House on the market for 5 weeks but only 1 viewing

Shandz

Hello, we are after some advice. We've had our 3 bedroom semi-detached house near York on the market for 5 weeks and only had 1 viewing.

When selecting an estate agent we got 4 valuations which covered the range £300-325k and decided to put the house on the market with the middle estimate of 315k.

We got 1 viewing on the first weekend and but have not had any interest since. From the Rightmove stats we got from our agent we can see that there are plenty of people looking at the house but this isn't translating into viewings.

We have recently dropped the price to just under £300k to see if that makes any difference but so far still not had any interest.

Our house is located in a small village on the outskirts of York and is on Rightmove. The forum won't let me post the link but can be found doing a quick search on Rightmove for properties for sale in Knapton, North Yorkshire; 3 properties come up and ours is the one on the market for £299,950.


Or if you go to Rightmove and paste this into the web address:-

rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-56688510.html

Can anyone give us any feedback as to why we are getting so little interest? We're really open to any comments, positive or negative, about the house, price and location.

Thanks very much for any help you can give us .

Out,_Vile_Jelly

Is it this one: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-56688510.html

Shandz

Yes that's the one, thank you so much for posting the link, I couldn't do it as a new user!

hoiyeeanita

Definitely one of the nicer property listings that I've come across in 2 years of searching - sadly it's not in Manchester.
How are other properties similar to yours looking? Do they seem slow too?
I'm struggling to understand the context of photo 4, I went to a viewing once where a similar image was posted, turns out it was just the view of the green at the very bottom of the garden..

ReadingTim

This, less than a mile away costs less and is bigger. Why would someone want to buy yours instead?

The reason is price. It nearly always is.

Out,_Vile_Jelly

I wouldn't buy a modern new build so I'm not your target audience. This one seems less pokey than a lot of new builds, but the windows look small. It's not cluttered or badly presented so I don't think that's the issue.

-who owns the bit of grass out front, is it shared with the neighbouring property?
-the view of the fields should go last, not randomly between pics of the lounge
-I like the way the floor plan is presented

PasturesNew

The market IS slow - have you checked HOW slow it is in your area?

In my area the current report states that "houses with 2 bedrooms or fewer are hardest hit" - which is precisely what mine is... *sighs*.

You need to be analysing all local/relevant house reports and speaking to agents to find out "is it the house, or the market?" and letting them know you can hear the truth, no need to dress it up fancy for you, no need for any sales/pep talk... what IS going on.... they'll be honest if you tell them you just want them to call a spade a spade.

Have you made a list of all your competitors, as you see it, in your area? What are they doing? Are they selling, removing from market, changing agents, dropping prices? Make that list - and watch it 2x a week.... is anybody "like mine" selling ... then try to work out what was so appealing about that one -v- yours.

No houses anything like mine have sold in my area in the last month... I watch them ALL. 2 beds, 3 beds, £20k lower than my price, £50k higher than my price. Older, brand new, "just like mine" .... you need to be watching your local area.

Shandz

ReadingTim wrote: »

This, less than a mile away costs less and is bigger. Why would someone want to buy yours instead?

The reason is price. It nearly always is.

Hi ReadingTim, thanks for taking a look. I take your point about price being an important factor and we are open to adjusting the price but the property you link to has about 97 square metres total floor space whereas ours is about 115 square metres, so I think ours is a bit larger. Please let me know if I am missing something but just under £300k doesn't seem unreasonable just looking at comparison of floor space.

quantumlobster

The question is, "what makes your house worth nearly £50K more than it was four years ago?"

That's a 20% rise in a slowing market.

What is the business-looking unit next door? Is it noisy/smelly/got a lot of traffic causing parking issues/etc?

quantumlobster

Shandz wrote: »

Hi ReadingTim, thanks for taking a look. I take your point about price being an important factor and we are open to adjusting the price but the property you link to has about 97 square metres total floor space whereas ours is about 115 square metres, so I think ours is a bit larger. Please let me know if I am missing something but just under £300k doesn't seem unreasonable just looking at comparison of floor space.

Off-street parking for more than one car is a mighty powerful incentive to a lot of people.

Shandz

hoiyeeanita wrote: »

Definitely one of the nicer property listings that I've come across in 2 years of searching - sadly it's not in Manchester.
How are other properties similar to yours looking? Do they seem slow too?
I'm struggling to understand the context of photo 4, I went to a viewing once where a similar image was posted, turns out it was just the view of the green at the very bottom of the garden..

Thanks for the positive comment . To be honest I am not sure how well properties are moving right now but we have seen properties selling in our village so didn't think the market was completely dead. There is a another property of similar size in our village on the market for £365k which is a similar size in terms of floor space but does look nicely done out in fairness. Nevertheless we thought £365k looked ambitious and we thought our property would look well priced in comparison.


Fair point about picture 4, that is the view opposite our house which is open fields and is used a livery so in my opinion a nice view out of the front window - appreciate might not be what everyone is looking for though. Might be best to move that picture towards the end then.