Tag: home selling

Avoid these rookie mistakes when selling your home

Avoid these rookie mistakes when selling your home

Selling your home isn’t easy, and it can be an expensive and time-consuming process. There are all the expected stresses, and you may be tempted to give up and stay rooted where you are. However, you can make your life easier, and sell your home faster, by avoiding the mistakes we mention in this post. So, if you’re planning on selling your home any-time soon, take the following into consideration to achieve a fast house sale.

Woman sitting and thinking about a house

Mistake #1: Not shopping around

In all aspects of your home sale, compare the prices and online reviews of the people who will be helping you. Talk to different estate agents in Lewisham, and find out how much they charge in fees. While you may be tempted to go for the cheapest, you should also research their reputation and how effective they are at selling. You can also tell a lot from their website, and how well-advertised their other properties are. You should also compare conveyancing solicitor quotes here, as while you can sell your house without an estate agent, you can’t forego the legal side of things. And again, do your research, asking solicitor firms for testimonials, and seeking the wisdom of family and friends who may have advice on who to work with.

House marketing

Mistake #2: Not adding value to your home

To ensure your home sells faster, there are a variety of ways you can add value to your home. There are lots of things you can do, such as renovating certain rooms in your property or installing smart technology, but if money is an issue, the least you can do is add a lick of paint to the interior and exterior of your home, get on top of any repairs, and tidy up any area that looks worn and not terribly presentable.

House made from jigsaw pieces

Mistake #3: Putting off the home buyer

When it comes to those all-important home showings, your home needs to be presentable. If your house is in a mess, with dishes piled high in the sink and with clutter on the floor, and if you have pets and children running around leaving disaster in their wake, then you aren’t going to give a good first impression to buyers. Similarly, if you don’t give potential buyers room to use their imagination when looking around, perhaps because you’ve gone overboard with renovations when adding value, and designed the home as you’d like it to be, or if you insist on following the buyer around the house giving them your suggestions, you’re going alienate their sensibilities. Ensure your home is presentable, consider what else might put the buyer off your home and, if need be, go out for the day and let the estate agent do their job and show the buyer around without your intervention.

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Mistake #4: Setting the property price too high (or too low)

When selling your home, you want to get as much money as you can, while beating off the competition. But by selling your home at too high a price, you may not be in line with the current housing market. If the buyer can buy a similar house for cheaper elsewhere, then they probably will do. If you decide to set your home at lower than the expected price, the buyer might ask why this is the case. Rather than have the incentive to buy your property, they may determine something may be wrong with it. And even if they do buy, you may run at a loss! To make a wise decision, speak to your estate agent. They have more idea about property prices than you do, and they should give you the right figure to both profit you and attract the attention of home buyers.

House and man with a megaphone

Mistake #5: Not making the effort to market or sell your property effectively

The estate agent will do much of the marketing for you, by advertising on their website, and any that are affiliated to them. However, you can put the effort in yourself. Advertise your home on social media, and provide links to the estate agent’s website. Consider setting up your own website or blog to market your property, and again, link your social media followers (and their friends) to the site. Place ads in the classifieds too, or directly approach people you know who are currently house hunting. The more you can do to sell your property, including the unusual ideas here, the higher the chance of a speedier home sale.

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Finally

We hope this advice was useful, and that it alleviates the stress you’re probably feeling if your house is up for sale. And if you have any further advice, perhaps from your experiences now or in the past, then be sure to let us know. Good luck with the sale, and thanks for reading!

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How to successfully sell your house for cash

How to successfully sell your house for cashcredit

You may, perhaps, have been faced with the situation where you’ve had to quickly sell your house for cash. Sometimes this is the best option for a given set of circumstances. If you’ve ever had to go through selling your house, you’ll be aware of how stressful it can be. There are a few basic principles to follow to make the most of the process of selling your property and keep anxiety to a minimum.

Here are some of the foolproof ways in which you could speed up the selling process and successfully sell your house.

