Feedback on Rightmove advert for house sale

kerri_gt

tori.k wrote: »

I think your issue is the kitchen, your market is mostly FTB people starting out,and there is a lot of properties in your price bracket but most have been refurbished with a modern kitchen, your kitchen looks soild just a bit dated. But your market mostly wants a currently fashionable turn key ready property that requires no effort or cash.
The landlord market is slowing down with the changes in the tax implications and building requirements. I don't think your property is overpriced but just a case that there is a lot available in the current market. So if you wanted a quick sell you would have no choice but to drop under current market expectations or refit the kitchen so that it makes your property fashionable with the added draw of a garden over a yard, but I don't think the garden is a big enough draw on its own.

If the carcasses of the kitchen cabinets are sound, it should be relatively cheap to change the doors to something more contemporary like a white gloss - they don't need to be the best of the best so long as they are well fitted and looked after while you're trying to sell.

antilles

- Kitchen looks like something out of the 1970s, most people will want to replace it therefore they will be thinking about the cost. I'd change the doors for white gloss or something modern.
- The first photo is awful - I can't even work out which house it is.
- How do you get a shower? It looks like it hasn't got a shower at all - that will put most people off.
- Dump the computer desk and stuff in the second bedroom, it looks like it won't fit a bed. Put a bed in there and make it into a bedroom, otherwise people will assume you can't get a bed in.
- Where do you dine, in the kitchen or the living room? It looks like the dining area is in the living room, and therefore makes the house look tiny. Can you move that table into the kitchen?
- I'd lose pic 11 - it makes the house look tiny and does it no favours.
- What's the huge white thing in photo 12 behind the garden, is it a factory? Can it be screened out at all?
- Lose some of the furniture in the living room that makes it look cramped (the footstool and the coffee table)

Hope that helps!

ed67812

It is absolutely the kitchen that is your biggest issue. As has been said, 99.9% of people will be adding the price of a replacement kitchen in to any offer you got. Depending on circumstances, I would be weighing up the replacement with a cheap modern one.

Lose the table and coffee table.

Even if it can only be done for new photos, you must show bedroom 2 as a bedroom.

Is the other door in the second bedroom to a water tank or cupboard. If it's the latter, I would say so. Any little bit of storage in a small house is good news.

Money_saving_maniac

The lounge picture is the one that makes my heart sink.
Every time I see a big table rammed into a lounge I think 'there is no space for anything at all in that house'.

You might be better to get rid of the table into storage and invest a little in a folding dining table or similar to give a more spacious feel to the room. Or will the table fit under the curve of the stairs?

Then you can keep the coffee table but lose the pouffe.

warby68

ashe wrote: »

I agree, and where possible we can and will do so, but we dont have the scope to make this change. I need a desk that I can work at all day and all night occasionally. The double bed will not fit in alongside wardrobe and drawers which are new, so this would mean buying a new double bed, getting rid of the new furniture which is in use and was not cheap, and me not having anywhere to work. We would then have the problem of where to put partners clothes and work items that are in the wardrobe and drawers due to no longer having those. It's just not practical unfortunately.

Couldn't you ditch the main bedroom furniture completely (I'm assuming it won't be going with you) - pack a lot of your stuff away temporarily and beg friends/family to store a few cases for you.

Move the white furniture into it and buy a cheap 2nd hand bed (perhaps one with good storage underneath) and just have that plus your desk in Bed 2 and possibly some bedside tables/lamps for both. Either very cheap/2nd hand or that you could take with you. Just show off 2 decent size bedrooms better.

I agree with others thats it probably more the fundamentals of price/competition and kitchen but there isn't much you can or want to do with these. You can at least make your rooms look spacious and also a bit more loved - this just might pull a few people to take a look.

Would one of those tiny bistro sets fit in your kitchen between the doors to achieve kitchen diner and allow the lounge table to go. I agree with clear your kitchen surfaces. Could you also ditch that dark open corner shelf and perhaps add a modern blind, again purely window dressing but you want to disguise not enhance the kitchen's age. Needing a kitchen is a big problem when the houses are relatively cheap - the cost is then so much more as a proportion of the whole.

You also don't seem to have a shower - could you add a wall rail for a handset and shower curtain/screen at lowish cost to show that isn't a problem.

It actually has the look of a rental to me already (sorry) with so much mismatched and ill fitting furniture (& a giant TV lol) , even that unit by the front door, and dark. I'm a big one for believing a lot of initial house decisions are made instantly on 'gut & feel' ie emotion and a house that looks loved and a nest and also light and bright do help with that. If you couldn't be bothered to 'love it' and were very half-hearted about improvements (only your office/her dressing room have had attention) then what does it say?

It might just be worth a try, and with new photos, as you're stuck with the agent for quite a while yet and not keen on further price reductions just yet.

Still no joy, then its back to price unfortunately.

Hope you're not too bruised and battered OP from all the comments and can have a go. Good luck

robatwork

Well done for being brave enough to post on here. Lots of very sensible suggestions already.

You must get rid of that wallpaper in every room. Not only will it not be to the taste of most house viewers, it's closing in the walls. I would paint everything white or off-white to open it all out.

getmore4less

Not sure why you so much new stuff when planning to move.

Less is more, get rid of everything you won't be taking and see if you can reorganize to make it feel like it has a second bedroom and more space everywhere.

00ec25

ashe wrote: »

There are not many, if any, houses available in this area with front and rear gardens as a lot of it is either terraced or new build (so more expensive)

I appreciate we are probably going to have to reduce the price, but wanted to get some feedback on what we currently have listed.

