I live in Pgh but I am not too familiar with the Penns Hills market. I live in the North Hills.

The price seems good and the house has nice curb appeal. However, I have not heard good things about the Penn Hills school Dist and the detached garage is a deal breaker for a lot of people in the Pgh area. I like the beamed ceiling!

Looks good to me, don't know your area but price seems good.
If I were being picky I might try to get a better picture of the kitchen, it looks a little dark. The first living room picture, retake without the tiny bit of coffered ceiling showing or remove it and replace it with a bathroom or bedroom. The bigger living room picture with more of the coffered ceiling - you can see that the ceiling isn't too low, but in the first picture, well it just seems a little more claustrophobic to me.

I think a lot of the pictures make the rooms look really small as furniture appears to be filling the rooms so it loks a bit cramped. Are they? Pics are also a little on the dark side.

Great curb appeal!

Have you been getting viewings from your listing? If so, it is the price. If not....

Your outside pictures are nice. Bright, focused, they convey a message of great curb appeal, nice lot and a good garage.

The inside of the house.... not so much.

All your inside pictures (except one) are very dark. The furniture overwhelms the rooms making the area look very small. Remove some furniture and retake the pictures. Your kitchen looks like a dark cave. Remove the eyebrow from above the window, get better lighting and retake the picture. Where is the bathroom photo? If your house is naturally dark and lighting is an issue, you may want to invest in a professional photographer.

You know those yellow halogen lamps with the grill on the front that you can buy at Lowes or HD? I used a couple of those when I was trying to get more light in pictures. It can be tricky because you create shadows, a couple of helpers holding them and moving around can help - but they put out a lot of light!

Sorry but.........
Home looks dated. The kitchen will NOT sell your house. Maybe paint cupboards, put in white appliances to lighten it up. Empty the counter tops. Make it look like you have lots of counter space.
Bookshelves in office(?) need to be emptied and staged with not just books, make it look good, not overfilled and messy.
Room with the sectional, get rid of some of the pieces, too big for the room and that is not good.
Beams on ceilings make rooms look smaller and ceilings lower, hate to say it, but maybe paint beams.
JMHO because you asked, Kathy G in MI

Exterior shot is fine. I don't need to see your garage; the listing says there is one.

Interior shots are too dark.

Your furniture is oversized for the rooms. Not so much too much furniture as too big. (I'd skip the photo of the leaning bookcase and TV on a table.)

This will sound harsh, but the photos make the house look 'unloved' -- tired and 'blah'. It's a nice house. Maybe some smaller furnishings and some zip via greenery?

I'm also readying a home for sale as well as being in buying mode, spending a lot of time trolling the MLS for a new home. Wish I could find something so nice for that price where I'm shopping!

There's nothing about your pics that would deter me from seeing your home. But other than the outside shots, I don't think they highlight the best features of your home.

Ask yourself -- are these really the eight best areas of my home? I'm guessing the garage is not, and trust me, very few people are looking for garage pics. I wouldn't have two pics of the LR. Do you have a pic of the DR? Bedrooms? Bathrooms? Your listing says you have hardwood floors, but I can't really see those floors in any of the pics.

The picture of the bookshelves doesn't work, because I can't even tell what room it is. If that's a good room to include, find a better angle. Move the largest books down to the bottom and the smaller ones up, because right now it looks top heavy. I wouldn't worry about staging it beyond that. I disagree that it looks messy -- it looks quite tidy to me, just top heavy. The cords from the TV (?) do look messy though. Unplug and hide those during the photo shoot. Maybe throw a large plant in that corner to hide the heat vent.

Did you take these pics? Do you or your realtor have access to a wide-angle lens camera? Try to find an angle that makes the rooms look as big as possible. Don't take pictures of the furniture, if you know what I mean -- people are buying the structure, not its contents. Also, try to shoot on a sunny day, use a tripod, and get some big lights like the previous poster mentioned to fill the rooms with light. Or get a pro in there!

I disagree that you need to go to the lengths of painting your kitchen and buying new appliances. That's a TON of work and money and personally, I don't think it's going to make the difference. But the picture could be better. Step back to get more of the room in the pics. Get light in there so the cabs don't look like a black hole. The pic makes it look like your kitchen has poor lighting. If there's one room where people value light, it's the kitchen! At the very least, you can lighten the existing photos, like so. Look at the difference:

Looks better already!

I also totally disagree about painting your beams. They are clearly gorgeous as is and I would not change them just to get better pictures. Many home buyers looking at a 1940s house will be thrilled to have unpainted beams.

Hope that helps. Maybe post your new photos here for critique before you upload them to the MLS.

Don't paint the beams!!! it's a 40's house with charm in those exposed beams, don't paint the charm right out of the house.

You've been on the market 9 months, are you getting showings? if you're getting people through the door, but no offers, it might just be a matter of price. If you're not even getting buyers in the door then definitely update the photos which aren't that great, many of them are just too dark.

Canobeans said exactly what I was going to say. The pictures are not good, and other than the front shot of house don't inspire me to see your house in person. You really need a wide angle lens to get better pictures, and even the most basic photo editing program will be able to lighten and enhance the pictures.

