Beginning to Think Our House Won't Currently Sell at Any Price

Hatster

I don't know if this will be any help, but we've just sold our house (to the second people that came to view), and I think that some of it was down to our estate agent's good sense about who would want to buy our particular house, and then marketing it very much at that group. Our house is pretty small. It's theoretically a 3-bed, but in practice has 1 single (bigger than yours, but we use it as a study) and 1 double bedroom. We also have a studio / office in the garden. The agent said that we needed to work out who was going to buy it, and market it at precisely that set of people. He felt that with the size, it needed to be a couple with no children, but that it couldn't be anyone too shaky on their feet, or they would be put off by the stairs. He also felt that we should market to someone who had a need for a studio / office - i.e. someone who worked from home. On the plus side for us, he felt that the type of buyer he was imagining would be willing to spend more to get a period house with a beautiful courtyard and garden, and that we shouldn't worry that there was a larger ex-council house nearby on the market for less. His concern was that people would do a drive-by and be concerned that the house looked very small from the front, so he organised a floor-plan, to show that what you see from the front is almost none of the house. On the website, they had 3 key photos, with the main one being a picture of the courtyard, and then smaller photos of the front of the house and the living room. His logic was that this was to show off the things that made the house different and appeal to the professional couple. He also flagged up the studio / office a lot in the marketing.
We ended up selling to a professional couple, one of whom was an artist, but because of the studio we actually had another artist come knocking on the door asking if we could contact her if the sale fell through, and yet another artist was wanting to view and didn't get a chance. (Bizarrely, we also had a family of 5 come round and view - the first thing I said when they came in was 'this house is way too small for you, but you can look round if you like!')

So I think the moral is that you do need to work out who's likely to want to buy a house like yours, and then make sure the marketing and sales details are all focused at getting those people in. You may have fewer people viewing, but they are much less likely to find it's wrong for them.

pickledpink

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Quote:
Originally Posted by pickledpink
There's no mention of fitted wardrobes in the two larger bedrooms? Do you have wardrobes in there? If you do in the master bedroom I would suggest you ripped them out to make the room bigger still and turn the smallest bedroom into a dressing room.

If you do this, people will think its an over priced 3 bed

Overall it's a very nice-looking house, and looks well-cared for. The colours may not be to everyone's taste but they're certainly not gawdy! I personally wouldn't change the colour scheme upstairs: there's thousands and thousands of identikit magnolia houses on the market - and they all look much the same. I think it looks obvious when everyone colours their homes in the identical shade just to sell it........................everyone knows why they've done it - and it all looks a bit desperate:rolleyes:

Developers have spent millions on tapping into what pushes "most" peoples buttons & pale netural walls do it for most people.

You need carpet upstairs for comfort (and to reduce noise), but downstairs you could do the laminate thing (like everyone else does) however, you will need to splash out on really GOOD laminate as nothing looks worse than cheap laminate!!!! If your lounge carpet is OK I would keep that rather than go to the expense of new flooring.


The difference between cheap & expensive laminate is in how it wears, if you are doing it up to sell, do not bother with expensive.
No point in expensive laminant anyway, either do it cheap or use oak & do it properly (but don't bother with Oak in this tumbling market).



MrsE,

Whilst it's true that an extra bedroom adds value to a property - if they are so small that you cannot fit a bed and a wardrobe in there then viewers will feel let down. Cheated even.

Most people who want a 4-bed plus, either have large families, or are fairly wealthy: those people demand space - something which is lacking in this particular house.

I don't think if the OP advertised his house as a 3-bed with dressing room it would devalue it; indeed, it could evenincrease the value!

It's very true that pale neutral colours 'do it' for most people - but I don't think this house's colours are gawdyor over the top. They are pastel colours - OK, not magnolia, but they're not vivid and shocking!

And I'm afraid I cannot agree with you about cheap laminate looking just as good as expensive laminate - it doesn't! Cheap laminate looks just that - cheap and nasty. You can spot it straight away.

However, I think the OP should just keep his lounge carpet and not bother with spending money on laminate that will make the place look cheaper than it is.

As it happens, laminate is now actually devaluing property (cheap laminate, that is) and designers are advising people to rip the stuff out and start again. It was once very trendy, but is now becoming dated. Carpet is making a big comeback!

