Struggeling to sell - any tips?

Tiglet2

It's a nice house and presented well.  For people looking to move from a terraced or semi into a detached home, with enough bedrooms for a young family, it is ideal.

My thoughts are that your house is very similar to a lot of other fairly new-build 4 bed detached houses built everywhere.  Nothing really stands out and makes it different from the others.  It gets lost in the pages and pages of similar houses on rightmove.  People may be scrolling by.

If I were looking at £350,000 in your area, I would be comparing everything nearby being sold at a similar price, but not only that, I would be comparing room sizes and driveways and garage options. 

While you have 4 bedrooms, 3 reception rooms, a garage, a driveway and a garden, none of them are generously sized.  Again, for a young family moving up from a 2/3 bed semi or terrace, they should be happy to have the extra space.

Your driveway looks enormous on the photos, but streetview suggests only two spaces side by side (without the space in the garage).  Probably fine for most people.  The garage being only 7 feet 10 inches wide would not be big enough to open the car door once parked inside (not my car anyway), but lots of people don't put their cars in their garage! (I do).

The planters in the garden look green, which might suggest that your garden doesn't get much sun.  Does it?

I do like the kitchen to be at the back of a house.  It's more child-friendly in that you can keep an eye on the children where they're playing in the garden, so a kitchen at the front of the house would not be my first choice.

I don't know your area, so I won't comment on the price.  

I really hope you do sell in the very near future.  Good luck.

Exodi

silvercar said:

pinkteapot said:

Bog standard modern house. Nothing wrong with the listing, so absolutely no point changing agent as everyone just looks on Rightmove anyway. 

Lose "offers in the region of". That tells buyers you don't want to haggle and will only accept close to that price. It hasn't sold, so that price is too high in the current market. Even if you drop the price you're still selling for well above what you paid for it. Drop the price, get overseas, and don't look back.

This one nearby is under offer, and was marketed at offers over £290k. Yours looks a bit nicer, but not £60k nicer. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/126540215#/?channel=RES_BUY

I disagree, OPs is far nicer, bigger, better layout, detached has an en-suite and a garage. Proper back garden with grass….

While I agree that the OPs house is nicer, bigger, etc, I am minded to agree with pinkteapots point that it's not '60k nicer' or priced 20% higher 'nicer'. I'd also agree with their view about losing the 'OIRO' bit. If the OP was willing to accept a bit less, they should market it for a bit less as currently potential buyers may not even see the house if they have filtered out £350k+ houses.

But I think we are grasping at straws, because the real problem isn't the handful of words or acronym stated before the price, nor is it whether their house is fairly comparable to houses that sold for less, the issue is there are significant current influences on demand.

A mortgage deal taken out today will be considerably more expensive than the same mortgage deal taken out a year ago. A year ago, a 5 year fix would have been at around 3.5% - on the OP's house (assuming the buyer had a 10% deposit), that would equate to a monthly payment of £1,577 on a 25 year mortgage. The same deal today would be about £2,101, over £500 extra a month... I won't even compare it to the 1-2% deals a couple of years ago...

30 years ago, the average house was about 3x the average salary. Today it is about 8-9x. People can not afford to pay this, if interest rates are high also.

If your house isn't selling, and there isn't an issue with the listing (as others and myself agree - it is a beautiful house and a solid listing) then the house is simply overpriced for the current market.

The flip side being - that any subsequent purchase would also be expected to have reduced in price.

Sarah1Mitty2

Exodi said:

silvercar said:

pinkteapot said:

Bog standard modern house. Nothing wrong with the listing, so absolutely no point changing agent as everyone just looks on Rightmove anyway. 

Lose "offers in the region of". That tells buyers you don't want to haggle and will only accept close to that price. It hasn't sold, so that price is too high in the current market. Even if you drop the price you're still selling for well above what you paid for it. Drop the price, get overseas, and don't look back.

This one nearby is under offer, and was marketed at offers over £290k. Yours looks a bit nicer, but not £60k nicer. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/126540215#/?channel=RES_BUY

I disagree, OPs is far nicer, bigger, better layout, detached has an en-suite and a garage. Proper back garden with grass….

While I agree that the OPs house is nicer, bigger, etc, I am minded to agree with pinkteapots point that it's not '60k nicer' or priced 20% higher 'nicer'. I'd also agree with their view about losing the 'OIRO' bit. If the OP was willing to accept a bit less, they should market it for a bit less as currently potential buyers may not even see the house if they have filtered out £350k+ houses.

But I think we are grasping at straws, because the real problem isn't the handful of words or acronym stated before the price, nor is it whether their house is fairly comparable to houses that sold for less, the issue is there are significant current influences on demand.

A mortgage deal taken out today will be considerably more expensive than the same mortgage deal taken out a year ago. A year ago, a 2 year fix would have been at around 3.5% - on the OP's house (assuming the buyer had a 10% deposit), that would equate to a monthly payment of £1,577 for a five year fix on a 25 year mortgage. The same deal today would be about £2,101, over £500 extra a month... I won't even compare it to the 1-2% deals a couple of years ago...

