My flat won’t sell, please help!

[SpookyW001989]

Hi guys, well my wife (33 F) and I (35 F)
have put our lovely 2 bed coach house on RightMove in Chelmsford, Essex and there has been ZERO interest! No viewings, no offers. It’s been on with RightMove and HOME estate agents for nearly a month, and zilch. We are beyond gutted. It was valued at £280,000. We have it on for £260,000 (we recently reduced it to this price) still nothing!!
To say we are bloody devastated would be an understatement. The flat has 2 parking spaces, a car port with loads of room, boarded out loft with electricity. It’s got 108 years left on the lease. Honestly, we thought it would be perfect for FTB. If anyone has any feedback back or helpful advice, please chuck some our way. Thank you. Here’s the link www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/164205242

I think it needs a spruce up to make it a little more homely. It's also not been all that long though, the market is slow at the moment and so you may just need to be a bit patient. It might take time but you only need one right buyer to fall in love with it.

As an investor, I am not going to buy your property unfortunately:

1. It is above the access so it is noisy with cars going under. I also think its irregular floorplan will make it hard to be mortgaged.
2. You bought it for £75,000 just a few years ago. It is hard to justify the £260,000 listing price now.

Kitchen/Living room is a complete "no-no" IMO at that price.

@mylovedoesitgood

Please consider extending your lease because 107 years is really short.

Is a 107 year lease really short? And how can the OP just 'extend it?'

@BabyCatFace

£75k in 2018?! Am I reading that right???

Wow, that's quite some mark up!

As for the 'cars driving underneath' bit of the flat, DH and I lived in a 1-bed flat in the early 1990s for a couple of years (housing association - similar to this flat) and we had the same thing. Didn't really notice the cars going underneath, as it was our bedroom over the (one car wide) road, and after 11 at night (when we were in bed,) no-one seemed to be about....

But OMG it was so cold in there for about 4 months of the year. The floor was perma cold during November, December, January, and February, and we had to have a fan heater on in the winter (as well as the radiator,) as we were so cold in there. All the cold seem to come up through the floor!

Is the 2018 purchase price right?? Expecting an uplift of 247% in 7 years seems insane with what looks like very little improvements, and that’s at at the reduced price.

Unfortunately I think the estate agents has been a bit too ambitious in pricing, a lot of ones in my area are the same, it’s a bit of a hangover from covid. The hardest ones to sell are slightly older new builds, there’s just far too much competition with attractive deals on brand new estates.

Its a nice home but only really suitable for a couple starting out so limits your audience and leaseholds are just not appealing at the moment, 107 years isn’t that long, I’d be worried about selling it on in future as the lease is only going to get shorter and even less appealing unless it’s extended.

We lost £75k on our central London flat last year. You have my sympathy.

Why are the lights on during the day? That makes me think the flat will be gloomy.

I also think the coloured walls (navy and teal) should be painted over to a neutral cream or white.

Could you put a garage door on the car port I don’t like the way that looks at all and that can be changed

and the price with that lease (and yes you can pay to extend) is your issue

Lots of good points made by previous posters.
It's the market, the location, lack of outdoor space and the lease. Would it be worth exploring how much that would be to extend? It's a question many prospective buyers would want to ask.
Agree it would be worth sounding out the local estate agent someone suggested upthread. In their blurb the current agents did mention ease of access to the main road. I think another big selling point might be to emphasise the amount of storage space there is - upstairs and downstairs. It seems odd for the agent to write "One of the standout features is the secure external storage cupboard within the carport, providing ample space for storing a bike, outdoor equipment" and then not actually show a picture or two of that great space. Also worth exploring whether it's permitted under the lease to put a door on the car port.

It would be good too to have a picture of the "boarded out loft with electricity"
It's still early days - I'm sure there's someone out there that's desperate for lots of storage space...someone who sells a lot on Ebay eg?

Good luck!

There's no indication of a place to put a dining table.
The vehicle access under the flat would be off-putting.
Apparently just a bathtub and no plumbing for a shower?

I think it might be because the sale price prior to that in 2014 was 54k.
No buyer is going to gift that kind of uplift.

