Top tips to sell property successfully

There are three main principles that are most effective when selling a home. These are presentation, marketing and pricing.

The decisions that house sellers make around these principles can significantly influence the chance to sell their home above or below market value. How you prepare your home for viewers and hiring the right estate agent to market your home will not only ensure your property is sold sooner but can potentially add thousands of pounds to its value and sale price.

Presentation

Declutter

Get rid of all the excess stuff that you have accumulated over the years, using the garage or your loft to store bulkier items or better still perhaps store it at friend's or family's houses, for the short term.

Potential buyers should not need to use their imagination to realise what the property might look like if they were living there themselves. Make it easy for them to see the most of the fantastic living space you are offering. Ideally storage spaces and garages should be empty or well organized to emphasize their practicality to potential buyers.

Touch up

Give your walls and ceilings a fresh coat of neutral paint to make your home appear lighter and more spacious. This will enable viewers to gain a quick impression of how they could adapt the rooms to their needs and tastes. It will also make it easier for the buyers to move straight into your home and to use the rooms immediately, than if the walls are painted in loud colours or are too dark.

You want to create a great first impression from the garden gate to the front door and to create a memorable experience and lasting impression that moves a viewer towards becoming a buyer.

Fix and clean

Make any minor repairs to any damaged items that you might have been putting off. For example, fill holes in walls, repair cracked tiles, replace missing doorknobs and worn or stained carpets.

The majority of buyers want to be able to move in and without having to make repairs that were left behind. Clean everything until it sparkles. Remove limescale, clean or re-grout tiles. Eliminate bad odours. Hang out fresh towels in the bathroom.

How does the garden look?
Perhaps the bushes and shrubs require a trim. Clean patios and decking. Mow the lawn. All these jobs around the house may not directly add value to your property but it will make it more presentable so you are more likely to sell as potential buyers visualize the need for less work and more downtime in future years.

Light and airy

Mirrors make a room look surprisingly bigger and lighter especially in smaller rooms or hallways so have windows cleaned inside and out and replace any broken light bulbs to make the place feel light and airy. Ensure you have lamps on in any dark corners. This will make the property feel bigger and more attractive.

Make your property look better

Plants and flowers add colour, life and light to a room and they smell great. So does that fruit bowl full of different coloured fruits, on your kitchen table or counter.

Cater for all the senses

Bad smells are one of the biggest turn-offs for buyers. Rather than just covering them up fix the source of the smell. Unblock drains, wash out bins, open windows and air the kitchen from old cooking smells. Conversely good smells can make a property feel more enticing.

Marketing

How do you choose the right estate agent?

Choose an agent who can demonstrate the most extensive marketing techniques and tools to attract the highest number of potential buyers. After all more viewers equals more offers which leads to a higher sale price. The photos taken and used need to be professional to showcase your home in the best possible way. Ask agents to show examples of their still images and virtual reality photography. 360-degree viewings are becoming more popular. Floor plans are a must.

One very important marketing tool is that is becoming more popular is video. Ask would-be agents to show you the videos they have recently produced and used to promote or sell other properties. Video is a great way to advertise the lifestyle that living in your home will provide. This will go far beyond the static pictures and imagination required to picture what a home is really like.

In this new age of social media more and more buyers are discovering property for sale on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Linkedin. Videos are the new commodity required to sell houses. If a picture paints a thousand words then the video brings a thousand pictures to life.

Showing the property

If you have hired a great estate agent let them show the property to viewers instead of you doing this yourself. It is a part of a professional estate agent's job to know the things to say and what to highlight. A great agent should have the techniques to deal with objections and ability to move viewers towards making offers.

Pricing

On the topic of pricing choose the agent who demonstrates the most experience, research, evidence and facts when it comes to setting the price of your house. Work with the agent who knows the most about your area. There is a wealth of information an agent should show you on the homes for sale nearby that you are currently competing against; plus evidence of sold homes in your area, with size comparisons, as well as their own local results.

