What’s wrong with my house?

[Blueysothermother]

House been on the market since Easter, it’s in the catchment for the much sought after local grammar, well priced, was valued originally at £595,000. We had an offer for £575,750 which we accepted during the summer hols but then fell though due to reasons unrelated to the house. We need to relocate, so dropped the price, even though much larger than most houses in the surrounding streets and better parking. Estate agents can offer no constructive feedback that I can act upon. I get that it’s not all grey etc but it’s a period house and has a wealth of features intact. Any ideas?
www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/91344150

I think the OP has lived in the house for quarter of a century and probably hasn't been looking at houses for sale in that time. The reality is that people have definitely upped their game on kitchens and bathrooms, they have had to because everyone has to stretch themselves so much to buy houses they can't afford to then have to immediately replace the kitchen and bathrooms, and yes most people would now expect more than one bathroom in a family house.

When we bought our house 11 years ago nearly all the houses we looked at needed new kitchens and bathrooms, now houses we are looking at all seem to have been modernised. Pretending that scruffy bathrooms are period style just doesn't work, you can have period style fittings but very slickly fitted and finished.

The other pretence which will infuriate potential buyers is that it has a recently fitted kitchen. anyone can see that this is not true. The OP should look at the other houses for sale for 5 to 6 hundred thousand in her postcode, almost without exception they DO have recently fitted kitchens, kitchens with no trailing wires, plentiful and matching worktops, matching cupboards, no dodgy boxing in, no exposed pipes and cookers fit to be photographed rather than hidden.

@Blueysothermother if you really want to sell it, and you must be in profit on it now almost whatever you sell it for, just stop fantasising that it has 4 bedrooms and a kitchen and bathrooms that anyone but you would live with and reduce it by enough for someone to get it professionally refurbished (£75000?) It will sell.

There's really no need to be so unpleasant. It's not even as though it's constructive criticism, just nastiness for the sake of it.

Its not about RICS its about building regulations. They are two different things, if RICS fails to inform you about obviously failing building regs they can be sued so no matter what they 'say' about you being able to use it as a bedroom in your own home they WILL raise it on a survey to protect themselves.

You can sell houses that fail building regs, you can sell burnt out shells, houses that are condemned and even complete ruins. There is no law saying its 'unsellable' regardless of its state but listing it as having a room that legally doesn't meet the safety requirements of what you claim it is fraudulent advertising and it will come up during convenience and the bank won't like it, they buyers might also not like it and it could scupper the sale.

Why bother when you could just list it correctly.

But wouldn't this be a case of what building regs applied at the time the property was built/converted?

Eg, our former home had always had two (three if you count the small space between the two which we used as an office) interconnected spaces on the second floor, dating from when it was built in approx 1800. There was also no fire door into the second floor/attic rooms.

Our buyers (he was a fireman) had a full structural survey (in 2014) and no issues arose.

this. Also apparently if the room has a window that an adult can escape through and its less than 4.5 m above ground level. then building regs will pass it. I also understand that listed buildings can have issues that would not pass today's building regs, so its not black and white.

It's not a 4 bed. It's priced the same as actual 4 beds sold for with significantly more space, and about 100k more than all the 3 beds sold nearby in the last 1-2 years.

The market is worse now. At least take the price down to at least match the recently sold 3 beds in the same area (440 ish?) and be willing to take offers if you actually want to sell. An obviously list it as a 3 bed.

The vicinity to the football stadium is a massive turn-off for almost all people, just the traffic if you want to come or go on a match day is a PITA, and traffic in Watford is bad anyway.

All the tatty old pipework needs boxing in properly and painted to match walls, wc looks none too good, outside back door needs cleaning/tlc. Looks good from the front but not so great on tidying up paintwork/old damp issues etc.

It will be the price. If you reduced it someone would overlook the bits above.

That just means the council can't force you to change it not that it can't cause issues with mortgage lending or buyers demanding reductions to price or insurances.

We were obviously lucky then, as there were no issues with our buyer's mortgage (we were cash buyers when we purchased it), no issues with their survey and no requests for reductions or indemnity policies 😉