Tag Archives: viewings

In this day and age when there is a multitude of properties to choose from in estate agent windows and on property websites, a floorplan can really make or a break a decision to view a property. People like to see how a house is laid out, and a floorplan does this for them before they have even stepped in the door. Surprisingly though, floorplans are still overlooked by some sellers and agents, with some only being available on request. In other instances, floorplans are uploaded to a properties portfolio online, but can be too small to view or the zoom function doesn’t work. If this is the case, it might as well be hidden altogether.

So why are floorplans so important? Use our points below to assess how beneficial a floorplan would undoubtedly be when selling your home.

Size – A floorplan enables a buyer to see how big a place is. It is also useful to include measurements too, to ensure you’re providing accurate information. This can let someone assess where their furniture will fit, and how they could display everything in their new home. A floorplan doesn’t miss anything out, leaving no room for error or deception.

Usage – Buyers like to see how the house is laid out, and consequently if the layout will work for them. If parents desire their bedroom to be close to their children, a floorplan could make up their decision to make a viewing. Floorplans show the flow of how a house works. If it doesn’t work for someone, it isn’t worth wasting your time and theirs by coming to see it.

After a viewing – If someone does decide to come and view your property, a floorplan can be very useful afterwards to remember where everything was and to help a buyer further their decision. It is a helpful tool for discussion alongside images, for couples and families to talk about their potential future home.

If you’re selling your home, ensure that a floorplan is available to your viewers. Make sure that this is both available in the agent’s office, as well as online for download via any property websites that your agent may use. Talk to your agent to make sure it is clear and works correctly. It could just help sell your property!

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

Your house is finally on the market: it’s looking wonderful, your photography looks great, your brochure enticing; time to sit back and wait for an offer, right?

Wrong!

When it comes to selling your home, patience is not the virtue it’s cracked up to be, and the most successful sales are always the early ones. It’s vital to spend some time each week to ensure you’re doing all you can to keep interest in your property as high as possible. Here’s my 20 minute weekly workout for home sellers:

Call your agent – make sure you speak to them every week, without fail. It’s so important to keep your house in their minds, and keep the relationship as warm as possible. You should know all the staff on first name terms, and even if you just call to ask how the market is doing, your house will be the first one they mention to their next enquirer. 5 minutes

Check your sale board – is it straight? Is it clean? A grubby, damaged board sends all the wrong signals so make sure it looks as if it was only just put up. 2 minutes

Monitor your Rightmove Property Performance Report – make sure your agent knows to send it to you every week, and watch the trends. If interest starts to dip, ask your agent to swap the leading image, and try a new headline. Test and assess the results on a regular basis to make sure your property is getting the attention it deserves. (Find our more about your Performance Report here ) 5 minutes

Check out your competition – spend some time on Rightmove and the other property portals each week, so you can see what’s just come to the market, what properties have gone under offer, and how they compare with yours. 4 minutes

Clean your front door – and make sure any plants at the front of your house are looking their best. Take away dead leaves, wipe down pots and check your doorbell works. 2 minutes

Check for any light bulbs that might have gone around your home; extractor fan lights and underlighting in kitchens are the usual culprits. 2 minutes

Spend just 20 minutes on your house sale each week and it’ll most likely be 20 minutes more than your competitors are spending. It’s all about standing out, in all the positive ways you can stand out. Snag your buyer’s attention long enough to pique their interest, create a desire and with a little bit of luck, they will take the right action – to buy your house!

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

“The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight.”

~ Edward Kennedy

Have you been trying to sell your home for months, or even years, without success? You’re certainly not alone; did you know that only half the properties on the market last year actually sold?

Did you decline an offer in the first month or so that, in hindsight, you now would take? It’s a familiar story. In fact, around 75% of sellers who contact us would now accept that offer – gladly – and now regret having rejected it.

A property is never more desirable than when it first goes onto the market. The initial flurry of interest can even occasionally generate an offer in excess of the asking price, such is the draw of a newly-marketed home. The interest curve for those all-important first few weeks looks something like this.

However, once all the buyers who have been searching for a while for their next home have seen it, then it’s only the new buyers coming to the market who are around to show any interest, and this may be only a handful a week, at best. This just isn’t sufficient to instill any sense of urgency in a buyer, who may view 15 – 20 or more properties before making an offer on one.

Once your property has been on the market for more than a couple of months therefore, the interest curve looks more like this:

If you drop your asking price, and keep dropping it in an attempt to counteract this downwards trend of interest, all you’re doing is ‘chasing the market down’, in effect.

So what’s the answer? Here’s my expert guide to keeping your property marketing fresh, and avoid it becoming stale and forgotten:

1. Don’t dismiss out of hand any offer you receive in those crucial early weeks of marketing. It will probably be the best offer you will ever receive on your home;

2. If you’re several months (or years) down the line, you need to break the vicious cycle that is no one wants a house that no one wants. Take it off the market completely for at least two months, and preferably up to six months.

3. Re-launch at the right time of year for your property, ie at the time of year when your buyer is most likely to be searching.

4. Don’t scrimp on your re-launch: engage a professional home stager, commission a professional photographer, and choose a proactive agent who believes in quality marketing.

5. If you get an early offer when you go back to market, take it! Within reason of course…. As a general rule of thumb, anything in excess of 85% of your asking price is definitely worthy of consideration in this market, and over 90% is a terrific offer.

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If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

Where do your viewings end? After you’ve shown them round the house, do you then take them into the garden? The problem is with doing this, is that as they are already in their garden, possibly in sight of their car, it’s very easy to say goodbye and for them to simply go at that point. What you really want them to do, is to have another look around the house alone, to give them chance to talk to one another in private, and ask their partner, “what do you think?’.

