Struggling to Sell our house

[TigersoulBlue]

Hi Everyone.
I hope you don't mind me posting here to get some advice about selling our house, we use an Agent, and its been on the market for 868 days, we have had some interest but nothing enough for anyone to put in an offer. I would be grateful on your views, I have tough skin so please be honest. all the other houses that are very similar in this area have sold for similar prices.
www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/148421291#/?channel=RES_BUY

It doesn't help you much but in my experience, people buying rurally want more privacy and it looks like there's none. Can you not enclose the garden more? A hedge would be ideal but it's a bit late for that now.

I agree with others that you need to make more of an effort to show what's possible, especially in that room with the chair and nothing else.

4 bed house (so potentially 4/5 people) and only 1 sofa in the living room? Where do guests sit?

I agree with @ThatOldWomanNextDoor - photo no.5 needs to be the first on your listing @TigersoulBlue! It better identifies which property is actually for sale and shows your home's external character features beautifully. That's a very easy change - and one I can't believe you haven't addressed!

Without wishing to go over old ground, if you really want to sell, you need to make your property stand out from the competition for the right reasons. Not because it's the one with the potty things, but because of some specific desirable/aspirational characteristic the others don't have - or because it's priced significantly lower than your competitors and therefore represents best value for money!

In a period home that aspirational feature could be, eg, a stunning farmhouse kitchen or well-appointed bathroom, a fabulous original fireplace or well-stocked cottage garden. Or something as simple as a room perfectly presented for family life, eg sufficient seating around a lovely focal point...that fireplace (if it existed) again?

We've renovated and sold seven period properties over the years and even back in the day before RM/Zoopla were a thing, we were conscious of good presentation, staging a house for sale and drawing attention to whatever features there were in the photos for the 'brochure'. We also always price realistically to attract a prompt sale - we once were told by a neighbour in our village that property there took an average of twelve months to find a buyer. We found one in five weeks.

Obviously, if there's no period fireplace, farmhouse kitchen or whatever, that's not going to work - but your particular property has pretty windows (with a far reaching view) and at least one characterful beam. If the windows were dressed beautifully with lovely curtains, looking out onto some actual plants/an aspirational outdoor dining set and the rooms painted in period colours, eg F&B (which could be colour matched if you don't want the expense of the real thing), with the furniture better set out it would look infinitely better. Not to mention more expected from a rural property!

However, price is the key - as previously noted, unfortunately you most likely overpaid when you purchased, but that's done now. In order to move on, it's obvious you're going to have to take a hit. It hurts, but that's life - if you buy at/over peak price, do nothing to improve the property and the market drops, you either have to accept the loss or stay where you are.

We lost money on a house purchased in 2014 as we didn't add value (other than removing acres of wood chip wallpaper/re-skimming), but bought the next one cheaply (a repossession that wasn't being shown to its best advantage), added a bespoke kitchen and bathrooms, restored sympathetically, highlighted the original features, created a stunning garden...and made a huge profit when we sold in 2024.

Obviously the market is very different now, but in your position I'd take it off over Christmas, make a few positive changes, get a good, local EA and some great new photos taken, lower the price and start again in the new year. Good luck!

might have been. As I said we were safely out of the financial storm, as were the people we cared about so while I remember it, my most abiding memory is of a particularly unlikeable boastful colleague of my late husband's who took a financial caning over it.

The braying about property is very quiet again at the moment, quiet before the storm?

It's lovely, but it's the sort of place I'd like to stay on holiday, not live.

Too close the neighbours, with too much shared space for people who want real rural, and too far from amenities for everyone else, so actually what you're saying about the countryside feel is probably a negative rather than a positive.

So, the price needs to reflect the small target market.

dunno. maybe it will be a soft landing this time?

Can"t see it, people are in debt for everything now, back in the day it was usually just the house, any uptick in rates is squeezing people on multiple levels of their spending now.

Who do YOU think the house is suitable for? You need to stage it for them.

Personally I'd say families are out, when my kids were little I'd want to be on the same floor as them, going up and down stairs, or faffing with stair gates looses a lot of shine when its 3x between 2 and 5am. Older kids also out unless the family are desperate for bedrooms maybe for a blended family where some kids are only there on the weekend, there isn't enough space to have a table 5 people can sit around and enough sofas for 5 people which is sort of your minimum for a family home, but realistically I'd be looking for a kitchen-diner seperate to the lounge as a minimum so I have two usable spaces. I don't understand where someone has mentioned people not needing a loo on the same floor, I've always needed the loo at certain points in my cycle during the night so would never consider one on another floor, small children are often up to the loo a few times in the night, I have two tweens and one still gets up for the loo a few times a week. I wouldn't have anyone's bedroom not on the same floor as a toilet for that reason.

So for me I'd stage it aspirationally for a couple. Bedroom, guest room or room for one child on the middle floor, top floor is your work from home study (is the internet good? that was something we checked for any house we were considering) and the other room set up as a second living space/book nook/craft room/occassional room type space. At the moment the fact this space isn't really used by the people who live there will be signalling to buyers its not an easily usable space and a bit of a waste. Outside make sure there is a pretty table and chairs corner, that's private from next door, nicely photographed. Include an aerial photo if you can clearly showing your plot, parking, other access. If those views are such a huge selling feature then show them, but also understand most people buy with the idea that views can be changed at any point so they're a bonus rather than a core feature.

Staging the kitchen/living space is going to be key because if you can't extend then you're really committed to how little space there is down there, it's a very top heavy house, so make the most of it and demonstrate how you can get both an eating and a seating area suitable for the size of property/family you're pitching for.

@VikingsandDragons That's an essay! I doubt OP is listening because it's around a month since she posted, and no change.

Same agent, same photos, no sign of wanting to take any advice.

She's in a kind of secure zone because the house they want is not being snapped up which makes me think it's a bit of a 'dud' in some way but she can't step back and see that. It's hard to believe that if there are other viewers of that house they can't see (like she says) it just needs cosmetic work.
Maybe it's more fundamental and in time she will end up with another house that has limited appeal.

Sorry fast typist and we've just gone through the selling a house that initially wouldn't sell process (swapped agents and ended up going for over asking price so in a challenging market I'd argue a good agent can more than earn their fee).

Yes, rising borrowing costs won"t help either, the time for a decent price cut is now if the OP wants to sell.

While a bad agent can have a negative impact, a good agent has a best a very marginal impact. The key is price.

Absolutely crazy that OP hasn't made a SIGNIFICANT price cut

Agreed, all the agent has to do is show people the house, the price sells it.

Lots of people can"t quite get their heads round the fact that high prices were due to (very) low interest rates, and also the fact that people thought they were buying an asset that would always increase in value.