What's wrong with my house?

littlesos

beachbeth wrote: »

My husband works with someone who owns a semi-detached on your estate and he said he has hardly had any viewers at all and has had his house on the market for quite a while.

Good luck!

Do they live at the end of my street??? There's been a semi up for sale for almost as long as we were! It's on the end next to the grassy bit.

Oh and he doesn't work for Triumph does he?????

Rach

StuHolmes

If you could pick it up and put it in Woking, Surrey I'd give you £320K for it!

It's really depressing seeing the price of property in other areas.

littlesos

StuHolmes wrote: »

If you could pick it up and put it in Woking, Surrey I'd give you £320K for it!

It's really depressing seeing the price of property in other areas.

If I could pick it up and move it I'd keep it myself and pop it in a big field! I love this house we just need a bigger garage/outbuildings as DH's hobbie of making rusty things shiny is getting out of hand!

Mizz_Pink

Hello :wave:

I live in Nuneaton. not far from you. Your house looks lovely! Have the EA given any reasons why your house hasnt sold? Have a look on https://www.cwhomes.co.uk at homes in your area that have sold at your same price and see how they differed maybe.

Just looked on cwhomes and it doesnt cover Hinckley, sorry

beachbeth

littlesos wrote: »

Do they live at the end of my street??? There's been a semi up for sale for almost as long as we were! It's on the end next to the grassy bit.

Oh and he doesn't work for Triumph does he?????

Rach

I don't know which semi it is. They work at Trinity Motors.

By the way, doesn't that grassy bit attract noisy kids?

RHemmings

I don't know too much about Hinkley itself, but I think there's a general problem in the Midlands where the houses being built are unsuited for the local market. I think it would be very illuminating if you worked out what the average salary was in Hinkley, and then looked at the price of your house. It could be that while the house is "fairly priced" in some respects, there simply aren't enough qualified buyers. Looking at the road your house is in on nethouseprices.com, there appears to have been one sale at £209,950. But only one. So unless 17 Cotman drive is a more impressive house than yours, there appears to be the potential that a buyer might come along. But how often will these willing and able buyers come around, and how long will you have to wait?

In the midlands there seem to be a large number of houses being built, but very many of these are medium - large (e.g. 4/5 bed) detached houses on postage stamp pieces of land, priced at say 10x - 20x average local salary. I get the strong impression that developers are all chasing the same niche, and there is a developing oversupply at "the top end". If potential purchasers believe that prices will rise, then lack of normal demand for properties can be compensated for by speculative demand. But given that HPI in most parts of the midlands has been subdued at best over the past few years, speculative demand is likely to be less.

I guess that many developers have banked on various parts of the Midlands attracting commuters from London, who would be able to pay the high prices for these properties. But without any evidence that I've seen that this is happening on large enough scale, there is a likelihood that there will be oversupply among more expensive properties.

As an extreme analogy, imagine someone went into a poor area of a third world city and started trying to sell Beluga caviar at 1/2 or even 1/4 of the going rate. A bargain, but it still ain't going to sell.

It could be that Hinkley is more up-market than other parts of the Midlands. But I'd be interested to know figures for average salaries, what kind of properties are being built as newbuilds, whether these tend to compete with yours. And you might want to take a careful look at the number of properties available on rightmove at various price points, and then examine selling prices as on nethouseprices.com or other LR land price website. If your area is like mine, you might find that there is a great deal of "fairly expensive" property for sale, but almost none selling.

littlesos

beachbeth wrote: »

I don't know which semi it is. They work at Trinity Motors.

By the way, doesn't that grassy bit attract noisy kids?

Nope, the grassy bit at the end of our road has the trees on it, the larger flat tree-less grassy bit further along is where the kids go.

We've never seen any trouble, mostly it's dads & kids playing football over there, but that's quite a way from our house.

The one on this road which sold recently was 4 beds. This is a problem with our house, it is the same size as the 4-bed houses on either side, only we have 3. It means that we have large bedrooms and bathrooms, but has capped the price.

The only others to have sold recent-ish are semis. Most of us have lived here since it was built 11 years ago.

beachbeth

RHemmings wrote: »

It could be that Hinkley is more up-market than other parts of the Midlands.

Its spelt Hinckley, by the way!

I live near Hinckley and the house prices where I am are more expensive. For that same house you could pay around £210,000 here, so I wouldn't say Hinckley is the most up-market area of the midlands. It isn't a dump though either.

Your house would probably be ideal for us because it is a detached, near my relatives that live on Henry Street (and another who lives on Coventry Road) and, of course, my hubby works at Trinity. We just want to stay where we are because its really nice here.

Mr_Frugal

Make sure that you go to town with the tidying up pre visits (sorry if this is teaching you to suck eggs and you are already doing it).

We viewed houses last weekend (not a million miles from you in Leicestershire) where I would doubt if they had cleaned in weeks. There was clutter everywhere and whilst you are supposed to be able to see through that my comments were "I wouldn't let my dog live there".
It makes a HUGE difference - I mentally switch off if the place is a mess and I probably give too much credance to clean and tidy houses (it's a mental thing but it tends to make me think that if the house is tidy that they have taken care of the property in the years they have owned it and vice versa).

Make sure you remove all clutter from each room, vent the place well (put plug in smellies etc and stick on a pot of coffee) and give the place a good spring clean.
I went a little crazy when preparing mine (again down the road from you in Rugby) and spent 6 hours tidying up (and the house was pretty much clean before I started but I was just being OTT). I walked in to each room and tried to look at it from a buyers perspective, being critical and wrote a list of things to do with each room before the prospective buyer arrived.

I also insisted on accompanied viewing from Estate Agent and then left the house whilst the viewing took place to allow the prospective buyer to walk around freely with Estate Agent.

Sounds a little OTT but it sold the house on the first viewing and I was concerned that it was going to be on the market for months as one down the road was on for 6 months last year and one of my neighbours (the only other house on the street currently for sale) has been on the market for 2 months already for 8k less than me.

The last point has already been mentioned but get in touch with your Estate Agent and REALY challenge them on what they are doing to sell/promote your house (after all that's what you are paying them an incredible amount of money to do) and point out that if they don't get a successful viewing in the next couple of weeks that you will be changing your Estate Agent to a more proactive one (assuming you are outside the contract length).

Good luck.

beachbeth

Mr_Frugal wrote: »

I mentally switch off if the place is a mess and I probably give too much credance to clean and tidy houses (it's a mental thing but it tends to make me think that if the house is tidy that they have taken care of the property in the years they have owned it and vice versa).

This is the way I think. If they can show their house to people and it looks like a shabby mess then they obviously aren't bothered about doing things around the house and it makes you wonder what other things they don't bother doing to maintain it.

We spent days clearing out our attic before putting the house on the market, then we put all our clutter up there in boxes so that the house looked as clean and tidy as possible. We even had the bathroom floor tiled and replaced a dark bedroom carpet with a cheap, light one and the bedroom looks so much bigger and brighter now.