Any House-Selling Tips?

TBagpuss

It's clean and well presented but a bit impersonal - maybe 'dress' it a little more for photos and viewings, to make it look a little more welcoming. 

I don't now the area at all but just looking at your house my immediate views are:
- You have the two smaller bedrooms set up as an office and a nursery. From the photos they both look pretty small. Could you set the one which is currently being used as an office, as a bedroom so people can see it is actually large enough for a full sized bed etc?
- I would expect your market to be families, maybe moving on from a starter home, and your back garden is small and not child friendly, which may be off putting. 
- the layout of the hosue means that you have nothing but a narrow verge between you and the road on two sides - so not a lot of privacy. I wouldn't like like that and it may put others off. 
- the description says off-road parking but I can't identify from the photos or plans where that is - is it part of your property or is there a shared car-park? If it is on your property, where, and how big is it?

It may be worth you speaking to a different agent to get their input and advice. 
Looking at other properties it looks as though there are other 3 beds which have larger rooms and/or a bigger footprint, so it may be that yours is a bit overpriced for what it is - it does look to be a pretty small 3 bed, both from the photos and the measurements on the plan. 

RelievedSheff

The house is strikingly similar to ours and I do wonder if it is the same developers David Wilson Homes (Hatton House Type) or Barratts their parent company perhaps?



Judging by the room sizes though they must have increased the size of the plot footprint to incorporate bigger rooms. All of our rooms are bigger, the bedrooms considerably so with the master at 11'2"x11" (plus en suite) and the second bedroom at 12'4"x9'5" and the single bedroom at 9'8x6'3"



The bedroom layout on your house is really only one double room and a pair of singles which could be putting people off.

As for the house being close to the road, well as you can see from the picture above so is ours, in fact ours is closer still, and we don't find it a problem but we do live on a very quiet part of our development with not a lot of passing footfall. You would perhaps have to convince potential buyers of this non issue a bit more if you were in a busier location.

wjr4

Are you showing the viewers round yourself? I felt much more comfortable having the estate agent show round viewers for my recent house sale. 

phoebe1989seb

I agree with the poster who said it looks as though you've gone over the top on the depersonalisation front.

We've never removed all traces of our lifestyle when selling a home and in seven out of eight cases have gone sstc within a couple of months (on two/three occasions within ten days), although of course the current situation is unprecedented.

I believe that you need a usp when selling, something to make your property stand out from the crowd - especially when it's a newer house that lacks the character features of an older home. Personally I've no experience of selling anything newer than Victorian, and to me your home - whilst tidy/well presented - looks very lacking in memorable features. Nothing to make a potential buyer fall in love with your house over the others available. On top of that, the bedrooms are very small which - in a family home - is not great, although the en suite is a plus for many buyers.

If it doesn't have anything special/the 'wow' factor, then it needs to be priced so that it seems a bargain compared to your competition........I've not looked at what else is available in your area so perhaps you are already competitively priced? 

Back in 2014 we were selling a (very marmite  ) thatched house and had only had a handful of viewings and no offers during the first four weeks. We were keen to secure another unique property so we dropped the price making ours the cheapest five bed period house within three miles of our village. This resulted in several viewings and three asking price offers within the next week.......

thedanshires

TBagpuss said:

It's clean and well presented but a bit impersonal - maybe 'dress' it a little more for photos and viewings, to make it look a little more welcoming. 

I don't now the area at all but just looking at your house my immediate views are:
- You have the two smaller bedrooms set up as an office and a nursery. From the photos they both look pretty small. Could you set the one which is currently being used as an office, as a bedroom so people can see it is actually large enough for a full sized bed etc?
- I would expect your market to be families, maybe moving on from a starter home, and your back garden is small and not child friendly, which may be off putting. 
- the layout of the hosue means that you have nothing but a narrow verge between you and the road on two sides - so not a lot of privacy. I wouldn't like like that and it may put others off. 
- the description says off-road parking but I can't identify from the photos or plans where that is - is it part of your property or is there a shared car-park? If it is on your property, where, and how big is it?

It may be worth you speaking to a different agent to get their input and advice. 
Looking at other properties it looks as though there are other 3 beds which have larger rooms and/or a bigger footprint, so it may be that yours is a bit overpriced for what it is - it does look to be a pretty small 3 bed, both from the photos and the measurements on the plan. 

Thanks all for the comments: 
Just for context we've literally five weeks ago had a second baby, so our time is incredibly limited at the moment balancing looking after him and our two year old, my full time job and other commitments which I won't go into here. Getting the house ready for a viewing so it's beautiful for whomever visits is a big job at the moment which we're doing our best with, whilst it may be ideal we don't have the time, storage or space to wholesale reconfigure rooms. 