I had a house on the market for 9 1/2 months, with over 90 showings. It didn't sell until I had dropped the price below what the competitors were (because my listing had become so stale), and I had to pull it off the market for a month while I went through the whole house and painted it American Tradition's Vanilla Biscuit. My realtor said, your buyer is vanilla, and you're neapolitan. Make it vanilla. Took me 8 months to listen. So, I pulled it off the market, neutralized it top to bottom, dropped the price 20k (to 349), took new pictures, relisted it, and finally sold the sucker.

In this age of digital photography, there's no excuse for bad pictures anymore. Just keep shooting until you get a good picture....

While I agree that you could do with a wide angle lens, I see nothing wrong with your pictures. Gosh, people here are picky. With the wide angle lens your furniture won't seem so big. And if you paint those beams, the old house gods will curse you. Seriously, they are gorgeous as is and for me would be a selling point. The quality of those pics are in line with the better pics I see for listings in my area (also PA...Montgomery County).
You could maybe do with a few less books on those shelves for purposes of a less cluttered look in the picture...but honestly what's on your shelves would not deter me from looking at your home. Good luck!

I think the reason people are responding negatively to the beams (which should be a positive) is because they are too dark and look as though they belong in a Tudor revival, not a colonial. Same deal with the kitchen.

I would have a little trouble getting past this if competing properties were more consistent in style. I do NOT see this as a special, historic house with beams that can't be painted. If it were my house I would paint the beams. But I don't think you should because some people will like them.

It seems like a lot of house for the money and it's a nice yard.

Gosh, people here are picky.

No, people here are realistic. They know that there is a lot of competition out there, and that it's important to make your house stand out if you want people to see it. If I see a house that looks like the rooms are small and dark I will pass over it and go look at something else.

Gosh, people here are picky.

Yes, that is what the critique process is all about.

I would retake the photo of the back yard at a different time of day to avoid the sun dappling. You can't make out much from that photo.

Besides better photographs, how about getting your agent to jazz up the description of your house:

Beautiful Brick Colonial Living w/ Beam ceiling Fireplace Family sunroom Kit. w ceramic tile & Garden window New windows doors New high efficiecy furnace & AC 14 rooms

You need to give people a reason for wanting to come see this house. New windows, doors and furnace are important, but they don't make people fall in love with your house. Note typo in the word "efficiency."

Good work on brightening the photo, canobeans! My husband is a photographer and does those types of photo improvements for a living.

mandogirl: Gosh, people here are picky

I restrained myself greatly on this one. There were SO many negatives to the inside photos that sweeping generalizations were not only easier to write, they made the post FAR less picky then it should have been.

One of the reasons folks (with strong nerves) ask for critiques of this forum is the people here are usually spot on. The same mistakes seem to be made over and over with listing photos, write ups and virtual tours. Sometimes the sellers take the advice given here when it is given, sometimes they ignore it and then take it six months later, and sometimes they get angry.

One thing is fairly certain, the people on this forum giving the advice have no reason to not give an honest, unbiased opinion on a listing. The same cannot always be said of the seller's Realtor, friends or family.

Disclaimer- Please note that none of my feelings were hurt during this critiquing chronicle of the house I am trying to sell. ;)

Hi All- Thank you all very much for your honesty. My DH and I called our agent and a professional photographer will be capturing new photos and in turn, the agent will use these to revamp the listing-- including the description. I'll repost when we get all of this complete.

/hapnor

Thanks for getting back to us. We're glad you took our remarks as intended -- trying to lure more buyers for your house!

I wanted to add my 2cents:)

I agree with KathiG...

I hate having to lower the price, when you could perhaps sell it at the listed price with some tweeking here and there. I am not sure what typical prices are in that area, and I didn't see a square footage listed, but I thought your house and yard looks great! Even in this market, (florida) we can't get a house like that for the price.

That being said, I would strongly suggest getting a temporary storage unit to get rid of the big bulky furniture. It really makes the rooms look too small.

I do think you should paint the kitchen cabinets white...when I first got married, my DH kitchen was horrible and dark..we did a quick fix before the wedding and painted it white and added new handles and it really did spruce it up!

The rooms also need some splash of color whether it is in pillows, flowers, ect. I would like to see a nice taupe/beige etc. wall color to give it a warm cozy feel, but can see how that may be a bit much to do all the painting..

Your house is really nice and has a lot of potential.

Before you take new pictures you should take down the kitchen curtains. They look pretty dated.

One other thing in the kitchen. The stove and fridge are stainless, the DW is white. If you get a stainless panel at Lowe's that's made for DW'ers, you can make your DW match. It's pretty jarring to have all that stainless and then the white dw popping out at you. And the stainless panel is a cheap, easy fix.

Glad you're getting the professional photos done, that will help drive traffic, I think...

Personally, I don't like dark cabinets in kitchens. We painted DH's maple cabs before putting his house on the market last year. The maple was very worn and refinishing wouldn't have helped, so at our realtor's suggestion, we had the cabs painted white and the hardware polished. The painter did a wonderful job, and the white cabs really brightened up the small kitchen. Our current house has cream-colored cabs and I love them. They are a bit of a challenge to keep clean (409 works wonders), but they look so pretty and are bright. I would agree with those who say to paint the kitchen cabs white or cream.

That said, I would not paint your beams. We have similar beams in our dining room and living room, and I think you'd take away some of the character of the house if you painted them.

I also agree about removing some of the furniture and better staging some of the rooms so buyers can tell what the room's purpose is.

Good luck!