Mayfair on a Monopoly board

Have a realistic valuation

One mistake that vendors often make is setting the asking price too high and then lowering it later when they’ve failed to attract prospective buyers. What people often don’t understand when selling their house is the fact that this can ultimately lead to a slower sale and sometimes at a much lower price than first expected. The first 30 days after you put your house on the market is the optimum time that you’ll see most interest and activity. If you’ve initially set the price too high, buyers would choose to stay away assuming that your property is out of their price range or not good value for money.

House with curb appeal

Improve your house’s curb appeal

You can improve your property’s curb appeal by adding a few touches here and there to make the exterior of your house more appealing to buyers. Mow the lawn and trim the hedge, put some potted plants on the doorstep, give the front door a wash or a lick of paint and make sure there’s no litter near your front gate. First impressions count and it’s especially important to bear this in mind when trying to sell your property. Prospective buyers are already beginning to form an opinion before they even enter a house. However, curb appeal is just the start.

Clutter-free living room

Clean and de-clutter

This one should be quite obvious but you’d be surprised how often it’s overlooked. The fewer things there are in an interior, the larger it will appear. Therefore, remove unnecessary things and any excess furniture. Store away things that you’ve added for that personal touch such as family snaps on the mantelpiece, knick-knacks on shelves and children’s artworks on the fridge door. Fold up the laundry and tidy away clothes & shoes into drawers and wardrobes. Make sure the bath and shower are spotless. Creating as blank a canvas as possible is important so that the buyers can envision themselves, their family and their possessions in the house.

If your property really needs help, hire a professional to do a deep clean of the house. If you have an appointment with a viewer, make sure any pets are kept out of the way – take the dog for a walk and make sure the hamster, guinea pig or rabbit is secure in its cage. And, if you do have pets, be aware of any odours that may be present to which you have become immune. The same goes for cooking smells; baking bread and freshly brewed coffee are said to be good for helping to sell your house – not so fry ups or kippers… ditto tobacco smoke. Counteract these by opening some windows, spraying air freshener or lighting a few scented candles or incense.

Property for sale signs

Ensure your listing is on all the property portals

Finally, when you’ve decided to sell your house, make sure that it is listed on all the major online property sale portals. Also ask your estate agent to showcase your house on their social media channels. This would increase the chances of your house being noticed and thereby getting sold. Most estate agents have Twitter accounts and Facebook business pages where they publicise their listings.

In addition to all of the above, get all the necessary repairs done before the house goes on to the market. Make sure that your house is as presentable as possible and doesn’t appear to buyers that too much work would be needed after the purchase. This will attract more buyers and your house should sell more quickly and for a better price.

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Why selling fast doesn’t mean selling for less

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When we put our homes on the market, we’re met with a mountain of administration to tackle, estate agents to wrestle with and a never-ending cycle of anticipation, offers and fall-throughs. But what if you could speed up the process? And what if you could do so without losing money? It’s certainly possible…

The majority of us sell our homes using estate agents. However, estate agents can cost sellers a lot of money, charging anything from 0.75% to 3.0% of the agreed selling price, plus VAT. So, using the national average charge, selling a £250k home could result in you owing an average fee of £5,400 – all going directly into your estate agent’s pocket.

But, is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. A good estate agent with strong local knowledge, effective communication skills and an ability to negotiate could mean that their fee is money well spent. But, sadly, that’s not true for everyone. Many sellers report feeling dissatisfied with their estate agent’s services, finding that communication often breaks down and that their processes are frustrating. If you feel this way or want to avoid the cost of using a traditional estate agent, there are a number of other routes you could can go down to sell your house fast without losing money…

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Using an online estate agent

Firstly, new homes, old homes, small homes, flats (or any other home for that matter), can be listed on sites such as House Simple, an online estate agent. Due to the fact that online providers like this have fewer overheads than traditional agents, they tend to charge much smaller fees. They’re also able to tap into a huge number of potential buyers, promoting your property across a large marketing network including sites such as Rightmove and Zoopla.

If you’re happy to show potential buyers around your home yourself, and are able to answer questions directly rather than relying on an agent as a middle man, you might be able to sell your house fast, and at a high price. House Simple currently helps sellers achieve 99% of their asking price and find that properties listed through their services take an average of 25 days to sell. Just be sure to research this option thoroughly by reading the small print and using a reputable online vendor – not all online agents are professional or able to secure you a good price.