Do not simply be impressed by the agent that proposes the highest asking price of your property. The price at which a house is listed is extremely important. Local Rightmove statistics show that over 40% of properties have had their listing price reduced before they sell often due to being overpriced in the first place. Rightmove also demonstrates that if a home does not sell within the first four weeks of being listed the interest level drops, levels out and then often does not sell at all.

Subsequently an agent typically suggests a price reduction to gain further attention. Time is lost when this happens. Would-be buyers see that the price has been reduced and can be forgiven for thinking the home has not sold due to a lack of interest or that there is something wrong with it. This is then often reflected in fewer offers received and when it eventually does sell the price achieved can be less than should have been if the property had been priced correctly at the initial valuation.

If you would like to talk to us about property in Guildford please feel free to call me on 01483 320207 or go to https://instantvaluation.newman.uk.com/ to discover how much your property is worth today.

Selling tips - the key features that make up a dream garden

Garden space often plays a key part in a property sale. But what are the key dream features that people would want adorning their gardens, if money was no object?

Garden specialist Oeco Garden Rooms put this question to 1,234 homeowners, who were given six luxury items to choose from. Those surveyed could also go off-piste and write down their own answers if their dream feature was not included.

A personal swimming pool topped the list, with 59% opting for this as their number one item. This was closely followed by a garden room/office (52%), while 50% said they would like a hot tub.

An outdoor kitchen/pizza oven, which has become particularly trendy and desirable in recent years as a foodie revolution has swept across Britain, was in third place, while a water feature/fountain was the ideal item for 41% of participants.

A sauna, something that is especially popular in Northern European countries where temperatures plunge during winter, completed the top 6, with 32% of the vote.

Of the off-piste, written down answers, the most popular responses were ‘hiring a full-time gardener’ to keep a garden in tip-top condition, ‘building a home gym’ and having ‘tennis courts’ or ‘football pitches’.

While some of the dream features are beyond the wishes of most people – only a relatively small number of homes in the UK have a swimming pool or personal football pitch, for example - some are slightly more realistic.

A delightful country cottage garden

A water feature/fountain, for example, wouldn't necessarily cost the world to install, and wouldn't need to be ridiculously extravagant, luxurious or expensive. A fountain would be likely to cost more, but a water feature could be purchased for reasonable prices if you made sure to shop around.

What's more, while building a home gym would be costly, a makeshift one – in your garage/shed – would be far more affordable. Gym equipment can be purchased for reasonable prices second hand, dumbbells don't tend to cost much, and gym mats and exercise balls won't blow a hole in your pocket, either.

Pizza ovens, meanwhile, are probably a more realistic option than a whole new outdoor kitchen. They can range from £200 to £900, depending on the size, make and quality of the oven. Not cheap, then, but nowhere near as expensive as a swimming pool, a tennis court or a hot tub. Wood-fired pizzas are all the rage at the moment – as trendy as courgette spaghetti and butternut squash pasta – so if you are eager to add value to your home and increase your chances of selling in the future, an outdoor pizza oven would be a wise move.

In this country, the months in which you can use an outdoor oven are, of course, more limited thanks to our famously unpredictable weather. That said, they come into their own in the spring, summer and sometimes even autumn months. In addition, they will have appeal to hip young professionals and those who fancy themselves as the next Jamie Oliver or Tom Kerridge.

More than anything, your garden needs to be bright, attractive, well-maintained, tasteful and colourful. If you ever come to sell your home, your garden will be a key selling point – so it needs to look the part. Most buyers won't be expecting any of the dream feature set out above, but if you happen to have a pizza oven, a home gym, a spectacular water feature or a garden room/office, make this a central part of your sales strategy. It could just make all the difference.

Gardens have to be versatile places – a place for entertainment, a place to unwind and a place to hold BBQs, dinner parties and family gatherings. That, on the whole, is more important than dream features. But, if you possess dream features, all the better. And don't be afraid to shout out about them.

If you would like to talk to us about property in Guildford please feel free to call me on 01483 600840 or go to https://instantvaluation.newman.uk.com/ to discover how much your property is worth today.