What do you need to do to a house to sell it?

[FinishedAtFifty]

I always thought I’d sell my house really easily because it’s one of the cheapest options in a desirable village with a great school. However now I’ve got my kids through school the market seems very different to what I imagined.

I don’t really want to do anything to my house as I get ripped off being on my own. It took two attempts to get both the boiler and bathroom changed. Three different decorators. After this experience I stopped trying to get things done and just lived with it.

What do I realistically have to do it? It needs new external brickwork, new kitchen, new internal doors, decorating etc.

People don’t seem to want to live with other peoples choices so I feel like even if I decorated , changed the kitchen a buyer would rip it out etc.

Big clear out and tidy. Big thing is to
make sure the house looks “looked after”. Holes in the doors make it look like it hasn’t been. So I would get those sorted

Basics

Clean & declutter
Shampoo carpets
Refresh paintwork
Ensure paintwork is neutral colours
Employ a good window cleaner to maximise light
Fix any obvious issues such as dripping taps as they indicate poor maintenance
Air the house, get rid of any odours
Improve kerb appeal, find a local gardener to weed and prune the front garden, Cut the lawn regularly, add pots etc if necessary to avoid bleakness

Take your own photos. Some estate agents are genuinely ham-fisted

When were selling ours we made sure it looked clean and tidy for viewings (behind the scenes such as under the bed was a horror story though 😂) the kids had scuffed bottom of walls in the hallway so I got a sample paint to touch up and it did the job! Our front door was chipped and didn’t look the best but house sold. Sometimes we see the flaws a lot more inside than a prospect buyer and my thought process was they will probably make changes anyway! A survey will hopefully pick up the issues with the brickwork and you may have to take that into account regarding the price. Good luck!

To successfully sell in a difficult market, as we have now, you just need a frank conversation with your estate agent.
Ask them at what price point can they guarantee to attract multiple interested parties. Tell them you want to generate competitive interest in the house.
Agents want to make sales - and if you approach the marketing with this attitude you will sell. If your fortunate you might even do a little better than the price they suggest.
If you really want to move the last thing you should say to the agent is "I need as much as possible " or " I dont want to be giving it away".
The market is headed down so you need to get ahead of the falls. If you do you will sell quickly. If you dont you may miss a window and end up stuck or selling for even less in future. We are at the beginning of a reset in values for sure.

In which case the solution for this is to try and sell them as a job lot (all together) for demolition and planning granted or pretty much granted to rebuild.

Price it realistically, give it a clean, possibly a fresh lick of paint - some rooms will be fine after the walls have had a good clean. Replace the doors that have got holes in them.

Leave the upgrades to the buyers, if they don't leak or are not rotting away and can be lived with then they can upgrade in their own time.

I wouldn't worry about the garden wall, again buyers might decide to replace with a fence or hedge or a new wall.

From observation (nosying at RightMove far too much) anything near me that sells quickly is “done” - relatively new and on trend bathrooms and kitchen, decent and coherent flooring and very tidy “landscaped” gardens. What doesn’t sell very quickly are ordinary looking houses that most people live in - those with dated fitted wardrobes and sad looking spare rooms and a 15 year old kitchen and outdated bathroom tiles. Swirly carpets and avacado bathrooms still sell if the bones are good.
I think most people buy so close to the top of their budget and really don’t want to replace things and people have much higher standards than a generation ago.
The trick is to be very uncluttered but “staged” rather than stripped bare and very clean and “looked after”. Replacing bathroom sealing and tidying grouting, replacing kitchen door handles, having good bedding, and making sure paintwork is immaculate goes a long way.

IMO if they can"t pay a painter and a carpet fitter they are not ready to buy/move house, but there has been a gradual move away from "basic skills" to people just not able to take on anything practical, back in the 80"s or 90"s I think lots of people would have done the painting themselves, and many would have had a bash at laying the carpet themselves as well, might not always have turned out super professional but you could hide the bad bits with plants etc.

But as there is already masses of unsold housing stock this could also get zero interest.

Not sure, I think some were still unsold, but were "thousands" of people lining up to buy them? No.

No, some things just don"t sell, houses that have fallen below a certain level of repair and future profitability are one of them, you need to understand that just because something has a roof and walls it is not some rare diamond or mineral that people will compete over, even if it is selling for 2 quid.

Surely the land still has a value even if the house is. I good?

Is no good

There are 7 properties on the market in our relatively small Gloucestershire village of about 647 houses, of which ours is one. There are also two properties that came onto the rental market.

the two rentals were snapped up in a couple of weeks, one of which was £1,800 / month rent 😱

of the other properties, a semi-detached came onto the market about 4 weeks ago and has an under offer sign up already. It was on at £295,000 and looked modern inside, obviously quite a lot of reno, but the outside looks quite scruffy especially the garden.

they key thing is the price. It sold because it was a very attractive price, edge of village. For us we wouldnt particularly like the position at a crossroads half way through the village, but the purchasers are probably thinking it's a very affordable price, will be able to move in and there is nothing needing to be done to the place in a desperate hurry. All they need to do is spend £3-4K giving the garden a complete overhaul.

at a time like this, anything with a 2 in front of it stands out as being good value and if someone is already on the property ladder, they probably won't need a big mortgage.

I wouldn't even attempt to fit a carpet 😱, but I've renovated 3 properties from top to bottom in terms of decore including garden 'total makeovers'. All self-taught. Need is the mother of invention. It isn't that difficult once you get going. I've made a few mistakes along the way but nothing catastrophic. Saved £000's.

nowadays we get a decorator in and the most I do is lots of tea and biscuits.

Yes, but there would be costs involved in developing the land and an ordinary buyer wouldn"t have the resources or expertise of a professional developer, and a developer might not have a use for it, say they wanted to build flats but flats were not selling, they could end up incurring a loss after development costs? Also we were originally discussing buying property, not land?

I agree about starting with a "2", that jumps out to people now.

Yes we were discussing property. But part of the value of property is the land it’s built on. So a property that is falling down will still have value to a developer who wants the land.

Anyway looks we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one, but I know who the majority of mumsnetters would agree with.

Me?

I was in a somewhat similar situation to you eight months ago. My wife passed away a couple of years ago, and I was preparing to move to a retirement home.

Please note I am in Canada.

My house is in a good neighbourhood, but needed a lot of cosmetic work, and the probability of a couple of major repairs in the foreseeable future - the roof and the furnace. I wanted a quick sale, partly to get rid of the house, and partly to avoid getting into gardening.

Taking the advice of the agent, the only repair I did was to repaint the front door. The agent wanted the entire house emptied (a lot of items were stuffed into the garage). She then arranged for cleaning, staging, and photography.

The house was listed at $449k. I got three offers on the first day, $500k, $501k, and $520k. I took the $520k offer. The purchaser also wanted a quick closing, which suited me. In addition to the agent's fee, the cost for cleaning, staging, and photography was $3503.

In addition to the 30 or so photographs, there was a somewhat frenetic video posted online.

No

I don"t think anyone on the thread agrees with you, let alone the whole of MN! The 5k flat example posted earlier, almost free in context of the property bubble we have had, should clearly show that the idea that "thousands" of people would line up to buy any wreck of a property because it is cheap isn"t reality.

Like I said, let’s agree to disagree, and move on with our lives.

Ok, try not to buy too many "projects", most people don"t make any money on them.