Why is my in-laws' gorgeous house not selling?!

[irisetta]

What is wrong with this listing? Some back story - my in-laws have been desperate to sell up for a while to be nearer to us. They live near Portsmouth, we are in St Albans. They have a beautiful house! It's 5 minutes walk from the beach in Lee-on-Solent, it's right next to the High Street but super quiet. Huge back garden. Beautifully renovated home, when they bought it it hasn't been touched in at least 30 years. It looks immaculate. No it doesn't have the open plan kitchen diner, but what there is, is perfect.

For the first 7 months while they were listing the house, the estate agent was effing up the RightMove listing quite badly - they were only appearing for people looking for bungalows, when it is not a bungalow 🤦 I noticed this recently. 🙄 After pointing it out, it's since been amended to appear to anyone looking for a 3 bedroom detached property in Lee-on-Solent.

Anyway, now that it's appearing to everyone who might want it, AND they've reduced the price (too much, IMO), my mum-in-law is somehow still convinced that the lovely estate agent is now doing his level best for them - still no viewings after a couple of weeks. And they've only EVER had 3 viewings, ever since it was first listed those 7 months ago - none of which were even proceedable. Thoughts, lovely ladies of Mumsnet?

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/173477669

I don’t agree RoseField.
I agree the house is overpriced. So the fixtures and fittings do not warrant top of the range ?
Many people will have similar bathrooms ( I didn’t comment on the kitchen). And I wanted to point out the OTT comments on gutting etc. Seemed too much. Many people live in properties worth say 450 to 500. With similar bathrooms.

Its in Lee on the solent, which is a small town just far enough away from Southampton to be a bit too far and just far enough from Portsmouth to be a bit too far - one of the many former English sea side holiday towns with not much going on.

I've just found this video of it from the estate agents. There are some nice pictures of the back of the property and the garden that aren't included in the Rightmove listing - and should be! It looks bigger from the back too.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYG8EFaNokv

So it was you!

It is an overpriced bungalow.

You've been given lots of food for thought - simple and cost-free changes like removing extra bits of junk like the treadmill in the lounge room, fussy quilts, and stuffed toys all over the place, messy book collections in the smaller upstairs bedroom, and miscellaneous clutter. Also the ceiling treatment in the sunroom.

The thread is pretty well agreed the flag must go, and if it's not their flag it should be photoshopped out of the frontage photo. The campervan out of the drive would help. The astroturf is offputting and ideally should be replaced with turf.

You could certainly spend a bit on making the front area look less desolate, either way, even by moving some of the potted plants from the back garden if you want to save money there. Include more angles of the garden if that's a selling point. Etc etc etc. But it will still be overpriced.

but the downstairs bedroom is small. I'd agree if it was bigger but remodelling the interior to make it bigger is going to be an expensive pain

This.

I agree with this.

What a waste of time it would be spending lots of time and money on it when a quick change of price will probably sort it.

I like the bright colours. I like the white bathrooms apart from the narrow strip of tile going round the middle. I hate modern bathrooms with their black and grey.

I absolutely hate the soulless look of some places these days. When I bought my current house it had hastily been redecorated in beige and greige. I couldn't stand it and only two weeks in I painted my bedroom blue just so I didn't have to wake up in a greige hell.

But people aren't not interested because of any of that, they're avoiding it because it's massively overpriced by hundreds of thousands going by what others have said about prices in the area. And pretending it's not a two bed dormer bungalow with a random downstairs room designated as another bedroom isn't going to change that.

I think this post - from someone whose parents are in the market for a similar home - sums it all up, and why it needs to be listed as a bungalow.

The options though in many cases are

1. reduce price by 75k
2. spend £15k and obtain listing price.

Staging and making key changes can save significant amounts of money (assuming there is cash available to access).

Exactly this.

The houses and bathrooms of anyone who's not selling are immaterial. A few of the remarks on here are obnoxious, but wouldn't be any less so if they were made by people with pristine, ready for the market homes. This is a property that is priced in a wildly unrealistic manner. Part of the reason for that is that many buyers would feel the place needed a huge amount doing, and I say this as someone who likes blue walls much more than the neutral tones being (sensibly) suggested. The state of my own home is irrelevant, because it isn't available to the public.