Incidentally, although I myself like neutral colours - that garish, patterned wallpaper of the 60's/70's is in vogue too!!!:eek:

brit1234

Wasn't it only 2 weeks ago people were advised against home extensions and other refurbishments if they were going to sell. The reason was the more you spent the bigger the loss on your home when you sold.

They advised to leave alone if you are going to sell.:exclamati

MrsE_2

pickledpink wrote: »

MrsE,

Whilst it's true that an extra bedroom adds value to a property - if they are so small that you cannot fit a bed and a wardrobe in there then viewers will feel let down. Cheated even.

Most people who want a 4-bed plus, either have large families, or are fairly wealthy: those people demand space - something which is lacking in this particular house.

I don't think if the OP advertised his house as a 3-bed with dressing room it would devalue it; indeed, it could evenincrease the value!

It's very true that pale neutral colours 'do it' for most people - but I don't think this house's colours are gawdyor over the top. They are pastel colours - OK, not magnolia, but they're not vivid and shocking!

And I'm afraid I cannot agree with you about cheap laminate looking just as good as expensive laminate - it doesn't! Cheap laminate looks just that - cheap and nasty. You can spot it straight away.

However, I think the OP should just keep his lounge carpet and not bother with spending money on laminate that will make the place look cheaper than it is.

As it happens, laminate is now actually devaluing property (cheap laminate, that is) and designers are advising people to rip the stuff out and start again. It was once very trendy, but is now becoming dated. Carpet is making a big comeback!

Incidentally, although I myself like neutral colours - that garish, patterned wallpaper of the 60's/70's is in vogue too!!!:eek:

Cheap laminate is better than second hand carpets or bathroom carpets.
I suggested laminate for it light reflecting qualities & its space creating feel.

I don't think in this market the OP want to put down expensive laminate or oak. I onloy suggested cheap laminate IF a room NEEDED changing.

I think the orange kitchen paint needs to be changed.

Austin_Allegro

lincroft1710 wrote: »

Is it possible to give us a Rightmove or similar link so we can see why people are saying it's too small?

In most cases it's because the walls are too close together...:rolleyes:

bubblesmoney

i think the problem why properties dont sell is because all the unsold properties keep comparing themselves to each other saying they are reasonably priced to each other. using that logic even if all of them were overpriced by 50k tomorrow at one go compared to todays asking prices, even in that scenario all of them would still be 'reasonably' priced compared to each other. there is no point comparing to other properties that are having problems selling. what one needs to compare to are what prices properties are selling for today (and not last year) and in a falling market price ur property lower. until that happens everyone not selling in the area keeps on comparing to each other and stalemate continues. no problems if they dont want to sell below a reserve price, its their call. but if someone needs to sell then they need to price aggressively undercutting the market and not trying to chase it down.

as a side note. these problems are accentuated in the south i feel as property prices are generally higher than up north. one good reason i always worked up north. yes most of us including me could probably earn a little bit more if we worked down south but then do the property prices (and earning to mortgage ratios) and the deleterious effect it has got on standard of living for a given payscale make it worth while living in a much costlier area. i dont know, it wouldnt work for me so i always tried to stay out of the costlier areas in the south for the same reason. i dont see the point in earning similar amounts and paying double what it costs in other areas up north for a mortgage. i guess for some professions it is a must to live down south but for the average joe like me people are better off living away from the pricier areas, lot less worries when footing half the mortgage bill (even when living near big cities like leeds).

property prices on rightmove are misleading, asking prices resemble builders asking high amounts for new builds but grossly discounting them with cashbacks and 5% deposits and other freebees etc in the hope that a newbie falls and gives the full price. same seems to be happening in rightmove with most unsold properties comparing their prices to eachother and thinking their property is priced right. when buyers like me have found that 20-30k off asking price shouldnt be much of an issue in many properties (not all) when dealing with EAs. try this yourself and see what u find in ur area, give ur budget and type of house and distance from area in mind and ask EAs to match any houses to ur price range irrespective of what the asking price is. u would be surprised at how many properties would be within ur budget even before u do 1minute of bargaining with vendors. and it is the EAs who send u the details, so u waste much less time haggling when u know that they send u only details of vendors who need to sell and more likely to consider ur price range. EAs have shortlisted some properties at asking prices of 165k when i have set them 135k limit as my budget. so thats a probable discounting of 30k off the rightmove prices even before i even decide whether to even view the advertisement forget viewing the property or making an offer. ofcourse if a property is already priced keenly then the drops are smaller. i wasted my time earlier seeing rightmove asking prices and asking for viewings. but since i moved to my method of seeing properties i found that i get more realistically priced properties and know in advance what sort of price is achievable for properties advertised at much higher prices on righmove. same applies for STC prices on rightmove as well. STC advertised price and actually selling price is very different more so in a buyers market. so please take the rightmove prices with a big pinch of salt in todays market for making comparisons of reasonable pricing etc

