sweep etc

@Vs123 I do feel for you, as we all find feedback when selling our home can be stressful, and opening the listing up to a bunch of anonymous strangers isn't easy.

Better photos will do a lot for the house. Looking at a few Maidenhead listing, I'm not hugely impressed by the photo skills of your agent population! But you know the area well - do a really honest price comparison with other recent sales and current offerings, and see if you think location/decor/layout all stands up to the price? I've seen people on here offer up local houses and say 'this is so much nicer and cheaper' and I know for a fact that it's in a poor school catchment for example, and that stuff isn't always apparent to internet randoms.

People who haven't had to get any work done for a while also tend to underestimate the cost of getting anything done now. Labour and material costs are through the roof. A standard bathroom installation can easily be £15-20k for example. So bearing in mind many people will want to refresh your bathroom and kitchen, as that's something people tend to be thinking of doing when they buy, they'll be mentally deducting 40-50k for that immediately.

That 780k house is horrible compared to op’s. Yes, the inside is ‘done’ in a current way, but the house is practically on the road and is a corner plot (noisy, less secure) and the surrounding houses are unattractive and sterile. All things that can’t be changed.

Interesting, I like the bathroom and would be simple to clean/cover grout. As far as the kitchen goes, really don't believe anyone who says there is clutter. Blank sanitised spaces are turn off to buyers. They want to see how to live there

The beams in the kitchen would need to go.

Kitchen is too small and galley-like for a 5 bed. I’d probably want to knock through to at least two of the reception rooms to make a large kitchen diner.

One bathroom upstairs is not enough for a five bed.

The back garden needs a tidy up but is a fantastic size and doesn’t seem to be overlooked so I would do some work in the garden and make it appeal to people looking for a large garden. Remove the trampoline and put some greenery/ flowers.

I’d be tempted to take it off the market for a few weeks, spruce the house and garden up a bit. Declutter the kitchen counters of all the red, paint the beams. Deep clean and paint the bathroom and then relist it at €780k or so and see what happens

Just a general observation that the market in the SE is quite flat at the moment and in some areas prices are falling, so you may have to have a rethink on price if you want to sell quickly.

It's a massive amount of space for the money, OP, so much so that I get the feeling it may have been over-extended. There are too many reception areas without a clear purpose (see the photo of the piano room), few or none of them with attractive views and some with odd internal windows that give the impression that the expansion has been poorly planned.

Above all there's only a small, unrenovated kitchen at the centre of the house without direct natural light and only a view of a fence in the distance. For many large families the kitchen/ family room is the heart of the home and somewhere people hang out together, but if someone wants that kind of kitchen they're going to have to create it in one of the under-used rooms and it will cost serious money.

Artex on the ceilings upstairs and one quite basic bathroom and no en suite... It doesn't add up to what most people are looking for in a larger family house at the moment. Add in the fact that it's right by the M40 and is really only 4 bedrooms and a dressing room and I imagine people are thinking it would cost them another £100k to create the house they'd really like if only it wasn't quite so close to a motorway.

There was a property in your road that sold for over a million last year, before prices dropped,

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/details/england-146076098-22111657?s=a1b53f24e63622e4021228b2be1327b7e9d7622f7e5bbaf1dba061917b2e8a5c

and has only four bedrooms, but it has the large kitchen/dining/ family room that a lot of people are looking for, a layout that makes sense to those looking at the floorpan and three bathrooms. You can see it's had serious money spent on it recently and I'm afraid you can't see that in your house. A lot of people want to buy a finished property and don't want the hassle of having to renovate. They're prepared to pay a premium for being able to move in to an 'ideal' home.

There is not a single house I can see in that area worth the money they are up for!! It’s not even like you’re on commuter doorstep! Agree with the PP that said the estate agents are rubbish at taking pictures!

