Would a five-bedroom house with a small kitchen put buyers off

[Lastgig]

Would you buy a 5 bed house with a 10ft kitchen?
We're trying to sell our house and to date have had no luck. It's a modern house.

We've been quoted silly money to take down a supporting wall between the kitchen and the breakfast room. A new small kitchen would cost us ( due to family contacts) £5k. The wall plus new flooring and moving gas/electrics £25k.
I do need a more accessible kitchen due to my disability but I also need to downsize.

We have a garden and plumbing in the garage . Tbh someone could use the whole space including the utility. I didn't need that as we're now only three peeps.
Im not to healthy atm and want a smaller house

I was going to suggest this. If you rewrite the particulars to show there are existing plans to enlarge the kitchen, and that the price of the property has been reduced to reflect the need for some improvements, you might get a bit more interest. I’d far rather take on the work and design a kitchen the way I want it than pay a higher purchase price for one done to someone else’s taste, but I appreciate I’m probably in the minority.

Either way, a ‘top heavy’ house is often off-putting to buyers, so addressing the issue in the listing is one way of acknowledging that. A staggering number of people can’t read a floor plan (as evidenced so often on these threads!), but at least if potential issues are flagged in the listing, the viewers’ expectations are realistic, rather than people being instantly disappointed or put off because the layout isn’t what they’d imagined.

That wouldn’t put me off as I can see that it would be possible to easily knock through and the utility area keeps those things separate so you know that all the kitchen space is for cooking and eating. It will be photos or price.

i know you think your 18 year old kitchen is immaculate, but people want a new clean kitchen, they don’t want 18 years worth of someone else’s crumbs and grease. I just sold a house with a kitchen of that age and it looked perfect on the surface (granite counters and glass splash back so no much grout or scratches etc) and gloss white cupboards without a mark. But the buyers still took it all out and fitted a new one to their specs and their offer reflected that plan!

If you’re not even getting views you need new photos/write up and/or a new price. But tbh most people have £50k leeway so if it’s within the general vicinity of the right price they’ll offer a low amount. You just need them through the door first. I knocked £25k off the £325k house I was looking at and it was accepted. My buyers knocked £30k off the £650k house they bought from me.

@EnjoythemoneyJane I'm the same. I do my own kitchen and having had a brother that fitted half the town it don't worry me.
I've been seriously ill and need a downstairs bedroom but they get snapped up quickly. I've missed two in the last fortnight.
I don't like bungalows but they are in short supply or cost the same as my 5 bed for a two bed!

We had probs selling a 4 bed with small kitchen. So many people want gadgets on their worktops. Air Fryers, bread makers, mixers. We didn't have most of those. It was a surprise.

Agree with others that as long as house is priced to reflect the fact work would be needed to create a larger kitchen/diner it wouldn't put me off.

It wouldn't put me off because I like separate rooms so kitchen, dinning, utility would be perfect. But I think I might be in the minority 🙂

I actually really like that layout! I would like being able to do laundry away from where I cook, but still have a room open to the kitchen to eat breakfast etc. Plus it looks like a lovely kitchen. Is it wood? I always think good quality wood that has hinges that don’t drop after two years (looking at you, Wren), and that can be sanded and repainted, is a good investment as can last for decades and still be more attractive than a cheap new one. Fingers crossed the right buyer comes along for you.

I live in a five bed townhouse.

i’be been keeping an eye on the market because ideally I’d downsize. One identical to mine though just hung around on the market for nine months and sold at much lower than they originally put it in.

my downstairs and theirs is like yours - separate utility, WC and dining room.

it’s just not family friendly with small kids. Too many doors too many small spaces and you can’t keep an eye on small ones.

i have two adult kids and my mum so we’re all adults and it works for us but not for families…..

It would absolutely yes... I have a big house and a lot of bedrooms and it was the first thing we sorted, extended and knocked rooms together. Given how expensive it is and how disruptive, not a lot of people want to knock the guts out of something whilst they live there... We did and it was grim, looks great now but seriously cooking a Christmas dinner on a two hot plates and an oven on bricks!! I wouldn't recommend it.

Seeing the floorplan, that wouldn't put me off at all, it's nicely laid out, it's not a small pokey kitchen, I like the big window and that it opens into the breakfast room!

It's not for me I'm afraid. What's the point of 5 bedrooms, and then a tiny kitchen where you're struggling to store your tins and packets?

I bought my house because it has a big kitchen and then can be opened up to a conservatory, it’s only a 3 bed. You would assume a family that needs 5 bedrooms would like a larger kitchen but maybe a couple who just like an office each and a spare it’s not an issue,

It would depend on price like anything else.

Anywhere with a small kitchen would put me off, whether 2, 3 or 5 bed. We have a large kitchen/lounge/dinner in a flat we recently bought, which is a reasonable compromise if a 2/3 bed flat where space is premium. But in a house, yes. A kitchen is generally felt to be the centre of a home - can you remove a wall and open it up into the lounge/family area?

@FormerCautiousLurker we can open it up but the cost is £25k.
If I revamp the current kitchen £5k

I think it's a lovely layout. It would totally suit us.
Don't panic, it's very slow market

You can easily find your house listing from those photos, if you have a stalker I would take them down OP.

That looks fine, it's bigger than my kitchen! And you have a utility room as well (my washing machine is my kitchen) so don't have to deal with that as well.

I love the house, private development AONB small number of houses. Great neighbourhood. I just can't do the stairs or the garden ( not big but not tiny). We have a fabulous village shop, buses for schools. I was a commuter. London 50 minutes.
Other things have sold although they are sticking now. I am three storey and we have another house opposite the same but they knocked through years ago. It's been great for adult DC as the both had their own bathroom. I get it's not for little children but hey at 13+ you don't want them in your bathroom!

Could you get planning permission and include that in the listing? Even a carefully worded space to expand kitchen might help.

Yes, unfortunately it would. We have a five bedroom house with three of us living here and even then a small kitchen would put us off. If we actually needed a five bed house, even more so.

If it was clear there was scope to knock through and create a large kitchen diner that would change my mind. But I’d not have expected it to cost as much as you’ve been quoted so that’s eye opening!

@sweetpickle2 oh thank you. It's fine. He can't come near me and he will lose his career if he breaches it.
I guess I'm panicking.

OP, I think swapping the kitchen out in the current space is a waste of time and money. There’s nothing about your existing kitchen that’s off-putting other than the restricted space.

If the wall behind the cooker is non-supporting, would it be a cheaper and quicker job to remove the top half? You could put an extractor vent in the ceiling above. It means you’d lose a bit storage but visually the space would open right up and show the potential of the room.

Agree with @Aluna, though - the housing market has flatlined in lots of areas, so the fact you’ve had so little interest is not necessarily anything to do with the layout of your house.

Ok, so what you can do, is speak to an estate agent - a GOOD one will sell the potential of opening up the kitchen and say that thequotes to do that have come in around the £25k mark. The EAs near me say that kitchens can be very personal, so if you spend money to make it look better, it may actually be a waste of money because whoever buys it will rip it out anyway and they’d rather reduce the offer price to reflect the work they’ll need to do? One EA reported absolutely stunning, brand new kitchens being ripped out because the buyers didn’t like it. They can be very marmite.

I’d be wary of spending any money, but get advice on how to pitch it and make sure EA is on the same page. The advertising deets can say - ‘spacious living area with scope for remodelling to incorporate luxury kitchen’ for example, so buyers are flagged at the outset?

ETA somehow missed your floor plan. Honestly I would leave as is and get EA to sell the idea of knocking through. It has great potential downstairs to do this.