House not getting much interest

[EmRose123]

So our house has been on for 4 months now. With very little interest, although all the house around this area seems to be in a similar situation.
Although it's starting to get frustrating as we would really like another baby but just do not have the space in this house.
Looking for some advice I'll add the link to our house I do understand some part are a bit cluttered (just struggling to find the time to give it a huge clear out)
I think maybe the kerb appeal is lacking?
Any suggestions (don't be too mean please 😂)

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/164737892#/?channel=RES_BUY

It looks very unkempt and unloved from the outside.
Far too cluttered (but I'm sure you know this).
I imagine the other bungalows you refer to are a mich higher spec inside and the gardens and frontage are well kept?
I like your colour schemes/wallpaper personally, bit my mum, who is currently looking for a bungalow, would hate it.
The photos aren't great. Odd angles, which always makes me suspicious as a potential viewer.

Even if you get back what you put in – which you don’t necessarily! Not everyone wants a log burner, so it’s not an improvement per se – that’s £150k + £30k = £180k. What justifies the additional £60k you’re asking other than time passing? House prices haven’t all shot up, the Covid boom is long over.

It’s a very specific house in a specific locale, without scope for larger families, so your buying pool is smaller.

It's a great house, nice size, good sized garden and plenty of off street parking, plus the solar is a draw (for me).

What I don't like & can be improved is that I can't work out what is what from the photo flow, the pics make it look like all the ceilings are damp and the garden and driveway need a good tidy up.

Where do you eat?
Why are there no photos of the cabin?

@thinklagoon so it probably a lot of what people can't see electric and water tanks ect but I do get that. I'm more realistic with it than my husband and always expected to have it around the £200.000 for our area I would say that fair.
Although this is our first time selling so I guess we're just gone off what the estate agents have told us.

Are you on with two agents? Is this your place too. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/161877209#/?channel=RES_BUY

Anyone browsing for a house to view will be able to see both sets of pictures. There's less stretching of the images so the (unused?) cot in your bedroom no longer looks square but it's really clear how much stuff there is in every room except the bathroom which makes me think "no space". Even the garden has loads of stuff in it. I'm not critical that you have a lot of stuff but hide it or declutter longer term. I am a naturally very messy person and I own a lot of crap but when we sold our old house I decluttered and strategically hid what I was keeping

The driveway...is that actually a dropped kerb because it doesn't look like it and it seems that it's just been the fencing removed.

Lots of good advice above. I hope you get a sale

You have to look into 'staging' which means making sure it doesn't look like your home anymore so people can imagine it being theirs.

Take all family pictures off the walls, make things less personal and much more generic. Remove tables if they make a room look cramped etc. You have to live with some inconvenience if you want to sell.

It really does work. I've done it a few times, myself.

Realistically OP this isn't a family house. It's too small. This is why you want to move!

It's a downsizer's/retirees bungalow. Many buyers in that stage of life would love the footprint of the property, the large garden, and the rural location that's in easy reach of the coast. So you need to market to that audience.

A big selling point for the over 60s market is a conservatory and you're currently just using yours as a dumping ground. In a house as small as this, you can't afford to waste valuable living space on laundry - you need to allow your potential buyers to see the conservatory as a space they can relax and enjoy the views of the lovely garden. Put a curtain over the washing machine, get everything else out of there and stage it as a living area.

As everyone else has said, you need to do a major declutter throughout, sort the drive and back garden out, and then get the photos done again and put it back on the market.

You also have no photos of the garden office you've built, which is a mistake - make sure that's included in the photos next time.

It is a lot of work to declutter for selling but you'll thank yourself for it when you're in the process of moving!

No one is buying at the moment, so I would take it off the market and wait 6 months. By then your garden won't look like a parched desert and you'll have time to have tarted up the drive with gravel and sorted out the clutter internally, then you will be in a better position to market to the right audience and get the price you need to move on.

There a quite a lot like this where I live.

To be honest they are almost exclusively owned by the elderly (downsizing and easy access) which is exactly what they where built for (the ones here are ex-miner retirement properties that where built by the pit companies).

