Why no offers on our house?

[RobEmily]

We’ve been on the market for a month, which I know isn’t long on today’s market, but we’ve had 15 viewings and no offers.

Our property was originally valued at £850-£875k by 3 agents. We put it on for £850k. We dropped it to offers in excess of £800k on Monday. We have told the agent from the outset that we are very open to offers.

Our house has 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, open plan kitchen/diner, 2-3 reception rooms, utility, garden and large drive plus small garage. Very well located for excellent schools, high street and train station. The house could probably do with decorating / new carpets but kitchen and bathrooms all done in last four years.

There have been quite a few similar properties to ours on the market but all sold, one a three bed on a much busier road which is 400 sq st smaller than ours, but much better finish, which was on for £850k and sold.

Another very similar decorative order to ours, went on same day, slightly smaller and I think a worse location sold when it was on for offers over £875k.

Everything else up our road sells very quickly, the 2 most recent sales were on for £750k but they were 3 beds and 600-700 sq ft smaller than ours as we have done big extensions.

We are getting very little meaningful feedback from the agent - they just say the people liked it but want to keep looking.

One person has mentioned they wanted it to be in a better decorative order, but we are open to negotiation / offers so I figured people would just want to decorate to their taste… should we be taking it off the market and decorating ourselves?

For recent viewings I’ve also tried to declutter more, we have 2 small children so I’ve now started removing some of the toys from their rooms and downstairs to do this.

The viewings by the agent typically take 10-15mins (I can see on the ring doorbell). They always book them one after another, 15 mins apart. Some viewings are under 10 mins. I don’t even think you could look around the whole house never mind go in the garden and garage in under 10mins!

We are viewing lots of properties currently and typically take 20-30mins in all of them. The only one an agent rushed us round in 15mins because they had another viewing booked we left hating.

Am I being impatient or should I be considering changing agents?

A couple of things

1. The autumn budget is making lots of people pause before they make a big decision.talkn of property taxes, SDLT rises spooks people. Don't forget if you can buy a house circa.£800k then you are deemed by the Labour party to have infinite wealth and capable of supporting not only you own family but god knows how many other families through your taxes.

1. Be honest is your house a bit of a shit hole? Covered with baby/kids stuff??

1. Done big extensions? Multiple extensions can sometimes mean weird layouts. Does the floor plan actually work?

A month isn't long, be patient. Ours took several months to sell.

How do you know the actual sold prices of comparable nearby properties?

House prices are definitely softening, it's inevitable really. So much of the market was driven by equity gains which people are not making as easily or quickly. Cost of living in general.

Is it the sex dungeon in the cellar?

If you are feeling brave put a link to your listing for feedback here. It may well be brutal but could help.
Late autumn is traditonally a slow time for house sales.

I’ve seen some amazing feedback on here when a link is posted. I know it’s risky but you can name change after.

It’s become quite expensive to do building work. Does your asking price take into account what it actually costs to do up a house (new kitchen and bathrooms?) to the standard you’d expect for an ~850k house?

Offers over is off putting as it implies you don’t want to negotiate. If you want 800 then you might be better off listing at ~820.

Feedback on here can be really good. I’d consider name changing and posting the link.

Post the link op. We cant help unless we see the house.
Fear not though, one of my family friends has had their house up for sale since June, its a lovely house very big & lovely and they’ve literally had no offers. Its not really the time to be selling houses sadly. The budget is worrying people.

10/15 mins is not long for a viewing of a 4 bed house, something is putting them off quite quickly. If you put up a link people can help.

It could be a number of things. What’s the street like? Neighbours? Smell of your house? Is it really scruffy?

Dogs (not an issue for me), smoke, smells, dark, souless, no garden to speak of, etc, We can't tell without seeing. The chances are that the price initially appears in the ball park hence the viewings, but something really puts them off. That may even be the EA! Some are quite unlikeable.

Load up Area360 for RM and check the area profile to see what similar ;properties in your area have been going for and whether prices have been rising or falling. Houseprices.io can give a suggested value for your own home and others in your postcode.

I don't think anyone or at least very few people will be making offers on houses in that price range until after the November budget to be honest.