Phirefly

Hatster wrote: »

I don't know if this will be any help, but we've just sold our house (to the second people that came to view), and I think that some of it was down to our estate agent's good sense about who would want to buy our particular house, and then marketing it very much at that group. Our house is pretty small. It's theoretically a 3-bed, but in practice has 1 single (bigger than yours, but we use it as a study) and 1 double bedroom. We also have a studio / office in the garden. The agent said that we needed to work out who was going to buy it, and market it at precisely that set of people. He felt that with the size, it needed to be a couple with no children, but that it couldn't be anyone too shaky on their feet, or they would be put off by the stairs. He also felt that we should market to someone who had a need for a studio / office - i.e. someone who worked from home. On the plus side for us, he felt that the type of buyer he was imagining would be willing to spend more to get a period house with a beautiful courtyard and garden, and that we shouldn't worry that there was a larger ex-council house nearby on the market for less. His concern was that people would do a drive-by and be concerned that the house looked very small from the front, so he organised a floor-plan, to show that what you see from the front is almost none of the house. On the website, they had 3 key photos, with the main one being a picture of the courtyard, and then smaller photos of the front of the house and the living room. His logic was that this was to show off the things that made the house different and appeal to the professional couple. He also flagged up the studio / office a lot in the marketing.
We ended up selling to a professional couple, one of whom was an artist, but because of the studio we actually had another artist come knocking on the door asking if we could contact her if the sale fell through, and yet another artist was wanting to view and didn't get a chance. (Bizarrely, we also had a family of 5 come round and view - the first thing I said when they came in was 'this house is way too small for you, but you can look round if you like!')

So I think the moral is that you do need to work out who's likely to want to buy a house like yours, and then make sure the marketing and sales details are all focused at getting those people in. You may have fewer people viewing, but they are much less likely to find it's wrong for them.

Intresting post. Particularly since our house is similar in many ways.

I'm always curious to know just how much difference the way the agent markets the house makes. I've always been a bit sceptical and thought that the EA's are pretty superfluous, that it really comes down to price, location, size and who spots you on rightmove. That theres little spin that the agents can do to influence these fundamentals. Perhaps in the current climate, the spin might be what makes all the difference? I dunno - I'm still sceptical.

lovethymini

I've decided against buying properties in the past purely because they had cheap laminate fitted.

Sounds a bit extreme but my opinion is that if they couldn't be bothered/afford to put a decent quality flooring down, where else are they skimping on - boiler, roof, insulation? etc etc.

As a female it's easy to spot cheap laminate when you walk on it with heels and it makes an awful hollow clickity clack. Not to mention the plasticky look of it.

Personally, I would recommend to the OP that as they're going through the trauma of a divorce that they do as much as they feel able to do but a complete refurb would probably be a bit too much.

Initially - furniture re-jig
then if they feel up to it - repaint a few key rooms and brighten the garden.

Austin_Allegro

Worrying about laminate and paint is rather like re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

The housing market has stalled because people can no longer afford to pay the high prices that people have come to expect for their properties.

The Banks giveth, and the Banks taketh away. House price inflation was caused by cheap credit. Now that cheap credit is gone, people can't raise the money to pay for the UK's overpriced housing any more. You can paint your house cream, lilac or pink with yellow spots, and it won't alter this simple fact.

People whose properties are not selling have two options: rent it out to at least cover some of the mortgage, and wait for the banks to start loose lending again and the cost of living (fuel, food, energy prices etc) to come down, so that the high house price party can start again, or, lower the price steadily until it reaches a point where it becomes affordable in the current market.

lovethymini

Austin_Allegro wrote: »

Worrying about laminate and paint is rather like re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

Absolutely agree, however I was merely adding my h'penny worth to the previous comments regarding cheap laminate flooring as it's one of my pet hates!