A House That's Had Over 100 Viewings and No Offers | Unsellables UK Full Episode

coming up on today's program sophie tries to freshen up a stale interior i've just found a half sucked cough pass an unhappy vendor vents his anger if you ask me do i do a better job than the agent i think yes so i sample one of his house viewings from hell look at it it's full [Music] we've come to one of south east england's wealthiest areas to address today's unsellable in 2008 six of the 10 most expensive streets outside london were right here in waybridge previous residents include john lennon cliff richard even henry viii but despite over a hundred viewings of this property no one seems to want it it's a four-bedroom 1970s terrace in a quiet cul-de-sac with two bathrooms and a front and back garden it was first listed at 440 000 pounds but after 18 months on the market the price has been dropped by a whopping 65 grand to 374 950 pounds i know the area is desirable and i want to find out why the house isn't and i'm going to head into town to pick up some local knowledge before i talk to the estate agent [Music] meet john and jill their daughter melanie and their dog sweet they have been living in this house for seven years but need to sell up because john and jill have decided to split up we want to move really because we're um going our separate ways after 18 months of sleeping in the spare room jill's at the end of her tether we are just very desperate to make you know make the move our lives have been on hold the last 18 months and we need to move you know both of us need to move forward and start our lives again their daughter melanie is also keen to move on at the moment it's a bit intense because my mum and dad don't go on at all so it'd be quite good to get out and be able to be a bit more relaxed at home and stuff but moving on isn't an option without a sale and john is convinced that the agents aren't up to scratch they've sent over 100 people to view the house and john doesn't think they were the right viewers we've had people say to us it's a 70s house yeah it's mid-terrace that's correct we don't like either of those two things we don't know if they've sent genuine people around now where they're just time fillers salesman john doesn't trust them to do the viewings either and is convinced he does a better job himself if you ask me do i do a better job than the agent i think yes and the reason for that not ego or big headed is that three people have gone back to the agent and said to them very very good show and you should really employ that guy so what is it that's keeping this house from moving off the market time to take a look for myself it's a nice quiet leafy cult sack which is a good start a good location but the stalemate might be because this house feels a bit stale oh god i think that belongs to the dog really smells okay correct that i mean very very stale doesn't exactly scream by me does it it's screaming clean me it's not just the carpet look at that i can practically paint my name in the goldfish box even the goldfish are desperate to leave it's lucky they can't remember the good times [Music] pretty hard i don't think anyone's gonna be eating them i think this family might have a problem with throwing things away i mean look fairy lights that have run out and they can go for a start this is a good sized room but it's filled with clutter everywhere you look perhaps it'll be better upstairs in jill's temporary bedroom if i can get the door open you don't want to have to force yourself into rooms oh my goodness i've just found a half sucked cough bastard words actually failed me is this a junk room or is it a bedroom i mean we've got a bow tie we've got some really old plastic flowers a lizard i can't believe this is jill's bedroom splitting up is stressful enough without having to sleep in the store cupboard with john's clothes to sell this house this room needs a clear purpose [Music] what is that i can swell down the hall is it a squat no it's a teenager's bedroom wow i thought the other rooms were full of clutter but this is taking it to a whole other level we've got the mandatory old tangerine we've got an old shirt a shop receipt i've never seen so much stuff in all my life it's extraordinary i mean it's just stuff everywhere melanie may love this room but buyers won't it's so cluttered they won't be able to see its potential as a light airy bedroom in fact you could fit a double bed in there but not amongst the debris just collects dust on paper this house shouldn't have a problem selling but when you go inside it's bland it's stuffed to the rafters with clutter that's just collecting dust its present state it is unmemorable and totally unsellable [Music] to help work out why this house has been left on the market for so long i'm going to check out the area [Music] waybridge is an exclusive commuter suburb of london the train into the city only takes 30 minutes there's easy access to the m3 and the m25 but it's also surrounded by rivers and woods so it's got great access but at the same time it has a sense of being a small rural town with its own identity which makes it doubly desirable the schools are good and with several corporations having their headquarters based there just as many people commute into the area as commute out of it this is a really nice comfortable little town and if you're looking for a spot of exclusivity within easy reach of london you could do a lot worse than move here i'm surprised this house is still on the market time for john and jill to face the facts with sophie the things i think that could be improved with this room you got an old carpet a very old and slightly stained carpet it's very stained then you've got these quite dark sofas and pale walls