How much redecoration does your house need? I think a lot of people are put off a bit by needing to redecorate and fit new carpets etc, it can make the house look quite scruffy when you view. Do the photos make it look a lot better than it is in reality? I've viewed so many houses that look great in the photos but then when you view it's clear they need a lot more work than first thought and then the price isn't so appealing.

I sold my house recently, although not the same sort of price bracket as yours, I dressed the house for sale in the hope of getting a buyer quickly. I rented a storage unit and put all the crap I didn't know what to do with in it, had a skip for a few weeks and cleared all rubbish from the garden, broken kids toys etc. I repainted various walls, skirting boards, scrubbed the house top to bottom. Organised every cupboard and wardrobe as viewers often open them all! I bought new towels, pillows, bedding soap, door mats etc. I would only use these when we had viewings. I had a big basket of these things and swapped the old for new before each viewing and then hid the box of old things in my car boot until the viewings were finished. It sounds ridiculous but I think houses that are dressed for sale sell a lot quicker.

If after another month or two you haven't had any offers and aren't getting any useful feedback from the agent you might need to look at the price or change agent.

I would change the agent and drop the price.

If you feel ok about it, post the link and you will get lots of good advice.

I agree that if something marked as sold you don’t know the price yet.
You have big family house with several receptions and utility so you need a person who can pay for all that. In my area it would be more expensive than average house so would require longer to sell.
Do you have something controversial / suspicious e.g suspected asbestos, shared drive, neighbour’s house looks weird, building site or business near by, garden very overlooking or north facing and narrow?
Whats your plans ? You mentioned toys so you have small children. I would suspect that you wouldn’t want to go into rental and the prospect of long wait/ sale would put me off
Short viewings might be an issue as well the atmosphere might feel rushed and unfriendly.
Personally the price is the main problem - you dropped it too quickly (I would wonder why) and then “offers over” usually put the potential buyers who otherwise might negotiate the price off.

So overall it might be worth to change EAs as it doesn’t sound as they are doing a sensible job at their end.

If you can link OP, we can help. Price is a big factor too, particularly with the budget next month.

I think sometimes you need to be brutally honest about your house. Needs redecoration - ok, but are people walking in and thinking “needs painting” or “needs a new kitchen and bathroom”? I think a lot of people with that budget want to walk in to something perfect. Sometimes a house which you know is fine, just tired, can look to a potential buyer like a house which could be hiding all sorts of problems.

As others have said, name change and post a link. It will not be a pleasant experience, but try not to take anything personally and sort through the feedback to see what you can do.

Absolutely agree that a lot of folk will be waiting for the budget to see if there will be substantial tax rises which could affect them. But prices have come down a bit over the last 6 months.

If you feel ok about it, post the link and you will get lots of good advice.

Is the advice actually good?

I have never seen it. It's normally price that is the sticking point, adding some cushions & moving some furniture about doesn't tend to compensate if the price is too high.

Utility bills are going to put people off as well and they are only going to get more expensive. We are planning to move in the next few years but won't be buying a home as big as we originally wanted.

Plus interest rates mean so much more money is wasted on paying debt. Even if you can afford it it's pretty galling.

Could there be something random that you haven’t thought about, like a bus stop outside or a pub on the corner. You know it’s not a problem but others might not see it that way.

All the kids stuff is confined to the playroom and their bedrooms so I don’t think I’d call it a “shithole”. By decorating, I mean there are a few scuffs on the wall and marks on the carpet as we finished everything about 4 years ago. Our furniture is a bit dated as we never intended to stay here so didn’t change it, but I thought people would see past that as they’d bring their own furniture.

I do worry it’s the layout / floorplan a bit, we intended to swap the playroom and dining room so the dining room opens off the kitchen with double doors to create an open plan space, but we didn’t do that so I could keep an eye on the kids.

You could remove a wall and make a massive open plan space though. But yes layout I have considered to be the issue.

I don’t know the sold price, just asking price, but we haven’t had offers, they clearly had offers they would accept, we’re not even getting low offers

Ha ha 🤣

My husband is a builder and if we don’t sell he thinks we would need £20k on driveway, garden, painting and changing the downstairs rooms round (swapping playroom and dining room over)