Selling extended house for less than purchase price: how will buyers react?

[Spotteddaisy]

Grateful for any advice please re house selling.
We are not strangers to house selling as have moved 5 times in the last 15 years, (but in the same area) We have always made a small profit on the house sales to put towards the new property.

In Autumn 2023 we moved to Dorset, 10 mins from the coast.
Detached 4 bedroom house with a plot of just under an acre. In a lovely village, good schools etc nearby. Previously lived in Hampshire.

We have extended the house by rejigging the layout and adding a big dining/family room downstairs. We've made other improvements too like insulation, adding solar panels etc.
Had a couple of estate agents out last year to value it who said to market at £850k. But we have been on the market since last June with no offers at all. We have now reduced the price by £100k and changed agents at the end of last year.

We have had a few more viewings with this agent but still no offers. Which obviously means it's the price. So we asked our agent what we can do as we're aware that properties still on the market after 9 months don't look good.

He said we should drop the price to £695k. We are not sure what to think about this (my DH is fuming)as we bought the house for more than that 2.5 years ago and have spent a substantial amount on the extension and improvements. Surely anyone who has done their homework and looked up house prices etc will see that we bought it for more then added an extension so to then list it for less just makes it look really dodgy? I don't think the market has decreased so much in less than 3 years that we would have to list our (bigger, improved) house for less than we bought it for?! I know that ultimately no one will care what we've spend on it but the fact that it's now bigger than it was must count for something?

We really aren't enjoying it here and now need to move to somewhere cheaper and to be back nearer to family. This has all been a massive costly mistake and I feel so guilty. The fact that we could end up in negative equity is just stressing me out even more. We've never made a loss on a house and ploughed all of our savings into this one. We were so full of hope when we moved here, but it's all just been awful.

As a potential buyer what would people think about a house being listed at less than it sold for not even 3 years ago, even after its been extended?

The people buying that price house in your area are looking for something very different to what you are selling.
Maybe you have got to the point where you are doing houses up to move on from that you haven’t kept up with what people now expect. Meaning you have overspent on things that are only important to you, and have missed the mark for what’s expected.

With the front garden (looked like a paddock to me on the satellite!) it's a huge plot.
Really worth checking that restriction on the deeds to see a way around it. The access road is narrow and long past other houses so I can see why it exists.
I'm surprised the developers didn't buy it, they could have put in access from the NW of the plot. Possibly still could but that house wouldn't be happy.

You could develop into a care home, people will joke about the cemetery next door!

What are they looking for?

I am the antithesis of @KeepPumping but, for once, we agree and I would also like to know what the "very different something people now expect" actually is? - please do enlighten us

If you can find a way of adding an additional bedroom or bathroom that's where the real value gets added. Properties are priced on footprint, but people pay for extra bedrooms and bathrooms.

You will add very little real value doing that, people could do that themselves with a bit of plasterboard? Best just to accept the size and price it accordingly.

Still confused why the epc is so low on this given the fact you have panels.

I was too especially as we have changed all the lightbulbs, insulated the walls added the panels and heat pump etc. And we have 2 wiring fireplaces that we use in winter. We also don't use the older style electric radiators. We've replaced them with newer, less expensive to run ones.

I asked the guy who did the EPC what we could do and he said it's just because we are all electric and if we were on a dual tariff it would change it slightly. We aren't on a dual tariff though as we dont have night storage heaters. Currently our electricity is about £2 a day with all the sunshine though which is a bonus.

Your house is lovely, I think the right buyer just hasn’t appeared yet. However it depends if you want to wait for them or not. Sounds like you’re absolutely desperate to leave. I do understand how you feel though. We relocated in 2017 to a rural village miles away which was the biggest mistake of our lives. I hated it and missed my friends. Luckily we sold it post pandemic when everyone else wanted to escape to the country. Have you had any specific feedback from the viewings you’ve had? It is a really lousy time to be selling a big house at the moment. So much uncertainty and political instability.

It’s a lovely house OP! I really hope the right person comes along soon.

I'm sorry that it still hasn't sold @Spotteddaisy. I agree with others that it is a lovely house.

I'm afraid that some of the problems will be difficult to deal with because of the way it has been built. We are currently looking to move to downsize to that sort of size of house, but there are a few things that would be a problem for us.

The lack of a central hallway so that rooms open off each other and the stairs in the main sitting room isn't the best layout.

Even if you made the upstairs loo into a shower room you would have two bathrooms but they would both be very small for the size of the house.

With a plot of an acre I wouldn't want the house to have been built so close beside the graveyard. Had it been centrally placed it would be possible to surround it with a beautiful garden, although I suppose it was done to make it closer to services and therefore cheaper to connect.

Sorry, but I think the solar panels are awful. I would not keep them even if it did make the house more expensive to run.

I think you just have to wait for someone who isn't bothered by these things.