30 years ago, the average house was about 3x the average salary. Today it is about 8-9x. People can not afford to pay this, if interest rates are high also.

If your house isn't selling, and there isn't an issue with the listing (as others and myself agree - it is a beautiful house and a solid listing) then the house is simply overpriced for the current market.

The flip side being - that any subsequent purchase would also be expected to have reduced in price.

That`s right, you are not going to lose out by being sensible and dropping the price. Are you using PropertyLog to see what other sellers are doing OP?

[Deleted User]

With the rate at which prices are falling right now, it's no wonder people are waiting to see how much more you knock off the price. If you want to sell you will have to reduce it further.

custardly

If you aren't getting viewings and offers within a couple of weeks of being on the market then it is priced too high. Reduce and reassess in a couple of weeks. 

BobT36

gwynlas said:

Sorry but the over reliance on the word area would put me off even viewing though otherwise the listing covers everything,. You have obviously decluttered but some photos still look messy with oven gloves and bits hanging around the kitchen, this looks to have an odd layout is there somewhere to sit and eat breakfast? Todays trend is for kitchen diners.Upstairs remove plastic boxes beneath the bed and straighten up the cushions in home office/guest room. You could inject colour accents throughout with a larger canvas print replacing pictures in living room and put  bowl of fruit or colourful dish on dining table.Co ordinating throws and cushions on beds towel sets in bathrooms. It might appear counter to your needs going forwwards but  again garden planters are empty and should be in full bloom at this time of year. Investing a £100 or more to style the house to appear interesting in new photos and a better worded description should work to attract more viewers hence potentiial offers. Otherwise you will just be advised to continue to drop the price until it catches the eye of an investor looking for a very easy flip.

I completely dissagree with this utter NONSENSE "staging", besides a general clean and tidy up. 
Oven gloves hung up out of the way in the kitchen, plastic boxes under the bed.. THAT'S WHERE THEY SHOULD BE. 
What do you think someone who buys the house is going to do, pack their oven gloves and everything else out of sight away in cupboards? 

A colourful bowl of fruit on the table? How daft. Are you one of those estate agents who wastes a picture slot on a close-up of a bottle of wine and two glasses on the table? Or puts 15 cushions on a bed like this?:


People are buying a HOUSE, not a restaurant, table, or bowl of fruit. If anything having that stuff out in normal places (but tidy) lets a viewer see how much room there is for their own normal-person things.
All the above about bowls of fruit etc only works if it's a mouldy, old, falling-to-bits terraced or a complete shoebox newbuild and you need some distractions. Otherwise it's a waste of time. I'd get extra-suspicious if it looks artificially dressed up. 

The house looks perfectly tidy and well presented. Clearly the only issue is the price. It's still being listed at pre-interest rate / cost of living rises... 

Exodi said:

A year ago, a 5 year fix would have been at around 3.5% - on the OP's house (assuming the buyer had a 10% deposit), that would equate to a monthly payment of £1,577 on a 25 year mortgage. The same deal today would be about £2,101, over £500 extra a month... I won't even compare it to the 1-2% deals a couple of years ago...

30 years ago, the average house was about 3x the average salary. Today it is about 8-9x. People can not afford to pay this, if interest rates are high also.

If your house isn't selling, and there isn't an issue with the listing (as others and myself agree - it is a beautiful house and a solid listing) then the house is simply overpriced for the current market.

This, so much this. There's SO many posts on here of "why am I getting views but my house isn't selling?" Clearly either something specific (wrong) is putting them off, or it's simply just not worth the amount that's being asked (especially in the current market). 

Also thankyou for educating all those "back in my day I had to pay 15% interest it was so hard" people.. Yes, on WHAT TOTAL? Nowdays just a tiny notch in interest rates is a HUGE monthly change due to houses being so damn expensive. It's getting to the point that normal people just won't be able to afford anything beyond an old terrace. 
Those houses at 2-3x salary were also when people didn't need to spend as much on childcare and tradies etc due to it being common to only need one household salary.. 

GDB2222

Also, there was a large exodus of quite well paid people from London during the pandemic, pushing house prices up in places like Coventry. That is now reversing, as WFH is reducing and the bright lights of London are enticing once again. I don't think Coventry will become a ghost town, but prices may lose their 'pandemic gain'. 

saucer

I think your house looks lovely, and I think it is nicely presented. I suspect, as others have said, that it’s the price, sadly for you. 

lookstraightahead

Do you have a timescale for your move? Can people move straight in? 

Sarah1Mitty2

mallen said:

I’ve recently sold my house and could have held out for 5-10k more but in a world of ever rising interest rates I listed it for offers over my bottom price and sold it quickly.

If it’s not getting any offers it’s over priced. We’re in a market where house prices are falling. Maybe it’s best to reduce earlier rather than waiting until august 3rd and another BOE base rate increase which will just price out more potential buyers. 

Very good advice, I just took the video tour and it is well presented, but asking for more than 300k just isn`t realistic I`m afraid. 250k would be a more realistic starting point IMO, but not sure if it can sell for that now.