Agree with others, the floor plan is confusing - presumably you can access the kitchen from inside the house. I don’t like the footprint - nothing flows. I would be looking to do extensive remodelling. This alone would put me off.

kitchen layout is odd. It looks more like a corridor or that it was once a utility room and you’ve knocked down a wall. It doesn’t flow and personally I’d prefer a proper kitchen and a separate laundry/utility room. The floor tiles look grubby - but that could just be the photos. Surfaces are cluttered which makes me think there isn’t much storage space.

the bathroom - looks grubby/moldy, it would be something I’d be looking to replace quickly (much like the kitchen).

there is no en-suite - that would put me off as would a downstairs bathroom/shower room. I don’t want wet/damp people traipsing through the house. There don’t appear to be any pictures of the downstairs bathroom - this would make me wonder what is wrong with it.

bedrooms are all quite small (appreciate you can’t do anything about that), but I think you could present them better, eg take the wall hanging a down in the room with the fitted wardrobes, remove that bracket from the wall above the desk in the bedroom with the lilac bedding.

fitted wardrobes - these would put me off - they are dated and often hide damp. It would be another room that would need renovations.

garden -looks well-used. It needs a complete overhaul which is more time and cost. The climber n the front would be an area of concern -is it permeating/damaging bricks? I’d be concerned of damage when cutting it back.

I think your agent isn’t very good. The photos and floor plan put me off and in all honesty, I’d just skip past your house and not even consider a viewing.

suggest a tidy up/declutter inside and out and get a cleaning company in to give it a good clean and a gardening company to cut back that creeper and tidy/spruce up the back garden. Sack your estate agent and get one who knows how to take photos to market a house.

I think there’s a few quite difficult to change things that would put me right off, OP, sorry. The kitchen is small for a house of this size. The astroturf would be a pain to remove and doesn’t look good even for astroturf, you can see all the joins and there’s weeds coming through. And the spotlights all through the house would be a no-no for me. It would cost a fortune to do the work I’d want to do, so there’s no way I’d be paying what you’re asking.

I've seen this agent in another guise in another area, and now, whenever I see those three coloured dots, I expect to see overpricing. They're part of a group who were overpricing so badly in 2023 that I did a legit shout at my screen. It's difficult to price after stamp duty changes, no doubt - but their Yorkshire colleagues were doing it two years ago.

Anyway, looking at that EA's performance (not the one on the second link), filtered by asking price of 700-900k, I see:

1.2 mil > 900
975>900 sold
770>750
775>725

And a few other 20-30k drops. Out of 14.

Do yourself a favour OP, install Property Log.

From GetAgent:

40 Heynes Green
Sold 8 mo. ago
91%
of original asking price (£775,000)

11 Portlock Road
Sold 1 year ago
91%
of original asking price (£700,000)

What's that massive plot of land on the other side of the motorway/main road that looks like it might be connected to electricity? Is that putting people off?

Otherwise, I echo other comments: poor flow (enter kitchen thru lounge only? no direct access from front door?), needs a better kitchen and better garden for that price bracket, and the extension rooms at the back feel awkward.

I'd also echo the comment re: having seen two previous Zoopla 'on the market' listings for an awful lot more money in the last 3 years, I'd categorise you as window shopping for a buyer if you can get the right price. However, your 30k drop is an encouraging sign; if you'd only dropped it by 10k I would write you off forever. So, if you NEED to move, and you decide another drop is necessary after you've absorbed the comments in this thread, I'd encourage you to do another really large drop to show sellers you're deadly serious this time.

Best of luck.

Terrible pictures, bad angles, unflattering, dark corners, you don't get a visual sense of the plan.

This ^ (the part about the garden)

I never understand people who don't have any colour by way of plants in their garden. It's just so soulless and - what with the awful plastic grass - makes potential buyers think they'll have to spend loads on the garden alone! Even if you're not gardeners, I can't imagine living somewhere for that length of time with a garden like that.

Internally, I agree it's very dated/tired, plus the rooms - whilst there's quite a few - aren't terribly large or are long/narrow. The layout is weird, although I'm all for quirky and could make it work with the judicious addition of an RSJ or two! I also don't mind the kitchen ceiling beams, but the artex needs skimming/overboarding, which will deter some people as they'll automatically think asbestos. We inherited some artex ceilings in our Grade 2 listed Georgian cottage and I absolutely hate them!

Buyers for a house of that size definitely expect an extra bathroom or two. If I was buying I'd plan to convert bed 5 into a bath/shower room. We've sold a smaller (1600 sq ft) and larger (3500 square ft) house with 5/6 beds and both had more bathrooms.

Overall, the photos are rubbish and need to be redone, preferably not showing the astroturf joins/manky bathroom grout!

I'm not familiar with prices in Maidenhead, but from a quick RM search, your price seems high for the amount of modernising required. If you want it sold I'd drop to £700k or thereabouts. It's always the price.