Knowing that I would say you house is VERY 'on trend' and while nice that is not 'the style' the elderly usually go for. Often preferring a 'homelier' feel of the past trends they previously lived through and less 'bold' options. You often see this when elderly people get brand new kitchens/bathroom but will choose what would now class as 'outdated' colors, tiles and styles of worktop etc...

That might be whats putting off your potential pool as the elderly also tend to greatly prefer a turnkey they can see themselves moving straight into (no DIY or big reno jobs).

I would say the kitchen colour is quite nice as its more subtle but I would tone down the navy blue wall in the living room as its the most jarring thing. Maybe change the black and white striped wall paper too but thats not as jarring.

Unfortunately I'd say these are mostly elements that are going to maintain rather than increase the value of your house. This is property maintenance rather than value added.

So for example if you'd left the kitchen and bathroom in, then by now they would definitely need replacing and probably be in a bit of a state, and you'd be looking at knocking off a few grand from your basic asking price. But you can't do the opposite i.e. add the value of this type of spend as a price increase. It's just keeping the price what it was. Same applies for the water tank.

The only elements that actually increase value imo are the solar panelling and possibly the log cabin (? Not sure what level of interest the latter would generate).

Anyway it's a lovely house, personally I don't think decluttering will make much difference and you probably have to lower the price again.

There is no dropped curb to your driveway.

The pictures aren’t great. Photo 8 - what is that even showing?? It’s making the house look tiny. And I wouldn’t have photo 3 so early.

Agree with all of this.
For the photos, you need to remove the stair gates and all clutter from all surfaces. Think show home. You don't see stair gates or air fryers in a show home.
It's a very nice house. Perfect for a couple, a couple with one child, or retired people.

I don’t think it’s THAT cluttered but previous suggestions on removing things for the photos are good. Why is the first photo of the parched garden early in the sequence? It’s rather random so I think you should move it and show the first garden pictures that do not highlight the brown grass. The driveway looks terrible, tart it up any way you can. Get a rug for the large wooden floor and lose the dark blue paint

I agree about the unnecessary clutter, particularly the large wicker storage baskets on the hallway floor.
It's the first thing you see on entering the house.
I think your kitchen and bathroom are lovely.
But the laundry room is so cluttered!
Huge bulging sacks of laundry hanging off the wall are really unappealing.
And your driveway, which is the first thing you see from the outside, is a poor first impression, as it looks uncared for and unloved.

Is it no viewings that's the problem, OP, or no offers after viewings have happened?

This is what inside the log cabin looks like for anyone who doesn't realise the above is a different listing of the same house.

Lovely house, awful photos. They don’t give an idea of room sizes or the flow. A close up of 2 plastic bags - what do EAs think of!

Great size garden but the huge array of furniture etc is distracting, could you restage just for the photos? And the cabin in the garden looks amazing but I can’t see any internal photos, makes me assume it’s just stuffed to the rafters with belongings?

I think the kerb appeal is fine, but could you neaten up the hedges at the front?

It doesn't look overpriced to me. It's a bungalow* with a big garden and cabin so should be reasonably attractive. 2-3 bed houses in the area seem significantly more expensive. I think your main problem is the quality and order of your photos. The sitting room photo is terrible - why does the agent think people want a photo of a window heavily framed by curtains? I think you want nicely taken photos of your tidied and decluttered rooms, and then the outdoor photos at the end.

PLEASE take the multicoloured ribbon door off your utility room door, though, that's the only thing that gives me the ick. You can get a plain screen door that magnets shut which will do a better job of keeping out flies and look less 70s!

*Edited as I thought it was detached .

**Also, the other listing of the house has much better photos, OP

i remember an Estate Agent once telling me that his biggest issue is that everyone is ‘house blind’ when it comes to their own properties. They are emotionally involved and see their properties very differently to potential buyers.

