Help! House on market, little progress, feedback needed!

[IcyCoralMaker]

So, my house by the sea has been on market for 4 weeks, had 3 viewings, no offers.
The house was built December 2024 and I'm selling to move into a detached house, closer to my family.
House has been reduced by £5k to bring it down to the search point on Rightmove and to attract first time buyers.
I think the photos are good and agent says they'll continue to push it but when asked how they were doing that, they didn't answer my question.
Any suggestions on what I can do to attract more views?
Thanks 👍

@CanadianJohn haha my Canadian husband would agree with you but he's got used to it over the years.

In the copy of the plan I found, the room is labelled as a study - which I’d take to mean can be a small nursery, toddler room or dressing room (we well as a study) They listed the house as a 2 bed with a study.

The builders have more recently listed it as a 3 bedroom house (not sure if it was described that way when the OP bought hers) and it’s a time waster for those viewing 3 bedroom homes she other homes priced like this one, in this area, are 3 full sized bedrooms. Houses with 2.5 bedrooms are listed more like £130K max, but all houses seem to be £20-30K down so I think she should speak to her EA and potentially stay put for longer if she can

Sometimes the “study” description is a planning limitation. We had some in the village that were 2 bed plus study but actually they were bigger than some 3 beds. But they were refused planning for 3 beds initially as the local plan didn’t have an identified need, but they did for 2 beds. So they were resubmitted as 2 bed plus study with a few feet lopped off and got approved.

You can use the 3rd room however you like, they don’t police it.

You would think so, but some buyers seem unable to imagine the layout differently. We put a small bed into our study when selling after viewers said they loved the house but needed 3 bedrooms. There was. plenty of room for the bed without even rearranging the existing furniture. It could help here, even a camp bed with a nice duvet on and a stool for a bedside table.

Oh dear 😂

Ask yourself @BigFatBully have you ever seen a property listing photo with the vendor having an orchestrated party out in the garden

this is toe curling!!

But surely you can see that your opinion is not just the minority… but - no estate agent in the Uk as far as I am aware has ever listed a property including the vendor having a party in one of the photos.

can you maybe point us in the direction of you ever having seen this before

or…

Are you saying that you’re putting out a radical hitherto unthought of new marketing strategy that the likes of Savilles, Hampton, Foxtons etc have never thought of before?

A garden party, surely you need a marquee for that and it wouldn't fit.

I do not want to see a load of people in the garden obscuring the view of what’s there. Seems every single estate agent in the country agrees as I have never seen this on a listing and browsing rightmove is practically a hobby for me.

At the end of the day- you can tidy up, fix a cupboard door, move your tv etc - won’t make any difference. It’s the price and age of property as explained by several posters in the thread.

The thing that stands out for me is the safety hazard the rug on the landing is causing. Elderly people, especially those with dementia, will shuffle their feet rather than lift them, this will make the rug move and cause your mum to fall down the stairs.

You don’t need a marquee

but quite honestly that is the least shit feature of this idea!

This is why houses should price and sell per sq m like elsewhere and not per "bedroom" . 🙈
The smallest ones alao shrunk during years. 1.86 width for bedroom is just... Ridiculous.

But not OP's fault or anything she can change. So just push forward with changing smaller things like showing lack of storage and lowering price a bit.

Huh?

Primary driving factor for a property value is… location

Well, yes but then also number of bedrooms rather than sqm. That's why you can often encounter tiny 3 bed priced like bigger 3bed. Many ads still don't even mention total sqm.
Which is kind of illogical. When buying a house, one is buying space, but most ads don't even say what size the space is.
And because 3 bed will sell for more than 2 bed, the developers (and sometimes people refurbishing) stuff in tiny rooms just so it can advertised as 3 bed. Or people change downstairs dining room into bedroom on floor plans (saw some great jokes like that lately). So 3 becomes 4. Boom, extra 15k+ on price tag compared to next property on a same street who is still advertising it as dining room and 3 bed.

Sqm is just simpler imho

Number of bedrooms is way below location in terms of driving pricing.

and certainly most of the listings I view include the total sq footage at the bottom of the floor plan

Be creative - invite friends over to replicate what a garden party may look like, but be sure to give a sense of the space available.

This is the funniest suggestion I've seen on a house selling post online EVER 🤣
"Business Diploma with a strong focus on marketing" 🌺

It’s the funniest suggestion I have ever seen, on any issue ever!!

Well yes. Logically I am not talking about comparing property walking distance from train station in nice area to a property 5 miles away in high crime rate area.... Same area comparisons. Bedrooms (even what really can't be used as bedroom because single bed would mean not being able to close the door or opening directly into the kitchen because it is actually a dining room) add to price tag even if it's same sqm as another on the same street.

Surprising number of agents still don't advertise with floor plans too. At least in my area. I even sent put requests to some for it. "sorry. Not available at this time". Sqm should basic information though right there in particulars.

So they don’t even include the Sq footage of each room on the floor plan?

what would put me off would be the gap between the bed and the wardrobe.Many years ago we had a static caravan with a tiny gap and it was really hard to make the beds etc.

Many floorplans are just rooms with no measurements. Yes I could count out approximate from list of rooms (which is sometimes also lacking) sometimes but coonsidering how they measure and how many areas are not measured. Would be waste of time.

My point was that it would most likely be better if houses were priced per sqm rathen than per number of bedrooms. That would prevent pricing up for "bedrooms" which are really not functional bedrooms.

Most include at least the square footage per room, if not the total (and very easy to calculate if not!)

and indeed… this one does

My point was that it would most likely be better if houses were priced per sqm rathen than per number of bedrooms.

property values aren’t priced according to one or the other
they are priced according to a wide variety of considerations, location, condition, size, bedroom number, size of garden… I could go on

Sqm basic pricing vs # of "bedrooms" . Just obviously am not putting every single disclaimer like that obvious final price is afected by the state of the house etc. I am also not going to be proving that many, many, many listings don't include sqm, floor plans etc. Yes, this one does. Point was that because bedrooms are the main driver, developers and sellers mark rooms which shouldn't be marked as that, as bedrooms to up prices.

Lets agree to disagree otherwise we will go for another week.

Sorry but I find this a rather confusing post!

in any event, EAs don’t base their pricing on number of bedrooms to the exclusion of all else.

anyway, yes… let’s!