it doesn't feel like there's much design cohesion this isn't the only problem there's also a lot of excess baggage which is making the shelves grown i think you're not very good at throwing things away am i right yeah absolutely right i'm better than some people i love to see you guys look at each did you just see what i had to do there yes yes i had to force the door now that is just not the right not the right statement to be making no isn't it no now is the step ladder always here yes it is right so you've got a bed that's too big for the room you've got a stepladder in the corner and this was the most extraordinary thing i found in here a half sucked cough pattern you people can't throw anything away it's all very well pointing the finger but it's not all jill stuff is it john things like this oh yeah is that a comet your comedy bow tie correct correct now from the new year from the new year now all these things all these things need to go this yeah this room needs to be made to feel much bigger much brighter at the moment it's just like half bedroom half junk room it looks like the place that when you don't know what to do with something that you put it in there why should we go into melanie's room then i feel like i'm marshalling the troops for battle now it's lovely it does look lovely doesn't it if you were a buyer and you walked into this room what were the three things you'd think one clutter two more clutter three even more clutter i hope when people come into this room they have got imagination wrong answer jill you've gotta make the rooms look amazing for people at the moment this room i can't see how big it is it looks dark it feels cluttered it feels grubby we need your house to stand out from the crowd so we need a blank canvas to start with and that means we need to get rid of the posters in this room so do i have permission to start well we shouldn't be very happy about it but um but we have melanie yeah you own the house and melanie probably wants to move on as much as you two so she's going to understand the stage that they're going to have to come off the wall john and jill will have to make changes in order to move on with their lives because as it is now their house really is unsellable so far waybridge looked like a very good town but to get to know what it's like to live here i want to talk to the locals so tell me what's good about waveridge why don't people like a waveridge town good community spirit oh yeah there is yeah everybody seems to know everybody yeah well we know most of the people in the shops here yeah only 20 minutes to heathrow yeah about 30 minutes to get week and about 30 minutes to um city you think it's a nice place to bring up bring up kids it's a lovely place yeah because you have fantastic schools in the area yeah imagine for small you know families with young children it'd be great for schools yeah playing areas and so on good shops good restaurants this is a baby it's a mix yeah it's a mix it certainly seems to have a friendly community this is the sort of area that people aspire to live in i find it hard to find a fault with the place anybody who can afford to live here should be laughing [Music] back at the house it's time for my favorite fit chucking out the chin and clutter so that i can see my way clear to a design plan a dirty rug a dirty fish tank and old curtains on their own not a major problem but if you combine all three in a room you don't get a very good impression and that doesn't get you a sale and there's a lot more random objects that need to go before we can really see the full potential of this house oh you've been done decluttering [Music] now it's quite interesting when i asked you and jill who was the hoarder you both pointed at each other do you think you both have a tendency to keep hold of things that should really be thrown away i'm not as bad as her yeah surprising it's not just decluttering that's needed here we're being really radical and actually throwing stuff out i'm loving your work john look at that they're getting stuck in upstairs while melanie's out i noticed decluttering now means you don't have to pack again when you move finally it feels like i've got a blank canvas to start work on after my wrecking around waybridge i reckon this is still the perfect area for people looking for a leafy retreat within half an hour of the city and houses around here are still selling here's three that sold recently detached arranged as two apartments large garden on the market for four months sold for 675 000 pounds new detached five bedrooms two receptions sold for just under 1.4 million pounds and this semi with three bedrooms a modern kitchen and landscaped garden four months on the market sold for 382 000 pounds despite the sluggish market weighbridge is still reeling the buyers in so the lack of a sale isn't down to location time for sophie to work her magic in the house this house is a bit tired at the moment and it's got absolutely no design cohesion whatsoever but now we've got rid of the clutter we have a plan the spare room i want it to go from storage room to a proper guest room melanie's room needs to lose its extreme teenage clutter and the sitting room and dining room first of all they need a good paint job we could try a color like green but it might make the room look smaller so we're going to pick just one green accent wall and paint the rest a revitalizing white we're keeping green accessories dotted throughout the room to pull it all together john has a litany of complaints about his agents and is convinced he can sell a house better than the experts so i want to take a tour around the house with him and see exactly how he's been pitching his property john's recipe for a successful viewing starts in the kitchen