Why isn’t my house selling?

[BraOffPjsOn]

So our house has been on for a while and has dribs and drags of viewings.
I know it’s a bad time to sell but it’s in a great area and in the south east and we’ve reduced by 25k already. The EA has told us not to reduce anymore and the right person will come.

So I’m being brave and going to ask for thoughts on here!

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/171848261?utm_campaign=property-details&utm_content=buying&utm_medium=sharing&utm_source=copytoclipboard#/&channel=RES_BUY

You have to laugh at all the people who are saying they'd never buy a mid terrace. Absolutely no use to the OP!

There's nothing wrong with your house OP, you don't need to change the dining table for a rectangular one, nor will a pot outside the front door make a jot of difference. If you find a house and want to sell quickly, you'd need to consider reducing the price. The market is so unsure at the moment, and with inflation on the up, people are worried about interest rates.

A mid terrace is excellent if it suits your budget and your family's needs!
Plus... good insulation.

so #36 sold for £299,950 in Jan 2025.
I understand why the EA says do not drop further as that style of house in the postcode has certainly sold for higher in the last 4 years (attached garage, mid terrace, 3 bed, for example £343k in 2022)

But the market is at best static, not seeing even a modest 3% rise in 12 months.

I don’t know what’s funny about it. Everybody knows end terrace houses are more popular than mid terrace houses, that’s why end terrace houses are usually priced higher. Nothing OP can do about it but it will be one reason why the house hasn’t sold.

I would assume that the EA takes into account it's a mid terrace with the pricing?

The photos need to be redone , they are not very crisp or sharp.
For example the photos of the living room it’s hard to tell if it’s brown carpet or dark brown wooden flooring ?
They need to be brighter and lighter.

Sorry, haven't RTFT so I may be repeating but the photos, generally, are bad and the first photo especially so.
I went on StreetView and it took me ages to work out which was your house, to match reality to your photo.
SV shows a nice, green suburb. Your first photo shows too much tarmac and makes the house look tiny. It's a shame you took out the front garden; it's too bleak without it. It needs re-shooting with less sky, more house and more greenery.

What's that lump next to your neighbour's garage? Is it a noisy heat source air pump?

Firstly, can I say that I think you are really brave in inviting everyone to comment on your house.

My view is that serious house buyers look past decor and furniture and focus on layout, room sizes and, most importantly, price.

Yours seems to be priced about right for the area and I think it’s just a stagnant market together with the high cost of moving. I think some people are staying put for much longer than they used to and then doing a big jump to a forever home.

fingers crossed a lovely buyer is just around the corner for you.

Kerb appeal ... get a nice planted pot at the front. Get rid of containers on top of kitchen cupboards ... sats "not enough storage" loud and clear.

Sometimes buyers are scrolling through loads of houses online. If the outside looks tatty or drab, people may just scroll on past or look quickly at a few rooms and move on. I do this . You need to make it visually appealing.

To be fair though that price was agreed late 2024. At that time base rate predictions were for some rapid borrowing cost reductions. Between July and November that year the base rate dropped by 0.5% and fatty boom boom at the bank of England was full of positive talk about rates coming down further - which they did.
Things have taken a 180 since... Now the predictions are for at least 2 interest rate increases for 2026 and another round of inflation. Inflation jumped again 10% last month and that's before many of the real increases start to feed through. Its a different scenario now and people are rightly worried about whats coming. That kind of negative sentiment has a serious effect on the market.

Well, not everyone can afford to scroll past - usually buyers have a particular budget. "Tatty or drab" is easily fixed. Wrong location or too expensive is another matter.

It's a good house with lots of good features at a sensible price.
I agree that the photos are a little sub-par, however.
I'd still view it though.

I agree that (whilst it's not my style of property, we always buy characterful, old houses) it's a fairly decent house once you get past the ugly frontage (and I can't talk, having recently purchased a Georgian cottage with butt-ugly integral garage door along the coast in West Sussex!).

However, internally there's mostly a sea of bland, clinical white with nothing to make a potential buyer feel they have to buy it! A feature such as that parquet should be emphasised (I can't see any reference to it in @BraOffPjsOn's listing - which tbh, is fairly basic without so much as a room-by-room description) as a desirable feature of the property. You can - just about - make out the parquet in some of the photos (mostly the dining area ones), but it deserves a mention as many buyers would see this as a starting point for an amazing mid-century decorating scheme! It's a shame the OP didn't take that cue and run with it imo.

Otherwise it's mainly down to price as always...although - and I appreciate things are vastly different to 2024 when we last sold - I disagree with the comment that you can't expect a significant increase in price over a relatively short time frame. We renovated a period house in rural Wales where properties were notoriously hard to shift even then (a few years previously during covid was a very different matter) and succeeded in selling for an increase of 230k over and above the price we'd paid six years earlier. One thing we ensured, however, was that our house stood out from the competition - it was featured in the local online paper, described as 'magical', which I have to admit it was.

I think the OP should replace the large sofa with something smaller that has a more mid-century vibe and lean into that look with a bit of strategically placed, inexpensive art. Lose the storage boxes/clutter and have the photos re-taken on a sunny day...plus get a far better description written up where features like the parquet are spelled out to prospective buyers. Even if you have to write this yourself - we've done this several times as even the best EAs sometimes write appalling descriptions!

Good luck!

It certainly looks a very well kept house. I'm not keen on stairs in the lounge area. And shared drive isn't great, i think it's just the poor market at the moment.,

It's not a shared drive.

From the floor plan , all the rooms seem very small . I would check to see if I could swap places between the living room and dining rooms , then build a partition wall followed by taking the wall out between the kitchen and dining rooms, making a kitchen diner . Obviously this all depends on where exactly the staircase is .

Surely the person considering buying the house would ce doing that if they wish to, not the person selling!

@winnieanddaisy It’s a nice idea to have a kitchen diner but OP’s would be north facing. Our lounge faces north so we have kept it a through room with the dining room for warmth and light.
OP’s south facing lounge has a window between two garages.

Having lived all over it is a mistake to think that prices in the North etc are a lot lower than in the South. Many properties in the North are on a par with the South. There often is not a vast difference.
There are rich, average and poorer parts everywhere.

As always, a selection of completely mad ideas, from starting major building works to changing the shape of a dining table. I think people just like these threads because it's a chance to slag off someone's house while feeling helpful.

OP, it's the price, which is to say that it's the price in this market. So either wait for a better market or drop the price. Your EA's advice is basically the former.

I think personally I would try and make it look a little more homely, softer lighting, textures, warmth. For example, I popped one of your photos into an AI image creator, and it came up with this. Personally, we’ve always gone with ‘selling a feeling’ making people think oh that looks like home, has always worked well for us ☺️! Good luck op.