You don’t need to have storage heaters to be on dual fuel tariff, we are to charge our solar panel battery.

I'm not sure what you mean as we do have a central hallway with a big storage cupboard that leads to the kitchen and family room, boot room, utility room and lounge/snug/office. It's just not shown on the pictures. It's on the floorplan. Previously there wasn't a main hallway so we put one in.

I'm also not a fan of the stairs in the living room but the big galleried landing is nice.

If we have no choice but to stay we may convert the washroom to an additional shower room or en-suite.

Obviously we had no input on whereabouts the house was situated on the large plot but you can still walk all the way around the house and the boundary with the graveyard is a big stone wall with huge hedges/trees.

There isn't enough roof facing the right way for the solar panels to be mounted there hence putting them at the back of the garden. We have a lot of garden anyway so it seemed sensible. We dont really use that part anyway.

I'm beginning to wish the house link wasn't on here now, does anyone know how to get it removed please?

I think it’s very bottom heavy, if it were a 5 bed with at least one ensuite it would be much more appealing.

Sad that no one has the imagination to see that for themselves.

Personally the garden lacks being “cosy”. I think it’s very common for expensive houses on large plots to take a long time to sell because the market is just smaller.

Have you asked the agent to take some more photos of the garden now the trees help screen the new builds?

Also take down the arial photo, encourage more people to come and view in person.

Sorry to hear that it still hasn't sold. The house looks lovely, hopefully the right buyer will come along soon.

I think that drone shot which is the first picture, and should really wow, isn't doing you any favours because it highlights the proximity of the housing estate. I would have a new photo taken of the front of the house as picture 1 or at the very least have picture 5 as the first one. And I'd keep the drone shots to a minimum and use ground level photos taken at a distance to show the large plot.

Good luck

I'm sorry if I offended you, I certainly didn't mean to. You seemed to wonder why it isn't selling and I was trying to point out what people might not like about it. I can see you have a hall, but the individual rooms do not all have their own doors off it. You have to go through the kitchen to get to the dining room, visitors have to go through the laundry to get to the downstairs loo, and the sitting room is a thoroughfare to the snug, study and stairs. I wouldn't like that, and it is possible that a lot of other people wouldn't.

The market for expensive houses is affected by the price of debt just like any other market.

Seriously OP, those photos are fending off most potential buyers. Replace the first photo and kill any arial photos. It’s a terrible perspective. Most people when standing in your garden won’t mind the estate but don’t make it look as bad as humanly possibly. You won’t end up with anyone looking! Plonk down some nice olive trees in pots next to the front door and take a new photo.

I would snatch your hand off for this house in Yorkshire. I’d love an acre of land backing onto a graveyard, and I think it’s a good size and would just need redecorating to my style rather than any real renovation work. I don’t know the Dorset prices are like but it would be about right / priced to sell where I live (I wouldn’t have been surprised to see it on for £850k locally), so I’m really surprised to see it’s still for sale.

I’ve not RTFT but you should make it clearer there are three toilets. I saw one bathroom and thought that was a bit of a downside (I hate an en suite to the room you sleep in so can get over that). I would like an extra shower, and given you have three toilet rooms this might be really easy but there’s only a photo of the bathroom and not either of the WCs which does make it hard to assess how easy that would be.

ETA: the solar panels in the aerial view might put me off. I’m a big advocate of solar panels and our roof is covered in them, but the free standing units and the quantity of them are a bit much.

If I were you I’d plant some quick growing mixed native hedging to screen off the new houses. Beech, hawthorn etc. Someone else mentioned using some of the garden as an orchard area & planting some apple trees, that could be a lovely feature which requires little maintenance. A wildlife pond might be a fun project if you have children old enough for it not to be a danger. Maybe make the garden a little more varied, cosy and provide more privacy. I think your house decoration is lovely, yes an en-suite would be better, but I think it will sell for what you want, but may need a little tweaking on the outside so the house sits better in its landscape. People can then see the lifestyle that goes with such a big plot which is a real selling point to the right buyers. However at the moment the garden is rather featureless, making the house look a little bit awkward in its situation. Plus those new builds are too visible. I think if you can bear to stay there a little longer, take it off the market, invest a little time and money in the garden, get some screening in front of those houses, and put it on again next year. The market may start picking up then too. It’s a nice house that just needs a bit of landscaping in my opinion and that’s relatively easy to fix. (another bathroom can be added at some point by you or the next owner). Other option is as others have mentioned, getting planning permission for some of the land. That would make it very desirable to local builders. Good luck x

In a falling market local builders won"t take the chance of spending time and money on something they can"t sell.

I don’t know this area so maybe not. But where I live local developers are snapping up larger house gardens to squash in a small cul-de-sacs of overpriced luxury executive homes. It’s become a bit of a pain to be honest as so much green space is being lost.

Are they selling?