And the garden is very small and badly maintained. Well, not maintained at all, really.

I agree that the photos from the second agent are better than the first.

I think people looking for a five bed house at that price will be looking for a large kitchen/diner, at least one en suite as well as the bathroom and a better lay out. There is the space to configure it into something much better, but that’s going to be expensive and if you were spending 800K you probably wouldn’t want to spend more.

I agree that it needs a good clean, tidy and spruce up, inside and out.

Its a 4 bed, the one you seemingly deliberately haven't shown in photos clearly is not a bedroom as theres no where to put a bed.

Why is the kitchen only accessible from out side, I assume you have missed off a doorway but the more I look the more I think its weird enough to only have an external entry.

It looks like a fire escape nightmare which makes me seriously wonder about the planning permissions.

I would echo what others have said but also add that most of the nearby schools are ‘requires improvement’. Nothing you can do about that but it’s something else that would put people off when looking for a family sized home.

Too expensive for what it is 🤷🏻‍♀️

Loads of good, constructive advice here. I've skimmed through but didn't see any mention of carpets. No carpets in the bedrooms put me off. Even if you can stage it with some nice rugs, it gives a warmer feel.

The second link was better re images and naming the rooms downstairs. Upstairs, the lack of an ensuite is a big one. That 5th bedroom is not really a bedroom - why not call it a large walk-in wardrobe? And flag opportunity of turning Bed 4 into an ensuite.

Good luck!

800000 omg. Lower the price.
Is it all thoroughly clean and tidy at viewing.
Check for smells.
I don't know anyone who could afford that for a house.

As others have said, ultimately it looks like it needs updating and "modernising" in terms of how people live their lives nowadays.

I can see a door into the kitchen from the living room, so the floorplan is definitely wrong, but the kitchen doesn't look a space that's easy to socialise in. There is enough room for a breakfast table, but to make it the open plan space that many people like nowadays (your nearest competitor size and price wise - https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/161409704#/media?activePlan=1&id=media3&channel=RES_BUY) will mean some substantial work. The wall where your kitchen currently ends is the original outside wall, so will require some substantial metalwork to be installed to open it into the rear reception rooms, which is what I would want to do. Realistically that job alone, together with a new kitchen, flooring, plumbing, etc, is probably going to cost someone £50k.

I agree that it's unusual for a property of this size to have only one bathroom upstairs, but it looks like there might be a downstairs shower room also? Not ideal to be on a different level though. If I were doing the property up, I'd look to turn it back into a four bedroom property, make the bathroom at the front an en-suite to the master bedroom and turn the dressing room bedroom into another bathroom.

I agree with PP that the front extension to the property looks odd on the floorplan too. I don't see any benefit to the extension having been done as the original external walls haven't been changed. Again, to finish the job off and extend the reception room into the forward extension could be a costly exercise with lintels, etc. Even then, it will create a main reception room that's 8.44m long and 3.8m wide, which is almost too big a room. In

I'm sorry if you were the people that added the extensions, but I don't think they're helping you now. It's also limiting how much extra space a buyer can add to the property, with limitations on how much land extensions can take up.

I've taken a screenshot of the floorplan and deleted and added walls to give an initial idea of what I'd do internally to the ground floor, with the exception of adding a separate utility room, which would be beneficial. It's a lot of walls down though and results in some exceptionally large spaces.

It's not letting me add the screenshot at the moment so I'll follow up in a separate post.

Kitchen - put mugs in cupboard. Remove clutter stuck to fridge. Clear top of fridge.
Remove most of the plants, especially the one wrapping around the curtain rail.
Put the weird wooden dining set into storage, please with a cheap but simple modern set - same with the seating area attached to the dining room - replace the rug here with something less busy as well.
In bedroom (pic 7/14), wall paper is too busy - paint wall light grey. Same again for bedroom 10/14.
Bathroom - clean/redo grout to floor Remove and replace mouldy silicone around bath. Clean ceiling.
Replace Astro turf with real grass. Sweep up leave, put trampoline and swing into storage. Remove other clutter (garden tools etc). Buy a small shed and place in back right corner.
Weed front drive. Cut back trees encroaching on windows. Remove foliage growing up right hand side of house. Mow the lawn. Outside, the house just seem generally uncared for.