Seven steps to a Spring sale

Here are seven steps to help towards your Spring Sale. Covering tips to help focus your initial mindset to trying to ensure the marketing efforts become a completed sale and move!

1. Know your ‘why’ and seek the professionals:

Moving home is hard work and can be challenging. It’s important you get the right individuals around you who support and enhance the process, but even then, there will be times that you question why you are doing it. 

Have a clear focus on why you are moving and remind yourself of that motivation when needed!

Realising the move is a great accomplishment, and once you have moved, you are set for years to come, but just make sure you get the right advisors around you (estate agents, solicitors, mortgage brokers and removal companies) and lean on them for help and support when needed.

2. What will a buyer see?

Put yourself in the eyes of a buyer.

Can someone see themselves living in your home?

Think about your personal belongings and how your home looks to someone coming in for the first time. If things are crowding  you out, move things on for good or find a bit of storage before viewings commence. You’ve got to help buyers picture themselves making your house their home, and this isn’t making your home clinical, but just not too personal to you when you hit the market and viewings begin.

3. Don’t go major…

Don’t get caught in expensive, time-consuming, large-scale refurbishment before selling. This type of work needs similar (if not more) motivation levels to the house moving process, and it can potentially wreck your moving plans if things don’t go to plan or contractors are delayed.

It could be a case that such work does create a profit margin, but there are plenty of examples when it doesn’t, or you come out of it breaking even. Definitely, a debate that should have an in person professional opinion before embarking on any shovel in the ground action.

4. Maybe go minor

It is worth though looking at what could make a difference for minimal expenditure in the context of the overall value. If you can spruce up front and back gardens, make a nice visual impact on entry, and really work on the curb appeal of your home, it will help you stand out in the market.

By creating an initial great first impression it enables more of an opportunity for the viewer to become the buyer.

5. A moment’s research

As with any service provider industry, standards can vary considerably across the board in an estate agency. Some estate agents will value your property to ‘win’ the business of your listing to the market. Once you are on the market with them for a set period of time, they will look to bring the value down over a period of time to help generate more viewings.

Don’t just ‘Google’ prospective agents as service providers, get an understanding of your property’s value, too. Take a few minutes to enter your postcode in Rightmove’s sold property page and set the location for a quarter of a mile around – look at what buyers will be seeing as sold prices in the same location vicinity for comparable properties.

All buyers typically do this type of research before embarking on committing hundreds of thousands/millions of pounds to a purchase, and this will give you a good start on the valuation process and help identify a red flag if an agent is wildly out of line in their assessment.

6. Can anyone sell?

Who will be showing buyers around? This sounds too simple a question to ask your prospective estate agent, but actually different agents will have completely different viewing strategies.

We pride ourselves on only full-time team members doing Saturday viewings, we think the viewing process itself is a critical element to getting your home sold. However, some agencies will leave this to Saturday only staff, not saying there isn’t some great individuals doing this job, but think of every time you have been on a viewing, looking to purchase and the person showing you doesn’t know anything about the property, or just opens the front door and leaves you to it – is this going to be an effective way to sell your own home?

7. Legal Eagle

You have the emotional aspect of the house purchase, and now you need to look at the legal aspect. If you are selling a leasehold, speak to the management company and freeholder very early in the process and let them know you are selling, at Go View London, we have a dedicated in-house sales progressor who works closely with the solicitors and your management company, and this type of assistance goes a long way to ensure a successful transaction post offer.

Even if you are selling freehold, nothing is stopping you from selecting a good solicitor early in the process, getting the standard Land Registry protocol documents completed and getting all your certification ready, enabling a sales contract to be released as soon as possible to an eager buyer.

Ready for your valuation?

If you are considering selling this Spring, we are ready to help by giving you an in-person valuation alongside moving advice from one of our experienced team members. Please follow our advice in point number 5, have a ‘Google’ of our track record of success and let us help you realise your next move!