We listed to the advice of our EA, who seemed pleased with what we did at Christmas to get it ready. Our house is 'lived in' when people actually come and view it because of the realities we're currently facing. 

• In terms of the size of our bedrooms, they're pretty typical from what I can see for smaller new builds - they are what they are. That said, in person they're bigger than they may appear, but ultimately more space for our family to grow in is why we want to move. Unfortunately we don't have a spare bed to setup, but they do fit comfortably.
• The garden is again bigger than it looks, very easy to maintain which in fairness has been one of the consistent thumbs up from viewers when they've visited. It's that way because we didn't have children when we moved in six years ago. The good thing is with it the gravel areas and decking were created with this in-mind and can be very easily removed 
• Sadly there's not much we can do about the spacing of the house from the pavement, but it's a quiet estate so passing foot traffic is minimal
• We have a double-driveway beyond the garden. 

The price was recommended by the agent and the mortgage advisor. We have room to reduce but we are considering speaking with another agent for a second opinion. 

thedanshires

wjr4 said:

Are you showing the viewers round yourself? I felt much more comfortable having the estate agent show round viewers for my recent house sale. 

Another reason we're considering our options re the agents; they seem to try and schedule them all for the weekend when they're closed so they don't have to do them. 

thedanshires

RelievedSheff said:

The house is strikingly similar to ours and I do wonder if it is the same developers David Wilson Homes (Hatton House Type) or Barratts their parent company perhaps?



Judging by the room sizes though they must have increased the size of the plot footprint to incorporate bigger rooms. All of our rooms are bigger, the bedrooms considerably so with the master at 11'2"x11" (plus en suite) and the second bedroom at 12'4"x9'5" and the single bedroom at 9'8x6'3"



The bedroom layout on your house is really only one double room and a pair of singles which could be putting people off.

As for the house being close to the road, well as you can see from the picture above so is ours, in fact ours is closer still, and we don't find it a problem but we do live on a very quiet part of our development with not a lot of passing footfall. You would perhaps have to convince potential buyers of this non issue a bit more if you were in a busier location.

It's a Bloor Homes property.

thedanshires

phoebe1989seb said:

I agree with the poster who said it looks as though you've gone over the top on the depersonalisation front.

We've never removed all traces of our lifestyle when selling a home and in seven out of eight cases have gone sstc within a couple of months (on two/three occasions within ten days), although of course the current situation is unprecedented.

I believe that you need a usp when selling, something to make your property stand out from the crowd - especially when it's a newer house that lacks the character features of an older home. Personally I've no experience of selling anything newer than Victorian, and to me your home - whilst tidy/well presented - looks very lacking in memorable features. Nothing to make a potential buyer fall in love with your house over the others available. On top of that, the bedrooms are very small which - in a family home - is not great, although the en suite is a plus for many buyers.

If it doesn't have anything special/the 'wow' factor, then it needs to be priced so that it seems a bargain compared to your competition........I've not looked at what else is available in your area so perhaps you are already competitively priced? 

Back in 2014 we were selling a (very marmite  ) thatched house and had only had a handful of viewings and no offers during the first four weeks. We were keen to secure another unique property so we dropped the price making ours the cheapest five bed period house within three miles of our village. This resulted in several viewings and three asking price offers within the next week.......

We are competitively priced. 

AdrianC

I really can't see any issue with the pics.

The fifty quid price-change (£180k -> £179,950) a week ago smacks of "please let this nudge RM...", but <shrug> it's only us property wonks with the browser add-ons that'll notice that one.

There's not much directly comparable within a mile, but within a mile there's...
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-68373957.html

Just over the mile...
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-65681322.html

Then there's slice of utter gorgeousness...
(yes, £20k more - but for sale for 18mo, and already dropped £25k a year ago, so probably ripe for a cheeky offer)
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-66481891.html

RelievedSheff

AdrianC said:

I really can't see any issue with the pics.

The fifty quid price-change (£180k -> £179,950) a week ago smacks of "please let this nudge RM...", but <shrug> it's only us property wonks with the browser add-ons that'll notice that one.

There's not much directly comparable within a mile, but within a mile there's...
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-68373957.html

Just over the mile...
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-65681322.html

Then there's slice of utter gorgeousness...
(yes, £20k more - but for sale for 18mo, and already dropped £25k a year ago, so probably ripe for a cheeky offer)
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-66481891.html

That last property is properly nice, in fact they are all nice properties in their own way but I can't see the sort of person who is going to end up buying the OP's house buying any of those. I see the OP's house as a young couples house, first time buyers maybe or a young couple moving up a rung.

The OP really needs to dress the property to suit that target market and try not to make it look like they are running out of room/space. I know this is difficult with two young children in a small house but if you want to sell then you have to make a big effort sometimes.