No offers after months on the market, are we house blind?

[Dandelionkiller]

Been on the market for a few months now, loads of viewings but no offers! I honestly can’t see the problem and I’m worried I’m house blind at this point.

this is the listing: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/88856211

i honestly don’t think it’s the price. There are unextended, unrenovated houses on for £20k less the next road over.

it’s also a fair price - we paid 550k in 2017, based on inflation it would be 750k now but that just isn’t supported by the area.

weve done lots to maintain it in that time - new boiler, washing machine, dishwasher, fridge. We replaced the laminate floors downstairs with wood. We changed the purple vinyl bathrooms to nice tile. It was meant to be our forever home so none of this was to make a profit.

bits I know are of; we’re a bus ride away from a train station, but I think this is reflected in the price. The carpets upstairs need to be replaced - this was the case when we moved in but we kept putting it off as we were planning a loft conversion.

tbe feedback has been perplexing - one viewer said we’d made the house too traditional and they would have to redo the kitchen / bathrooms to modernise, but I think they are pretty neutral?

what can I do? Is the market just a bit rubbish at the moment?

Honestly, I think the price is a steal for the location. I agree it falls between “move in ready” and “fixer upper”. It’s most likely the market. Think of who you’re buyer likely is, I’d guess moving from a flat, which are not selling right now in London, so like you they may be sitting, waiting to make an offer once they get one. That would explain the second viewings.

I have just looked at this thread and read some of the comments. I see you are already making some changes, moving the desk and monitors out of the master is the biggest one.

i won’t mention the front of the house as you are addressing that.
in fairness both of these are shown in photos so shouldn’t be a deal breaker.

what struck me in the photos were, the rugs, they seem undersized with odd placement, unanchored on the floor, I think this draws attention to the carpet.

the right rugs can really add texture and colour so it might be worth browsing some images.
your box bedroom is small, I think a crisp nicely made single bed would improve that. Can you move that dolls house?
present it as a nice space to sleep and read, it is not big enough to play in.

the mismatched white furniture in the other bedroom gives me furnished renter vibes. Plus, we ran out of storage so added another cupboard. Any chance of extra decluttering or storage to lose one of them?

Personally, I would be put off by the shower directly in front of the window. The ideal thing would be too have blinds in the glazing to solve the privacy issue. Or failing that the opaque glass, I find the patterned glass outdated. I say that as someone who never closes the blind in their bathroom, as we aren’t overlooked, but I don’t shower in front of the window. It just struck me in your photos as something I wouldn’t like.

I like your reception rooms, but I think that is where you are off balance. It seems a lot of adult space and lacking child/family space. With the open plan area could you move things around to make it feel more family oriented? There is a bit too much white furniture some brighter prints could help. Thinking Oliver Bonas fun Style, rather than traditional, they even have a go to the water and swim print, which ties in with your proximity to the Lido.

I like your kitchen, and understand how you make it work for you. I don’t like the run of units in the dining area. I don’t like the plinth area looks like a pain to clean, it looks stark. Hate to say the word but “styling” this looks like the classic place for styling, not necessarily how you would chose to live in a space, but make it look appealing. Is this where your dishwasher is? A shelf with nice crockery, and glasses, a coffee station etc.

i think the main problem might be your target buyers. If you are getting viewers that are top of their budget, the textured wallpaper in the hallway and the need for new carpets upstairs feels like it is too much to take on.
if you get buyers who see potential in the loft conversion they need to see how the downstairs works as family space. I don’t get that from your current set up.

That said it’s your home and I wish you luck in being able to move on, it will be right for someone, at the right price.

One thing I'd strongly encourage anyone buying at the moment to do is to put in cheeky offers!

We're selling, and once we've sold, we have several properties that have been hanging on the market for a few months that we're absolutely hoping to lowball.

I'm philosophical about the whole thing purely because we're in the same position as everyone else in the chain - selling in a shitty market. There's no point getting angsty about it, because it affects us all similarly.