You mention the loft is boarded. To have a large storage loft is an amenity. It might be worth putting in a couple of velux windows so that there is natural light up there. If the walls and roofing is also boarded it can feel like a really useful space. You could list it as a storage room. Some people will need plenty of storage and this could be ideal.

I know this area and that location isn't great, it's a fair way into town but still right by the very very busy chelmer road. So neither quiet nor central. There is also a huge amount of new build competition in Chelmsford.
For those saying you can get a house for that in Chelmsford, you can but you would not want to live in those parts of the city.
I think beaulieu park is a big factor, all brand new new station about to open etc. The boom in Chelmsford has slowed right down

when you said coach house I was expecting something on a country estate not the heart of Essex suburbia!!
I don't know if many first time buyers can afford £260, that's 3.5 times an annual salary of £66k with a 10% deposit. Well out of the reach of most people buying on their own and probably a stretch for some couples.
I think it's small for a 2 bed flat, there isn't really space for a table which would put me right off it and there's built in wardrobes in the bedrooms. I'd also expect it could be quite hard to keep warm given there's nothing underneath and the wooden cladding would put me off as that'll need some maintenance. Does it get road noise from the main road at the back too?

For everyone questioning the price increase - I’d bet this started life as a shared ownership property and the OP had staircased.

I don't know Chelmsford at all, but to me the price seems high (plus service charge, plus ground rent) for a small flat with no outdoor space. I would always say that no viewings at all immediately suggests that your competition in that price range is very strong and yours just isn't as good - which means you are almost certainly over-priced.

It's advertised as two double bedrooms, which it really isn't. You can see in the picture of the second bedroom that there's no room for any other furniture other than a double bed. Where would anyone using that room for anything more than an overnight stay put clothes etc? Far better to be honest and say it's a decent single than pretend it's what it's not.

Although I'm surprised so many here are against the coach house thing. I'd find it quite appealing to have a flat with no neighbours above or below. Is it a main entrance to the building? I guess from the responses here it could be useful to clarify how busy that entry is.

I wonder if the wood panelling outside is an issue - people are super careful about anything that could be considered "cladding" nowadays and I wonder if that's something that makes viewers nervous.

Also made me laugh that the estate agent stated that the cupboard in the carport is a "stand-out feature".

Sold prices in the area reveal another coach house that looks like on this estate sold in 2021 for £245k. I'd expect prices now to be less than the 2021 price (covid bounce followed by stagnant market) unless Chelmsford is different to most other areas in the country, so my guess is that you are at least 30k overpriced.

Less than 2021, really? That's interesting, around here (not at all posh) prices have continued to rise, albeit much more slowly.

Yeah, there are some places that haven't had the fallback of recent years - you must be in one of those areas, and it's perfectly possible that Chelmsford is also one of them, but I think it's unlikely.
I view any property price in the 2020-2022 timezone to be a blip where it was unnaturally high.

I'm in the process of selling a flat in Southend, and the biggest feedback we had from the no's was no outside space. It's incredibly hard to shift a flat with no garden post Covid. We did sell (providing it goes through ok), but for £40k less than the initial estate agent valuation.

I don't know the area so can't comment on whether the £185k price rise over 7 years is right.

The car park access under the flat would put me off initially but if the equivalent property in your location and price point is a flat I think it's preferable to having constant living noise from attached neighbours, as any traffic noise would be intermittent. It's just the fear that it's less within your control and if someone wanted to kick a football against that downstairs wall or teenagers may congregate there. So I would want to understand the estate dynamics better.

I agree with the pp who said that type of flat gets very cold in the winter. One of my friends in a similar property has to stay with her family on very cold nights. Those flats might not be well insulated against the summer heat either.

Sorry to be stupid, but what is the open area under the property, to the left of the car park entrance?

I think I'd be expecting an ensuite bathroom and to not have the kitchen in the living room for that sort of money🤷🏻‍♀️

Sorry OP. Your flat is lovely but I wouldn't touch a flat with 108 years on the lease. I couldn't just be asked to go through the hassle of renewing it at some point. This might not be an issue now, but would probably need to be addressed when re-selling next time. I would also be put off by the driveway underneath unless there's a considerable discount.

I’d take it off. Redecorate, you can do that without a lot of expense. Eg paint the kitchen units and change the handles. Etc
put back on in September. The key points you have above are lost in the details.