okay the kitchen there's a couple of features here that we like to demonstrate we've got two ladders here we've got straight ladder as you can see just with shelves in and then yeah look at it it's full buyers do want to know about storage but not in such great detail uh boiler you think well a ball is a boiler boiler but yes it may be but the the reason i'm showing that is because 180 degree opening of the cupboard um fascinating what other exciting features this house is concealing that's an evening setting and you've got just with the lights off though isn't it well there are some lights still on and there's more so you've got a a ladder tower radiator which is really really nice um when we first bought it they were really really expensive but as the years have gone by they've become quite cheap now first-time viewers don't care about the price of a heated towel rail they just want to get a feel for the house john doesn't realize he might be a big part of the problem and blames it on the estate agents instead we see them just whistling through yeah and you think yourself god forbid what do they do when we're not here yeah even quicker whistle probably yeah you know if john continues to do the tours himself this house is never going to sell i need to get to talk face-to-face with his agents now if you want to avoid problems with your agents here's a couple of tips you've got to remember if you're using an estate agent make sure you get your money's worth if they're doing things you don't like arrange a meeting with them to calmly thrash things out john's an experienced salesman but that makes it hard to accept that anyone could do as good a job of selling his house as he could but i think it's a really bad idea vendors doing their own viewings he's got to learn to trust the agents if you're getting lots of viewings but no interest double check that your estate agents are screening people and not just sending anyone along john and jill's house has been on the market for over 18 months their marriage has broken down and they are desperate to move out and on with their lives we are just very desperate to make you know make the move but then the unsellables team stepped in [Music] john is tackling the sales issues and i'm breathing new life into a stale property first came the deconstructions then the reconstructions even john's entering into the swing of things we're painting the doorframes white to freshen up the sitting room and to add a contrast to the stunning wooden floors and i'm keen to get the green wall painted to see how it brightens up the rest of the room john's been doing some viewings himself i think this is a really bad idea so i've set up a meeting with him and his estate agents so they can iron out their differences and then john can let them get on with doing their job it's showdown time john versus his two estate agents john's main concern is that the agents are not sending him people who are really in a position to buy i would like to draw the criteria rightly or wrongly and it may be a very small narrow thing but people who have either sold their property or who are in rented accommodation i'm afraid it is a numbers game and you do especially in this market john you know the more mud we can throw at the wall the more of it that's going to stick i tell you what you're saying they're not pretty judging uh what people are going to buy but you felt that a lot of people weren't proceedable when they yeah in other words without clear that they haven't yeah they haven't gotten offer on their house or mortgage financing if we were talking about 20 people come through what you've said is fair but with a poll of 100 it's not so you want basically just precedables to come yeah i think because then you've got a serious thing yeah he doesn't look very happy with that but it's one nil to john and he's on a roll now and yes he's moving on to the viewings it's there to be sold it's not there to be shown it's the case of you know this is a better road yeah sell it it's a better road john thinks he can do the viewings better than the agents but what do they think we find that viewers will be much more honest with us about feedback because i think most people are too polite you know there's certain people who are going to come around and they're going to really really like the way you show it and there's going to be others who are going to say straight away i don't like this house i just wish this guy would you know be quiet and so i can get out of here spot on he must have been through one of john's viewings too so the estate agent has equalized he isn't going to let john get away with doing the viewings my sentiments exactly position you know i think at the moment we've got a plan anyway you've got to agree on qualifying the leads if you like john you want to step back out the picture and let them sell it because if you didn't trust them to do it you wouldn't be giving them the job in the first place i hope now that they'll be able to drum up some serious prospective buyers for the relaunch so now the pressure's on me to make sure that this home will grab any viewer it's been a bit of a monster but after some ruthless chucking out then getting the marigolds out we've worked a major design transformation for much less than a grand so while john jill and melanie are away from the house it's time for me to do the finishing touches when you're selling your house it's quite important to de-personalize and de-clutter because potential buyers find it difficult to imagine themselves in the house if your cds books family albums and posters are covering the wall now with your cd collection you don't need everything so find out what you do listen to and what you don't give them to a charity shop really