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Becoming a DIY agent

Alternatively, you could sell your house quickly and cheaply by acting as your own estate agent. Use your local knowledge and take advantage of advertising, social media and word of mouth, photographing your home professionally and listing it on websites like Tepilo or Gumtree before showing prospective buyers around your property. It’s a more labour-intensive option than hiring an estate agent and involves lots of administration and paperwork, and requires excellent negotiation skills… but if you’re good at it, you’ll have full control over the speed of a sale and will be able to save yourself lots of money.

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10 ways to help your home sell faster

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property sold signscredit

You’ve made the decision to move on – and now the hard work begins. You may have great memories of the property where your children grew up or you progressed in your career, but to the home-buyer that means nothing; their memories are still to be created. Here are ten quick ways to help your home sell faster and boost your chances of moving to your next abode.

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De-clutter for visits

If you’ve made the decision to move, then your personal effects will need to be packed up at some point – so why not start now? Pack away the personal photographs and travel memorabilia, wall certificates, photographs and kids’ paintings, with the aim of creating a canvas onto which a visitor can mentally stamp their authority.

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Let other people love your home

Garish room colours such as dark reds, purples and blues might be perfect for your lifestyle, but for a potential buyer it represents redecoration at best, and rejection at worst. Regard it from the viewpoint of someone coming into the home fresh, with new ideas for rooms, which they’ll visualise more easily if they’re pastel colours.

dog ate a hole in the wallcredit

Get those jobs done

The niggly, nasty little jobs that you’ve been putting off for months or years need to be done if they’re a real barrier to the sale. Guttering upgrades, crack repairs, and broken windows might need professional help, but replacing doorknobs and skirting boards could be done in a day or so by the owner and could tip the balance in a buyer’s eyes.

dated kitchencredit

Update the kitchen

Alongside the bathroom, this is the one room where old age can’t be hidden easily by removing items for the photographs. Dirty units and old-fashioned trimmings will drag down the overall picture of the house; while a modern, clean kitchen might catch the eye. We’re not talking big money – just enough for it to become a positive talking point for the estate agent.

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Leaving behind?

Transporting some items is more hassle than benefit; sheds, integrated TVs, cookers and the like are the types of furniture that might not add value to your home, but might a) give a good impression, b) look nice and prevent disruption and c) enable the buyer to sell their own counterpart items.

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Get recording

You’ve got a mobile phone or a small video/DSLR camera, so make use of it. A walk through your lovely home is one thing, but why not go further by taking potential buyers on a leafy tour through the local amenities, pubs, shops, leisure facilities, parks and other attractions. If they’ll agree, enlist neighbours and friends as well.

'Easy Guide to Selling' web page

Go online

The quick house sale and online estate agency markets are booming, with much of the donkey work such as photography, floor plans and advertising on property portals like Rightmove and Zoopla done for you through sites such as HouseSimple.com. It’s certainly worth a look if time is of the essence – for example, if one needs to move to start a new job.

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Utilise social media

That video should not only find its way to YouTube and Vimeo, but other social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Accompany it with lovely pictures, a PDF of particulars for downloading and contact details. The trick is to make something that’s interesting enough for friends & followers to share, encourage and positive comments.

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Don’t forget the exterior…

The external walls and the garden are part of your home, and a spot of weeding/raking to the latter and painting of the former – and therefore protecting it from sun, wind and rain for future owners – could be worth it. Keep a tin of the paint and the receipt if completed by a professional decorator, to prove the job has been done recently.

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…and additional space

According to the Royal Horticultural Society (as reported in The Independent) three times as many front gardens are now completely paved over compared to a decade ago, for reasons such as people can’t be bothered with gardens and need parking spaces. If your property boasts its own parking space make sure this is highlighted, and emphasise that it is near to any attractions (if true). A happy medium would be a combination of parking and grassed area, of course; shout from the rooftops if you possess this treasure.

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