Five ways you can unintentionally damage the price of your home

Real estate prices have climbed at an all time high as desperate buyers scrambled for the limited number of new homes on the market.

Yet even if demand is high, sellers are not sure to profit from their bricks and mortar. Inside false break to questionable papers, sellers could unwittingly reduce the price of their property by tens of thousands of pounds, or even end a sale.

Telegraph Money spoke to real estate experts about the most common ways to accidentally damage the price of your home.

1. Too many “you”

Robin Gould, of the purchasing agency Prime Purchase, warned that a property that is too personalized is a big hurdle for potential buyers.

“I visited a property on behalf of a client that had an outdoor pool with an owner’s tiled mural at the bottom. Why a buyer would want a lasting reminder of the previous owner is beyond me,” he said.

“Unsurprisingly, the customer didn’t buy it. But if the seller had finally found a buyer, one of the first jobs would have been to redo the tiling of the pool, which could easily have cost hundreds, if not dollars. thousands of pounds. “

A survey of more than 2,000 adults by GoCompare Home Insurance found that one in ten would be reluctant to buy a home with overdone or exaggerated rugs. A messy house was a red flag for 18% of those surveyed.

Sarah Cull of Strutt & Parker, a real estate agency, said being too bold with colors and styles in rooms that were expensive to change, like kitchens and bathrooms, was especially off-putting.

She added: “Buyers often hate to undo something that has been recently finished, but not to their liking. Some touches of style are fine and features like curtains and paint can be easily changed, but larger and more light fixtures are fine. more daring can start to cause problems. ”

2. Over-develop your home

As the saying goes, less is more. Overdeveloping a home and making it too big for its land can cost tens of thousands of pounds at its price, according to Cull.

“Homeowners have the best intentions when expanding or expanding their home, but if that doesn’t balance out with garden space, it can really devalue a home,” Ms. Cull said.

“It really depends on the price of the property, but let’s say a house was on the market for between £ 700,000 and £ 800,000, then the overdevelopment is able to bring the price down by £ 50,000.”

3. Suspicious documents

With so much time spent indoors since the start of the pandemic, many homeowners have turned to home improvement. But planning and consent rules can be complex, and it’s not always clear which changes require approval. This, Ms. Cull warned, often led to problems with the sale.

“Sellers who don’t get the necessary building permits or regulations for work in both listed and unlisted properties can really hurt the price or even kill the deal altogether,” she said. “On top of that, a serious breach of consent can result in hefty fines.”

In some lucky cases, retrospective permission, granted after the work is completed, may be granted, but anyone who purchases the property instead risks being ordered by the council to return the property to its original condition.