think about the circulation space around your rooms don't block doorways with heavy lumps of furniture because it will make the room look cramped and when moving things around remember there are two ways to do this my way or the wrong way brilliant other people will be put off by your grime so keep everything sparkling clean for those viewings ah how's it going it's going pretty well how's it going with you i'm getting rid of all these music posters do you listen to much karang uh i think karang's a magazine oh look at you well no it's looking really nice in there there's a bit of design cohesion going on it's bigger and brighter concentrate how's it going with you it's going pretty well i've got john together with the agents and i think i've persuaded him to let them get on with the job of selling the house although i think he's going to be keeping them on a pretty tight reign oh gosh three days ago john and jill's unsellable home was at a stalemate its potential was lost under a mountain of junk and clutter and its rooms had no clear direction after 18 months of languishing on the market it felt stale grubby and unloved but now we breathe some fresh air into its corridors the sitting room had some badly positioned furniture and a dirty old rug not anymore by moving the sofas we've opened up the space creating a calm living environment replacing the rub draws attention to the fabulous wooden floor and not the marks on the old rug this is the first room a buyer sees and now we'll set the whole house off on the right note the dining room was so full of clutter that the furniture was lost that's all changed now the furnishings have clean sharp lines and it's clear that there's room for a whole family to sit down for supper [Music] jill's tatty single bedroom was doubling as a junk room and had lost its way now it's an inviting guest room ready to move into at a moment's notice melanie's room used to look like a sixth form common room not anymore it's now an airy girly retreat where there is clearly room for a double bed the fresh paint and inexpensive accessories make it feel lived in without being swamped selling your home is about selling a lifestyle and this home has gone from stale to fresh time to see what john and jill think of our creation okay come on in oh my goodness oh my gosh wow oh wow that is really really do you think it's quite different yes well yeah it's different it's like show house yeah with not a huge amount of money and using a lot of your own furniture you can really transform the look of a room and look there's no clutter no there's no old tea lights everything's organized so far so good oh my goodness it's a proper room again come on in john now i did a bit of moving around the bed and look you didn't need a new bed you just give it that tiny bit of i'm going to space away from it what do you think of the color i spooned it really pretty for the former teenage den i really need melanie's opinion come in melanie to the pinkest room you have ever seen your life yeah it's very different it seems really like spacious and light really quite nice so i don't want to clutter it up again so i try and keep it as likely as i can so on a scale of one to ten do you like it hurry or nine out then that's very generous thank you the family have given their seal of approval so this house has gone from unsellable to sellable right come on in it's now down to the estate agents to sell sell sell but let's hope they don't start in the kitchen because we're in their spying john hasn't been happy with the way the agents have conducted the viewings so i want him to learn to trust them by watching on it's um real emphasis on sort of bright spacious and airy accommodation as you can see flows really well through to here to the dining room which is a good size can easily sit four to six there very comfortably but look guys in the garden oh look jimmy trampoline this is quite a pitch even john's nodding in agreement i think this would make a great room for jimmy i think we might have to do something about the color but uh you like it i'll be good for charlotte you've got the queen's road just at the end there and there's some really nice sort of restaurants and shops within walking distance so all in all you know quiet but convenient as well i do like the place yeah i really do like it it's uh it's lovely positioning as well yeah that's great to hear yeah it's thumbs up for the house but well andrew the agent get a rave review too so john we've seen andrew back in action post our um heart to heart yes what did you make of this performance with the viewers overall i think very good good it's stuck in his throat but john has finally realized his agent can sell i think it's gone from grabby to gorgeous i think it's terrific and i think the owners have undergone a bit of a transformation as well john's definitely a bit more relaxed with the agents now let's hope he can stay that way and let them get on with their job and then hopefully we'll get a sale [Music] when we first met john and jill their 70s terrace was unsellable but then we stepped in and transformed this house since we left five weeks ago the agents have kept to their side of the bargain and delivered viewers who are seriously interested and john has stopped doing the viewings himself i think this house will be under offer in no time you

Channel: Unsellables

Views: 280,290

Keywords: Unsellable house, Unsellables, Cineflix, HGTV, Sofie Allsopp, The Unsellables, Housing, Building, Lifestyle, Home and Design, Renovation, Renovation Shows, Real Estate, Unsellables Full Episodes, Shaw Media, BBC, Makeover, Homeowners, Transform, Properties, Renovating, Unsellables UK

Id: Tx83Hd10FiM

Length: 27min 4sec (1624 seconds)

Published: Fri May 07 2021