I have asked the EA to change the photo of the house as the main photo does not focus on 'our' house and looks like it could be a mid terrace, when ours is in fact the end row on the right hand side. Theres a patch of grass to the side of the house also and the new photo shows this, which helps to stress that its an end terrace. but the patch of grass is not yours, it is open ground on your "estate", so be careful creating a false impression, particularly as the gravel in the front garden screams scope for off road parking, but then I look on streetview and realise the estate layout at which point one of the advantages of end of terrace (own driveway creation) vanishes The cheapest house with a garden in a 1/4 mile radius is 89k after ours, or 72k within 1/2 a mile, so I feel we should be capitalising a bit more on this in our advert? It gets the sun all day in spring/summer too in the back.

Our property


EA took photos 1, 5, 6, 7, 11 & 12
I took photos 2, 3, 4, 8, 9 & 10

Some nearby properties:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-64873913.html
This is on our street - marketed at 65k since march, reduced to £59k about a month or two back, now sold. This is mid terraced a few houses down from us. Reduction was due to being desperate for a sale.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-60686557.html
This property is newly marketed and listed at 65k. It's well finished, but its an awful street with a church on it which acts as a homeless charity which I've nothing against, but means you often have people sat on the walls outside drinking high strength cider on that street! Also no front and back garden, just a rear hard with fake grass. It does have a loft room however.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-60757756.html
Same street as the above but mid terrace, again well finished but no front/rear garden and same problems as the above

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-65825816.html
Couple of streets away, again mid terrace. This was added on the 18th August (today!) and is already under offer?

Prices on our street confuse me as if I was a buyer, I would much rather have a newer house with a front and rear garden than a terraced house with a yard and pavement, but the older houses seem to be holding their prices whilst these newer houses are reducing?

thank you for having made the effort to research your own area and list your competition, that is precisely what is required. As you can now see from the comments on here your offering does not stand out from the crowd. Indeed it is easy to see why the last one you list has appeared under offer, it is by far the best internally but gains greatly from being an older property with bigger rooms. The photos instantly create an impression of size, whereas, as pointed out by others already, your impression is "compactness", the living room has to serve as space to watch the telly, space to eat in (its not a kitchen/diner!), and both a corridor to walk through and stairwell as there is no hallway. Are you taking the fireplace with you? Surely one of the key points of a fireplace in a modern house is merely decorative feature and focal point of a room? Yes the TV is the real focus of how people actually use that room, but your fireplace is totally ignored.

Indeed one of my first reactions on seeing pic 2 was to double check the floorplan to see if you stepped directly in from the road as the white "filing cabinet" on the left of the door appeared to be the storage for coats and shoes. The existence of the porch is obvious once you check pic 1 again, but for property of your age where there is no hallway the point of entry is a factor for me as I hate coming directly into the house without a hallway. The latter point further reinforces my hatred of an open plan stairwell where you can watch the money spent on heating the lounge rise to heat upstairs.

The bathroom is very nice, but I second the opinion regarding confusing shower message.

Good luck, you can play around with stuff as suggested by others, but at the end of the day it is what it is and it does appear that Stockton is currently experiencing a very low level of demand going by the contents of this thread from someone else in a village location a few miles away from you. http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-49324338.html
I think you have the classic dilemma that you will have to play a waiting game for the right buyer to come along after other places have sold ahead of you or price at a point you can't afford to sell at.

Cirias

It's a lovely house, but for me the biggest two issues are the kitchen and the shower.

Most buyers these days will expect a good shower, and yours looks like an afterthought, with the bath the main attraction there. I would advise raising the shower head's position so it's at a good height and then install a shower screen or simple curtain, so that you're giving the impression of a full shower rather than a bath with a shower head screwed on.

ashe

Thanks for the comments everyone. We are in the process of making as many changes as we can - the living room already looks much brighter as replaced the dark curtains with some cream ones, got rid of coffee table, moved table to the kitchen and took the netting down. Removed the purple rug too and added a decoration to the wall to avoid a blank open space.

Some changes we just cant make - I know a few people raised the desk needing to be a bed in the spare room, but to reiterate I work from home. Realistically you cannot do 35 hour+ weeks whilst sat on the sofa, in bed or in the living room, it would be very uncomfortable, so taking the desk out and putting a bed in is something we just cant do.

We've slimmed down on what were are storing in the wardrobes and have removed one of them and I enjoyed cutting it up with an axe this morning. Bought replacement bedding set that matches more with the curtains, and the spare room curtains have been replaced with a silver set.

The kitchen is a tough one as we are currently awaiting new worktops from the company that have installed the blinds as they cracked the worktop standing on it. Unfortunately they have managed to match the worktop somehow despite its age, but at least the worktops themselves will be refreshed. Is replacing kitchen cupboards normally a cheap option? I was put off this when I had a company round to do a quote and they quoted me in excess of 3k which seemed extortionate. If its generally something that can be done for a reasonable price we can consider that. Few other irons in the fire.

RE bathroom, yes that is an issue we have thought long and hard about, the window placement and shape of the bathroom is the issue - as we didn't want to make the room seem smaller than it is as its already a compact bathroom. We will get some quotes in around fitting a shower curtain and a higher shower holder.

I've bought a camera for a few weeks to get better pictures that has a 35mm equivalent wide angle of 22mm so hopefully can get better photos, so going to blitz one room at a time and do them all again based on the feedback and as we sort things.