Am I just impatient?

[Mumslot]

My house has been on the market for just over 3 weeks.
First 2 weeks at £150k as recommended - 2 viewings, 1 of which was in the process of viewing around 20 houses. Other gave feedback of kitchen too small.
Just over a week now at £145k - 1 viewing - In and out in 4 minutes. Family of 5 said it was way too small. Saw another house from same EA before us, so I'm presuming they were pushed in to viewing it.
No feedback given of anything we could change.
I'm now tempted to drop to £140k as we have seen the house we definitely want! But is it too soon? Or does the lack of interest show the price is too high?
The only similar build house around this area sold in the last 12 months went for 145k and was of a similar quality.
Any help would be appreciated 😁

I don't know the area, wish a house was that cheap where I live so to me it seems good value! I would say 2 weeks and then price drop is quite soon to have done that so I would hold out a bit longer to do it agsin. Presumably the EA is a decent one, sold other houses in the area etc. I would always ask their advice first.

I don't know the market where you are but here so many houses are reducing because the buyers just aren't there.

You’re not getting much interest @Mumslot but I don’t think it looks good to keep reducing the price by such small increments.

Ideally you would have reduced from150k to 140k in one stage.

I think I would leave it where it is price -wise now for a bit longer but ask the EA to let potential buyers know that you are open to offers.

£145 for that, 3 bed and with a garden, gosh that’s good I’d buy 3 of them, but you would only get a garage for that price where I am so seems good value for money to me personally. I imagine for your area the price is maybe not so good, especially as you haven’t had a flood of viewings.

As you’ve seen a house you like I get why you want to drop the price, I wouldn’t do that though without viewing the other house and having an offer accepted.

From the photos, it is puzzling why the sofa bed in the top room is set up (and looks to be too big for the room) when there appears to be another room with just a desk in it. Is that used as a bedroom? Why was the sofa bed not put back as a sofa for the photos?

Does your dining table fit in the kitchen?

The position of furniture suggests there is not enough space (which might not be the case) and so some people might be put off viewing in person.

@OtiMama Yeah EA is very well established and rated in the area. They just keep telling me it's quiet. Issue is we've always told them we want to be gone by October and they expected it to go quick at 150 & 145.

@Twiglets1 Yeah unfortunately I didn't know at the time about this. It was EA that led us down to 145 as they were adamant it would get interest

It was recommended to us to make the sofa bed up to show the size of a double room. It is a large room but currently only used as an office.

We could rip out the extra unit we had placed in the kitchen to fit the dining table. But we felt it was more use with the small amount of storage space

Mine been on market since March. Had about 6 viewings- no offers. Dropped it by 10k very early on. Think it very slow, but I'm inpatient too. Handed my notice in, wanting to relocate. It was leave in summer(teacher) or October. It early days for you.

If you want feedback from just random mumsnetters:

Things you can't change =

small (new builds tend to be but as a family of 5 ourselves I wouldn't even have viewed it)

Things you could change =

Its overwhelmingly 'greyge' apart from the jarring bright yellow... those are the two 'marmite' colours I would absolutely not live with so if I viewed even if I liked it I would factor in cost to redecorate into my offer. Bright yellow literally sets of my migraines and grey just depresses me (we already live in a 'grey' country its not a happy colour. White or magnolia or blush or any other neutrals etc... would be fine). The pink in the study is the nicest touch of colour in the whole house.

The giant quote sticker on the bedroom wall is generally viewed as 'tacky' by most.

I assume you won't replace the floors etc... but I would 'tone it down' by introducing other colours to the walls and accessories, maybe keep it gentle like light or subtle pastels like blush, light blue or sage green.

The living room layout looks cramped and odd and the 'study' looks stark and empty.

Thank you
The study is empty. It's the top floor bedroom which is technically the biggest room of the whole house.
We had colour everywhere originally, but we've painted white where we could on recommendation.
I think we'll look in to doing this in our bedroom too (the yellow one)
I wanted to take out the table of the living room to show space, but every agent we asked said not to.

I found the photos terrible. Lights on in the rooms make me think it’s going to be gloomy, and everything is very grey (apart from the yellow bedroom).

The first photo should be the one of the front of the house, you could brighten it up with some potted plants for kerb appeal.

I’d add a photo of the porch so people can see some storage for coats and shoes.

I would put the dining table in the kitchen if you can and take the clutter off the fridge door. The lounge looks very grey, I’d add a bit of colour.

There’s a lot of furniture in the garden and no plants! The patio area looks nice, I’d keep the furniture on that and clear away the rest of the items.

The bedroom with the day bed I would just show as a nicely made up sofa, and where is the bed in the room with the pink chair and desk marooned in the corner?

The video says it’s a two bedroom, one bathroom house - but you have three bedrooms? The floor plan is missing a door into the top floor bedroom.

If it’s only been for sale for 3 weeks then a bit more patience is required. I believe the average time to receive an acceptable offer is more like 6-8 weeks.

Other than that the only thing that will get it sold is reducing the price. As you say, you haven’t received any feedback of anything you could easily change (which is why feedback is pretty pointless). So all you can do is wait a bit longer then reduce price.