So trying to be dispassionately constructive

• Photos 1 & 2 are fine, but my heart actively sank when it got to photo 3.
• For me, the garden and driveway are the biggest turn off. It is positive that you have a reasonable sized garden, but you need to do some work to make it attractive to your potential market.
• as others have said it would be worth decluttering, especially for the photos. Why not rent a storage container for the few months it will take to sell. Store, some of the excess toys in the garden along with other clutter you are not actively using but don’t want to get rid of a.t.m. I understand that costs, but is much cheaper than knocking several £k off your price because the house doesn’t present well.
• Check that you think each photo presents that room in the most positive way. Some of the photos e.g. the Living Room make the room look dark. Of course it may be a darker room, but is it? or is there an issue with the way the photographer has lit the room.
• Also look dispassionately at the ornaments etc in each room. You put them there, live with them and may love them, but that doesn’t mean they photograph well. When selling my last house I took photos of each room before the photographer arrived and then went round removing everything that was superfluous in terms of the room presenting well.

I do agree with people that say price is important but I actually think that your photos are equally important. They are your marketing material. I often flick through photos on a house before I even look at the price. And it’s not just the room sizes etc I am looking at. A photo indicates the levels of house maintenance, whether a house has been tarted up as a flip project, etc. etc.

With your house, I might be tempted to view on the basis of the house BUT the garden and driveway would mean that I would probably flick onto the next property. Of course that is personal, a garden matters to me, but you should be aiming to get every potential buyer through the doorway and not losing a proportion before that stage because your photos don't do your property justice.

Very outdated. Needs so much work done to it, a whole fit out basically. The price doesn’t justify the amount anyone would need to spend on it.

When it says guide price, I assume either auction or they want significantly more money and just want to encourage a bidding war. Can you ask them to change it so it no longer says guide price?

I agree with this. All the posters saying it looks 'old people-ish' - that's surely the main market for a two-bed bungalow and the issue is more that it looks too unappealing for that market. The garden especially looks godforsaken in all but pix 1, 14 and 16, so I'd get rid of the other garden shots that look like it's full of the leftovers from a sad carboot sale. Pic 17 looks terrible too with that overgrown drive and ancient shed. Just don't show it as it won't lure people in and maybe if they turn up on a sunny day they'll focus on the ample parking. If you can do anything at all about the state of the lawn, that would help massively. Bungalow buyers often want a nice garden and while that's unlikely to be achievable, you could definitely spruce it up and not have it look so bad.

Inside, I'd have fewer photos and try to have them of whole rooms looking as good as you cen get them. Photo 2 is a classic example of the bad choices - why would you put that second, when it instantly gives the impression of a pokey kitchen? The angles are just terrible. Open that back door, stand in it and take a photo from there so the whole kitchen is in it. If you must show the hallway, and I personally wouldn't, why would you show a pile of boxes in it and doors open to unappealing cots and a curtain over the front door to show how draughty and cold it must be.

The conservatory shot is chaotic and I haven't seen dangly strip blinds like those for 40 years. The living room and bathroom shots are better - use those as a guide for how the others should be. Strip back to show the house it could be for someone else, behind all the clutter that's putting people off. Yes the market is slow, but you're really making it hard for someone to want to picture themselves in that place. Imagine it was an airbnb you were going to - would you want to stay there? Try to make it look like somewhere a person would at least want to stay, unless the price is so low that you're appealing to those who'll strip it all out anyway and don't care how it looks to start with. But it sounds like you want a decent price for it so scrap most of these photos and star over with fresh eyes.

Until you said that the solar panels make a big difference to costs, I'd find them off-putting, along with the oil fired heating, rather than a plus point. You might need to contextualise them better so they help to sell it not to put people off. Again, I'd consider only saying/showing what will get people to come and view then they might be more open to making such adjustments, but first you have to sell them the dream.

Are you looking at the correct house?

The one bang 'on current trend' with the new kitchen, bathroom and solar panel system.

I'm currently installing a new kitchen and EVERY show room I have been too (about 10 in the last 3 days) is promoting OP style as the main 'must have' kitchen right now. Its the first one you see when you walk in Wren and Magnet here.

I think the fact its NOT outdated is very much the main issue. The main pool of buyers will love new/well maintained and easy but not so much modern design.

@housethatbuiltme Yeah the first link… it’s my opinion that the house looks outdated albeit with a new kitchen/bathroom however the ceilings, the doors, the windows, the living room wood, the flooring, the utility room are outdated. It looks like it needs a lot of work, maybe it’s the clutter making it look worse? I don’t know either way I can see why not getting much interest. Isn’t the point of this thread to see what general public think?