Phil Spencer

Gra76

Dan-Dan wrote: »

it`s a buyers market and were in a dreadful recession

You've hit the nail on the head. So to sell it reasonably quickly you know that you need to stand out from the crowd. The location is good by all accounts so that's in your favour. What counts against it is that having just looked at the photos myself the property is very dated as has been mentioned.

As a manager at a builders I deal with property renovation regularly, we buy and renovate properties ourselves to sell on when work is quiet. There's a number of things which will help sell it.

The obvious easy stuff. Paint the walls Magnolia or another nice neutral colour. White ceilings and coves. Gloss all the woodwork. Buy some cheap neutral colour carpets to cover over the dated parquet flooring (oatmeal coloured carpets always looks good with magnolia walls). Replace the curtains too as they're not doing any favours at all for the house.

If you want to go further, that kitchen could be made lovely by removing the partition and installing a new (doesn't have to be expensive, just functional) kitchen and getting rid of those carpet tiles. A new bathroom suite as well if you really want to go the whole hog. I'd also have that fireplace out in the lounge and fit something more contemporary.

The rear garden is lovely though! You want the house to match it.

A lot of the things above you can do fairly cheaply. Just the basic cosmetic stuff is a going to cost you little more than your time and some sandpaper, emulsion and gloss.

If it were a property we were doing I'd be weighing up what it would cost us to do it against the likely selling price. In your case you really just want to get the property sold as quickly as possible by the sounds of it.

That leaves you 2 options. Either sell it as a dated property but lower your price significantly, or put some money into it and sell it as a renovated property. Only you know what you want to do.

phoebe1989seb

I've said it before Dan, my parents' house was kind of similar - although different era (1920s) and they'd been there since 1963 - extended/renovated houses in their area (South Coast) go for £100k+ more than we got for theirs last year, but we priced very realistically based upon the level of work/dated decor etc.

Their house did have a reasonably trendy wet room - fitted in 2006 as my dad couldn't get in/out of a bath any more - but otherwise it was full of swirly (expensive John Lewis) carpets, pine Magnet kitchen (fitted late 1980s) etc etc ad infinitum. It had been thoroughly taken care of till my mum got Alzheimer's in 2004 at which point my dad (bless him - he now has Vascular Dementia) was no longer able to cope with DIY.

Their avenue was highly sought-after with young families/people trading up from FTB homes so we did expect it to go quite quickly, but even so I was a little wary that the *unmodernised* decor might put some buyers off. We didn't repaint any rooms, nor remove any swirly carpets (admittedly they had rugs/hardwood floors in some rooms) and the 1960s conservatory, whilst having had a new roof in the 1990s, was now starting to shown signs of age.

What we did do though was price realistically - a house in the same avenue was on at the same time for just over £100k more and sold for the asking price - that had been extended into the attic and had an open-plan layout creating a large eat-in kitchen/family room downstairs.

Pricing realistically did achieve our goal - a sale that went through from marketing to completion in less than four months.......if we'd painted everywhere magnolia I doubt we'd have achieved a penny more as the sale agreed price was right on the SDLT threshold of £250k - and we didn't want to hang about as the cash from the sale was sadly needed to fund two lots of nursing home fees

IMHO if you want/need to sell ASAP, a drop in price may be necessary - alternatively doing some work *may* bring more buyers clamouring to buy.........but it's a very fine line - and where do you stop - only you know the market in your area and what you want/need to do

BTW Dan - curiously & coincidentally we were within a mile of you last night collecting an eBay purchase (all the way from Wiltshire!) - small world

Edited to add -

Lesson - I think the guy with the TV house programme was Andrew Winter - DH met him when he (DH, that is) worked in the interior design industry and he said he was a right prat!

Slinky

You say schools aren't relevant given the target market. Do I take it you expect to sell to some retirees? Are they going to want to do the huge amount of work required to bring it up to standard?

What sort of people are already living in the other homes in the close?

Slinky

Gra76 wrote: »

. Buy some cheap neutral colour carpets to cover over the dated parquet flooring

I thought I saw on one of those property programmes with Phil that parquet is back in fashion?

lessonlearned

Yes - Andrew Winter - that's him.

Couldn't comment about the "pratt" bit - never met him. He didn't come over as personable as Phil, who has a nice "twinkle in the eye" thing going - at least on TV. He could of course be a real disappointment in real life, who's to know.

Kirsty just seems sweet and gentle and a bit "dippy" - slightly away with the Fairies.

She actually reminds of me of my lovely mum - vague and charmingly absent minded ........

Dan-Dan

Slinky wrote: »

You say schools aren't relevant given the target market. Do I take it you expect to sell to some retirees? Are they going to want to do the huge amount of work required to bring it up to standard?

What sort of people are already living in the other homes in the close?

Middle aged teachers and builders , no one under 50 !

SG27

Both this weeks houses are still on the market.

Has anyone noticed that when they do the open day 2 out of three of the viewers are people that have viewed previously. I think the agent must just ring up any previous viewers and ask of they want to be on tv!!

phoebe1989seb

Gra76 wrote: »

You've hit the nail on the head. So to sell it reasonably quickly you know that you need to stand out from the crowd.

Buy some cheap neutral colour carpets to cover over the dated parquet flooring (oatmeal coloured carpets always looks good with magnolia walls).

My editing above.......

IMHO 'standing out from the crowd' does not entail covering up the 'dated parquet flooring' with cheap neutral colour carpets :eek:

The lovely parquet flooring is (again IMHO) very desirable and if restored would be a lovely feature in a house which (apologies for being blunt Dan) doesn't have that many - with the exception of the garden, size and quietness of the location........

Dan-Dan

lol , no offence taken

ash28

Dan-Dan wrote: »

Middle aged teachers and builders , no one under 50 !

I'm mid 50s and couldn't be bothered with the work....we've done up enough houses in the past and now I want somewhere done....just ready to move into.

We moved last year into a house that needed absolutely nothing doing to it...and guess what - we haven't done a thing....bliss.

We did quite a lot of work on our last house before we put it on the market...our target was families....and with the economy and mortgage difficulties and deposit sizes we thought people could be struggling just to get a mortgage let alone have anything left to do up a tired house - we'd lived in it 20 years.

It was worth the time, effort and money spent (just under £6k on 2 bedroom carpets, new bathroom and downstairs toilet + walls and floors tiled, decorated throughout and new felt on the flat roof extension and new sofits and guttering) as it sold within 3 weeks. It was worth the pain...we got £40k more than next door...very similar house but not exactly the same, ours needed no work and theirs did.