Thank you.
We originally had the front of the house and the EA said we should switch it every now and then. But I agree with you.
Unfortunately if we place a dining room table in the kitchen we would lose the extra unit and worktop space that we've heavily relied on and believe others would too.
The lounge was green. We were told by all valuers to go neutral. I wonder if they go too far sometimes.
As you can tell we hate gardening. We've gone 0% maintenance gardens. Issue now is if we put plants in the dog would destroy them 😆
There is unfortunately no bed in the pink chair room. It was a bunk made to measure that we had to smash up so we could "neutralise" the shocking pink and unicorns bedroom. We've 2 girls in there and we're not sure if they'll have double or single beds in our next house. So we've refrained from buying anything.
I feel like AI could produce the majority of the changes you have mentioned.

The market atm is slower, lots of houses sticking so give it time. If you are going to reduce it 5k probably isn’t going to be enough.

I think the market has slowed a lot. We sold in Feb, normally we would've waited for spring but I was keen to just get on with it and at the time there was a flurry of movement due to the stamp duty deadline. Although that didn't impact us because we were never going to complete we did benefit from securing a good price because things were moving. I've been watching and once that deadline passed everything slowly up again and prices locally have been creeping downwards again.

I would give it another month before dropping your price. 5k wouldn't put me off coming to view it anyway, I always view houses that are a bit more than I can afford in the hope that there's a deal to be done.

The photos are awful. Just random shots of small areas eg kitchen. There are some photos that look black and white, not sure if this is a gimmick but it's off putting. The pullout bed looks like someone just got out of it. It's a lovely house, I wouldn't drop the price but get the photos re done and stage the bedrooms.

I don’t think it’s a problem to have the dining table in the living room @Mumslot lots of families do this, including mine growing up.

Things you can't change also include:

• the estate look - but I think that is reflected in the price
• the 10 out of 10 crime rating. Is that to do with the retail park up the road?

FWIW, the price looks about right to me (and I'm normally bearish), based on the sale of 3b in 2017.

Scunthorpe sales (Time on Market) do seem to be quite long at the moment so perhaps your guess about being impatient is correct:

https://www.home.co.uk/guides/house_prices.htm?location=dn16

I don't know your circumstances but my approach would be to paint the house white, drop the price to an unbeatable £125K and hope for a bidding war of offers over. But it's not for me to tell you you can afford £25K off.

Hey. I'd love to know more about your first two points. Where is the 10/10 rating? Is it the larger Scunthorpe area? Do you have a link?
And could you explain what you mean by the estate look? As in shape?
Where we are is widely known as the friendliest/safest/newest part of the town.

Yeah unfortunately £125k is not possible for us.
Help to buy scheme recently paid off during remortgage at surveyed valuation of 150. Meaning we don't have enough equity to then move on.

The market is just slow at the moment and two weeks is no time at all.

If you've found something you like and can afford to drop then that's an option. Otherwise you'll have to be patient.

The market will only get slower once the school holidays start.

The best illustration of the estate look is probably picture 7 - lots of brick houses seemingly overlooking each other and barely a plant or tree in sight. But as I said, I think your price reflects that.

Use the Area360 add-in for RM on Chrome. It brings up lots of stats for each listing on RM - including crime rating. Some folks don't believe that the rating is accurate. There was a similar discussion about a lovely home in Salisbury with a 10 out of 10 rating. It turned out that there were some unfortunate neighbours very close by.

It's done on a neighbourhood basis. Try Area360 - it's free. Look at all of Scunthorpe, upto £150K, 3 bed+. You'll see a large variation in crime rating. Yours unfortunately is top. Again, it may be the retail park and nothing to do with your estate. But as I said elsewhere, I use it as a filter. You have to be foolish, brave or well informed to ignore it. I'm none of those.

I didn't mean to worry you with the crime stats. I'm an oddbod in that regard. I prefer data to aesthetics. For every one of me there will probably be 100 judging you for your furniture, paint job, twigs and inspirational writings.

That Area 360 add on looks like a rather blunt tool.

You can see the actual crime stats on the Police UK website, which shows the location of reported incidents each month.

www.police.uk/pu/your-area/humberside-police/ashby-lakeside/?tab=CrimeMap

I wouldn't say it is hugely overpriced given one sold at that value recently.

People are thinking about summer holldays at the moment not house buying.

I wouldn't bother about the family of 5. Some people will look at anything in their budget and have no ability to visualise sqm. They make their decision after they have seen it.

I think re price, the RM market summary seems to indicate prices are heading down for the 1m radius.

It's really all about what you want, either hold the price and have it potentially take a lot longer or drop it and potentially sell a lot more quickly. 10k increments are a better size for drops on a house of that value for me.

The good news is even if you do drop the prices you are losing relatively small amounts compared to the sort of drops you would need to gain interest in the south.

It's all really about how quickly it is you want to move. Which is down to you really and no one else.

The listing is okay, the house is clean and tidy. The photos could be improved. The estate looks okay, quite clean and well maintained so that's not putting people off.

The market is 'quiet' and prices are falling in quite a few areas at present, judging by the number of threads on here and articles in the media.
It has only been 3 weeks @Mumslot so it may well be that you just need a bit more time on the market. Having said that, the peak interest is in the first 2 weeks and you haven't had many viewings. How desperate are you to sell quickly? What is the lowest figure you can afford? I think your decision will come down to those two things.

You forgot the diameter of the giant clock on the wall. Which is always important.