Bungalow/chalet/house - whatever it is it is overpriced. Doesn’t matter what you paid for it, or what you think it’s worth now, it’s only worth what someone will pay to buy it. And clearly there are no takers at the current sale price. The current political and economic uncertainties are against you, and I daresay that won’t change for quite a while. I’d declutter ruthlessly, and get better pictures and marketing, and drop the price to a more realistic level. Even so, you may find that, like us, your in laws won’t be able to afford to move, or at any rate not to a property they’d would like. We have spent a few bob on adapting our house - a stairlift and a walk in shower - so it suits us better as we age, as the costs of moving to anything/anywhere we’d want are out of reach.

That photo of the house from the back garden shows the property much more sympathetically than the weird utility/sunroom floor plan suggests.

Why on earth isn't it in the listing?

Tbh 16 photos isn't very many.

But it's overpriced, so 🤷

Price is the issue in my opinion. If you look on Rightmove for the town, the majority of 3 bedroomed properties are below £500K, in fact some are between £450-480K mark. The properties in your in-laws bracket are 4 or 5 bedroomed.

Yes, your in-laws property is lovely, but it's overpriced for a 3 bedroomed, even for a bungalow.

I appreciate that perhaps in your in-laws road might be a road where properties fetch more money. However, the property market is dire at the moment, it's a buyers market, not a sellers.

They're not getting viewings because I suspect the guide price originally set on the EA's advice was too high to start. It's still too high, even though your in-laws have reduced the price.

Look on Rightmove yourself, and you will see where I'm coming from.

But that is because it is overpriced, not because it was listed as a bungalow. I work in property and do quite a bit on Rightmove. You need to be listed as a bungalow so anyone filtering for bungalows sees it. Those people looking for a 3 bed house are unlikely to filter to exclude bungalows statistically so will see it as well.

A quick look on the right move link you shared shows a bungalow, with upstairs bedrooms sold last year for significantly lower than only a mile away.

Again I don't know the area so could be that but as many have said it's the price for a bungalow

www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/details/a0271438-78ac-4615-848d-273ecbe420a6

They need to reduce this by a lot more than £75k. And spending £15k will just mean they still have a vastly overpriced property but a lot less savings, or even a new loan to finance.

That's a nasty thing to say

Wow! That's much nicer. I can't quite see the bath panel, though.

It feels a bit "neither one thing not the other" - old people who want a bungalow don't want two upstairs bedrooms and a massive garden, and people with kids probably don't want to sleep on a different floor to them. It's not really a bungalow, but the first pic makes it look like one (can't see a way to change that) - it might be that people who are old and don't want stairs are looking at it and then realising it's got stairs and looking elsewhere, while younger people are looking at the pic, thinking "nah, bungalow, not for me" and scrolling on by without looking closer.

Also, grannyish decor. Aertex (sp?) ceilings are naff and expensive to change.

It also looks like that giant arch thing in the living / dining room makes it impossible to position a sofa anywhere sensible, although it's hard to be sure.

I think it looks awful. Small and poky compared to the one under discussion.

Absolutely. Spending money on it is a waste, in this climate. Just reduce the price.
I think people are still in that "staging the house" vibe of about 20 years ago, when it was a different market altogether.

It went for a far lower price, and, imo, is a better property.

I can't tell from the photos if the ceilings are just shiny or if they are a bit textured. Textured ceilings say 'asbestos' to me. That and the astro turf would say no for me.

The comparison bungalow looks to have been next to a block of flats, so very much overlooked. However it says 4 bedrooms so not going to be that small. No garage though, no floorplan and I bet the buyer changed that kitchen.

Bungalows are always more expensive than a house of the same size as there are few of them.

Think about your target buyer. Is this aimed at someone nearing retirement? Could it be a family home? Too expensive for first time buyer. Is it for someone downsizing or someone stepping up? What income and expenditure do you expect your buyer to have?
Bungalows are supposed to be in demand. However, the market is not good. No idea why houses are being built everywhere.
I think the garden and parking are big selling points. The dormer windows are to the back of the property, an external photo of these are needed. The front upstairs windows aren't particularly attractive.
The conservatory or whatever is very cluttered. I don't like the roof blind. It could be a good selling point if we could see how big it is.
I think 3 people could live there comfortably, 4 would be a bit of a push.
As for kitchens and bathrooms, I thought most people upgraded when they move house. I change bathroom about every 7 years. Kitchen less often. I am about to have my 4th different kitchen fitted. I'm on my 5th bathroom.