This house has been on the market for 10 days now.  It is listed at $1,249,000.

Compared to its neighbour, this house does not look very big but it is with 4 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms.  Unfortunately the layout is messed up.

From the get go, I am not into the colours.  The mint green really throws me off.   But that is a simple fix.

Then you go into the living room and start noticing some strange things.  I like the idea of those built-ins but if you don't like the fireplace (which I don't), how do you redo it with those things built right up against the brick?

The bathroom....

And then there are the kitchen shots.  It took me a while to figure out what was going on there but I finally got it.  Instead of building a simple island and a family room with a walk out to the back deck, they built a 90 degree island, closed off the window to the backyard and built the kitchen along the back wall.  So unless you go to the far corner of the kitchen, you can't see the kids playing in the backyard.

And if you have kids, maybe a family room area would have made sense.  At the least, windows that looked out to the back.  Maybe put the fridge and stove where the desk is.  You lose storage but gain light.

And then there is that vent hood.  Isn't the silver tape and range hood duct supposed to be hidden?  That is a quick fix though but just a weird thing to have done.

Upstairs has the master bedroom on what used to be the back porch.  Weird.

The bathtub in the kid's washroom seems to be kid sized.  Is there such a thing?

The third floor is fine.

The basement is the best room of the house.

And the backyard is good with artificial grass and a large deck but I don't understand why that stump couldn't have been cut down by 4 inches (am I nitpicking?).

I really don't understand why they filled in windows and basically created a brick wall overlooking the garden.  Was it a feng shui thing about looking through the back door from the front door?  If I had kids, I want to see them playing in the backyard and wouldn't care about feng shui.

All of these things would be a huge deal breaker for me (mostly the kitchen), especially at the asking price.

As the reader who sent it into me said, 'if they had priced it at $998,000 or something like that, they would have sold it for $1.1 mln last week. Now they’ll wait another 2 weeks and end up selling it for $1.05 mln.'

And I completely agree but I am going with $998,000, not $1,050,000.  I can't get passed that kitchen (or that shoe rack).

Too harsh?

listing