Lots of viewings - no offers - advice please

Mocha61

The drive doesnt look very steep to me either as others have said. What feedback have you had from the EA, it looks a lovely property.

I_have_spoken

Just my observations

De-cluttering before retaking the pics, looks like there's not enough storage space with shoes, weights etc. peeking out. Much more effort in 'staging' for sale is needed.
Too many strong colours on the walls, esp. the girl's room. Needs going through with off-whites to neutralise
It's small for a 5 bed cottage on a small plot
No mention of broadband speed available in the village, critical when working from home
Too many pics of unexciting garden

Things which would put me off which you can only price for -

Ground floor bedrooms facing the street
Don't like dark wood-effect D/G frames, esp. on the interior
Sloping ceiling in the upstairs rooms

ruggedtoast

greenwoodlad wrote: »

WE have had our home on the market for 6 months, we have just dropped the price, lots of viewings, 4 this week but no offers. We have a steep driveway, which is so steep we always park our car on the road , we have lived here for 8 years , this has never been an issue for us. It is a 5 bed detached home in great order, and with ground floor bedrooms suitable for dependant relatives...but viewers just keep saying the drive is too steep....which for older people I can appreciate- we need to sell now owing to financial issues with redundancy etc - but we cannot afford to drop the price any more - we have 2 agents and both say it is below market value in fact 2 buyers said it was so good value they had to look - advice please

If you want to sell something that isn't selling you have two options. Market it more effectively to create a demand or lower the price. The lower the price the more potential customers you have.

If you can't / won't lower the price then as others have said I would lean on your agent. Fire one of them. Having two looks bad.

Have the photos retaken, preferably when it's sunny. Declutter a bit (Nick nacks off the window sills etc). As a impartial viewer I am a bit sceptical about this 5 bedroom thing. There doesn't seem to be any loft storage space as the bedrooms go into the roof. None of the rooms look especially large either.

Can you do an open house?

The other things near you make yours look good value, but are they actually selling? What is the local market like?

greenwoodlad

Hi Thanks to you all for constructive and helpful replies.

greenwoodlad

Thanks for the advice, regarding the price, we have just dropped it from £315,000 and set the fixed price and we really don't want to drop much more but you are right we have to decide do we want to sell or not! But dropping gain within a month really would look desperate. Taking the fixed price off would be an idea - we set this as we did not want to drop any more.
and yes we are the cheapest in terms of space by a long way

We have actually de-cluttered a lot, but we re-cluttered a bit as the estate agent said our efforts made it look too clinical and not a home! so we put items back on the window sills I think its a difficult one! will a pair of trainers being neatly in a bedroom really put a buyer off? There are 2 dark corridors upstairs and down but the are freshly painted in magnolia and i put lights on prior to viewings.
It is a lovely light house when the sun is shining but dark if not, like many houses

We walked in 7 years ago and we knew it was the house for us owing to the space and feel of the layout - it was a very dark day and house was very cluttered but it did not matter to us - guess we are looking for someone who walks in and knows

Interestingly over 7 years, 6 houses in our street have been for sale at various times - only 1 has sold . All the homes have steep drives either up or down..........

2 agency agreement - it is only since appointing extra agents - that we have had all the viewings .....from both agents.

Comments we have had from buyers so far

* Don't like the fact you have to drive through council estate and old peoples bungalows to get to the street

* The hill up to the street will not be easy in winter ( we are renowned for very bad snow up her in the yorkshire dales)

* Sloping bedroom ceilings & bathroom ceilings not good

* House is too big

* Drive too steep

* Kitchen too small for a 5 bed house

* Back garden is west and south facing - not south facing (garden gets full sun all afternoon & evening and back garden is not overlooked by other houses) - 2 viewers produced compasses to check this fact

ruggedtoast - thanks for your advice - there is actually lots of loft space - large loft over the garage and eaves cupbards running full length of each side of the upstairs which can be accessed from several rooms!

The house is very quirky and unconventional - therefore potentially challenging to market?

A few of you say that the house is not for retirees but out of all the viewings we have had - 12 in all ....10 of the viewers were.... I would say over 55..apparently as the ground floor layout lends itself to older people who may wish to / eventually live on one level.

Anyway we will press on ....have another viewing later today

can't agree price is an issue now as we will have had 6 viewings in 8 days !

Old_Git

the thing that would put me of is the conservatory off the sitting room .
It means you cant see the garden from your sitting room .

Digsby

ellie27 wrote: »

You paid £295k for this early 2008? In my area prices have dropped by about 10% since then, so perhaps price is the problem?

On balance, the price doesn't seem too bad to me from this point of view. Prices in North Yorkshire are down 8% since 2008, but by the same reasoning that 2008 price was very good value considering it was bought for £250k before that, and prices were up 31% between then and 2008.

So while the asking price looks a bit steep looking at just the last price, it actually looks very very good if you looked at just the 1st (new build) price, and on balance looking at them both, just about right I'd say.

As you may know, I write software that does this kind of analysis. Here is what the listing looks like in my chrome extension which might explain some of the above:



It's interesting to me because I usually look at this from a buyers perspective but here we have a seller wondering if the price is right.

The estimate based on purely the 2003 price is about £330k. The estimate based on purely the 2008 price is £270k, and the average of those 2 prices is £299k which is where you're pitching it - I'd say £315k was pushing it based on this (but worth a go), but based on those numbers I'd be surprised if it didn't sell at £299k (lovely house btw).

However...

I've recently added a new feature that shows you the average prices in the area for now and at each sold date, and looking at it with my pre-release version that has the feature, it's saying that the average price of a detached house in 2003 was £209k (when £249k was paid), in 2008 was £299k (when £295k was paid), and now is £274k.

So although paying £295k in 2008 for a house bought for £249k in 2003 looks like really good value on the face of it, it was only just shy of the average price of a detached house in the area - it looks a little more like perhaps the initial sale was a bit high.

From that perspective, I get the feeling you might have to drop the price a little bit more to bring it more in line with mean detached prices, but I do still think it stands a pretty good chance of selling at you current price, if you can figure out what's putting people off.

This is obviously all purely statistics and doesn't account for someone (or two) coming along and falling in love with it.

sniggings

Problem for me is size of living space, if I NEED 5 bedrooms I want a much bigger living room than that, plus a playroom.

5-6 people in that living room would be over crowded.

Lovely house tho, just not a 5 bedroom house.

ilikecookies

sniggings wrote: »

Problem for me is size of living space, if I NEED 5 bedrooms I want a much bigger living room than that, plus a playroom.

5-6 people in that living room would be over crowded.

Lovely house tho, just not a 5 bedroom house.

That's exactly what I thought! Lovely house (it really is) but I'm not sure it works as a 5-bed as I assume families (2 adults, 2 children) would be the ones primarily looking at 5-bed properties. They would want more living space and a much bigger garden for the children, etc.

sheramber

greenwoodlad wrote: »

The house is very quirky and unconventional - therefore potentially challenging to market?

A few of you say that the house is not for retirees but out of all the viewings we have had - 12 in all ....10 of the viewers were.... I would say over 55..apparently as the ground floor layout lends itself to older people who may wish to / eventually live on one level.

Anyway we will press on ....have another viewing later today

can't agree price is an issue now as we will have had 6 viewings in 8 days !

Therein lies a problem.

The house itself attracts retirees but the situation is not desirable to retirees. Hence , no offers from them.