Yes, and this could be a reason for lack of offers. Op is asking for offers over, so she's already told buyers cheeky offers won't be accepted

^ that said, if you don't ask you don't get.

if I felt there was nothing to lose (ie if I was prepared to walk away), I'd make an offer if I felt the asking price was unreasonable and could justify my offer. Vendors' decision whether to reject or counter with an offer they would be prepared to go with.

i don't agree with randomly slicing off £000 just for the hell of it, if there is nothing wrong with the property and the price is set realistically, but if it's overpriced, then why not say so by bidding lower.

I think that's fair enough. They could get a similar deal wherever they're buying.

Oh, I don't mind offending sellers, even if they put OIEO, though I know that others won't.

The house I love is gorgeous, but badly reconfigured (it could be a straightforward 4 bed upstairs, but instead, they have three bedrooms and two dressing rooms upstairs, plus a downstairs bedroom - but you can easily make it a 4 bed upstairs.) and the listing is misleading. The price is too much for what others would consider a 3 bed, and too much if you're going to have to bugger about making it a 4 bed.

At least I hope nobody snatches it!

Asking prices are made up, and 'offers over' means nothing. OP has decided what their house is worth based on what they paid for it some years ago, but the market clearly doesn't agree.

Either they'll soften their opinion eventually and accept a much lower offer after wasting another 6+ months, or they won't be moving.

Just a comment on the “Offers over” thing - when we were selling our last house the EAs put “Offers over” without discussing it with us. We kind of accepted they knew what they were doing. It was only reading some comments on here that made me question it and we asked the EAs to change it. They were surprised we had an issue with it and said it was common practice. So it might not have been the OP who asked for “Offers over.”

Sorry to hear they were dead, I suppose your house price doesn"t matter then.

Good advice, not getting a good vibe from the AB government so far, they are coming across like a Uni debating society vanity project, bond market is not going to gel with them IMO.

Kitchen and third bedroom would put me off. Space allocation just doesn’t work- huge dining room is unused space, IMO. And with two reception rooms, you have a lot of wasted space and don’t have the space where you need it. Just speaking for myself. The layout is really unworkable- and once you see it, it probably looks like it’s not some thing that could easily or inexpensively be fixed.

No one surely just allows an EA to advertise their house without checking the details?

@ByTheSeas - oh we definitely checked the details! DH (accountant) read the contract so closely he found a mistake that was on all their printed contracts! But when they put the details up on Rightmove they put “Offers Over”. Everything else was as expected and we saw it but didn’t query it as thought it was normal. I have just had a quick look on RM at houses for sale in our old location and quite a few have “Offers over” on. Funnily enough our old house is SSTC recently and it’s not how they have listed it this time. It’s ’Guide Price’.

A lot of people probably do, they think the EA is the "expert".

Agree with this

My parents bought a house that had a kitchen under the stairs - a room about 1.2x2m, and an awkward shape, with the stairs in too.

It was two houses knocked into one, and there was a massive stone wall preventing reconfiguration.

The ONLY way you could fix it was a) relocating the staircase to make sense of the rooms upstairs or b) converting one of the downstairs rooms into a kitchen diner and treating the kitchen as a sort of pantry/utility.

But they never saw how hugely undesirable the kitchen was to anyone normal. They returned lots of other parts of the house, and put in a new bathroom - but removed the shower!

They had to take the hit when they sold, because it was a house that almost nobody else would want unless they wanted to do a lot of work on a weird bog standard terrace, when you could simply buy any of the normal ones in the village.

More fool them.

All the EA wants is a sale and their commission.

But many are stupid and go about it the wrong way.

You won"t get a sale though advertising at a daft price, that is why so many EA"s are going bust.

Mortgage rates are through the roof. That's why you're not selling. The whole market is slow for this reason.

No, they aren’t. 5 - 6% isn’t “going through the roof”.

I know. When I got my first mortgage, interest rates were 15%.
Some people have no idea.

Estate Agents want a sale it actually makes very little odds to them if a house sells for 100 grand less when you look at relative percentage percentage terms particularly what actually ends up in the pockets of the Estate Agent themselves unless they’re self-employed.
So they’d rather get your house sold for less than not at all