The answer, is to plan the viewing in advance. Decide where you want to start – I’d always advise the best downstairs room in the house, to create the maximum first impact (leave all the doors closed by the way, so they don’t wander into rooms in the ‘wrong’ order) – then plan the tour of the rest of the house in the most natural order. Upstairs, it’s sometimes a good idea to show the bedrooms in reverse order, so not only does the master bedroom feel bigger by comparison, but you also end the house tour on a high note. Then take them out into the garden, but come back in the same door you went out of. If this is a patio door, you may find you need to ask them to take their shoes off, or leave slip covers by the door, so they don’t trail mud inside on a wet day. Then go back into the best room downstairs, and say “why don’t you go and have a look around again by yourselves”; very few people will refuse this offer, and you could add “I’ll be waiting in the kitchen when you’re done but don’t hurry” so they know they can take their time, and that you won’t be following them round, so they are free to talk in private.

So, avoid the garden close; instead, take control of the viewing, make sure it lasts at least 20 minutes to half an hour and you will have much more chance of your viewers having the time and space to fall in love with your home. Just as you once did.

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

After the thrill of finding that perfect place to live and the hassle of filling out all the paperwork comes the dread and realisation of what it all means…moving day! What should be a happy and exciting time can quickly switch to a stressful experience if things start to take a turn for the worse. Not running on time and poor organisation can lead to a miserable day which is why we have put together this handy little guide on what you should be thinking about when you come to moving home.

Using A Removal Company

One of the first things people often ask when they decide to move home is, “Should I use a removal company?” The answer, if you are looking for a less stressful time, would be a resounding “Yes!”

Reputable companies like Hadley and Ottaway removals can really provide invaluable experience and take the hassle out of loading and unloading a vehicle, moving boxes and furniture around, and providing general tips and advice. Having a removal company will save you plenty of time and keep you free to think about all the other things you need to do.

Plan In Advance

Planning in advance is essential to making sure that your moving day goes as smoothly as it can and it starts with packing boxes. Once you have filled a box make sure that you label it on the side and top with the room it is going in and the contents, this means that when you arrive at your new destination you can unload your boxes to the right room and not have to keep reshuffling.

It’s also worth using freezer bags to store all the screws and fixings for any furniture that you have dismantled. Securely attach it to relevant item with tape, then when it comes to re-building you will have everything that you need.

Tips For When You Arrive

Getting to your new property and throwing everything in can seem tempting, but there are a few things you might want to consider before you start.

Check all the fixtures and fittings that were included in the sale are still there – this is the perfect opportunity as the house is nice and empty
Take metre readings – you don’t want to be charged for any gas, electric or water you didn’t use
Cover any hardwood floors with flat packed cardboard boxes – this will prevent any scratching occurring while you are putting things in their new place
Use dust sheets to protect carpets – if it’s a wet day then you don’t want to dirt being traipsed through your house
Have some spare light bulbs – there is nothing worse than getting to your new house and finding that you can’t see what you are doing so make sure you carry a few spare bulbs
Bring the furniture in first – this means you won’t be putting boxes in the way of the bigger items and have to move them

Once you have done all of that then you are ready to begin moving everything into the right room – see we told you labelling those boxes would pay off!

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

I’ve sold my house. Not the one I live in, but a little cottage I bought, renovated, and then because of the banking crash in 2007, I had to rent out for a few years. When the tenant moved out last year, I took my chance, and prepared it for sale. Just as I advise my clients to do, I freshened up the paintwork, washed all the soft furnishings, and bought lots of lovely accessories to stage it. Then I had professional photographs taken and I wrote a great description, specifically designed to tempt viewings. Finally, I employed a designer to put together a beautiful brochure for me, together with a logo for the cottage, to add some brand appeal.

It all looked fantastic.

So which agent would be worthy of marketing such an easy-to-sell house? I looked at the local independents: too parochial. The big nationals: too impersonal. Really, I wanted to sell it myself, but the private seller sites, like Tepilo, just aren’t big enough yet. I know that buyers only look at the four big portals: Rightmove, Primelocation, FindaProperty and Zoopla – that’s where I needed to be, but they don’t accept private sellers.

The answer, was to use a ‘virtual agent’. If you don’t know what one of these is, you might be interested in reading my previous blog post on the subject, but briefly, it’s a no-frills agency that offers just enough of a service to comply with the property portals, but doesn’t offer viewings, or charge a commission. In addition, they don’t ‘value’ your home; you tell them what you want your asking price to be.

I tried several virtual agents before I found one good enough to sell my cottage; most of them don’t allow you to upload your own brochure, which was none-negotiable for me, as I know how important it is. Finally I found an up and coming online agent who was just right: right attitude, right approach, right skills, right price. (I’m not going to share with you on here who it is, but I can create for you a plan to help you sell with them, exactly as I did.)

Viewings to organise now; as I don’t live near to the cottage, I found a local lady who could do the viewings for me for a small fee, and who I trained in how to prepare the cottage, and how to show it to viewers. She called me after every viewing to give me feedback straight away, which was really helpful. No waiting for days for the agent to call with it.

This weekend, encouraged by my viewing lady, a buyer called me direct, and made an offer to me. I was able to explain my situation, and negotiate directly with him, and we settled on a price that suited us both, which was the 95% I was hoping for. Even better, there are no further agent fees to pay!

So what did it cost in total? Here’s my spend to date:

Staging costs £ 1000

Photography £ 300

Brochure design £ 240

Viewings £ 200

Upfront fee to virtual agent £ 199

Energy Performance Certificate £ 60

For sale board £ 40

Completion fee to virtual agent £ 199

Total expenses £2238

I’ve saved a total of £2500 on agency fees, which basically has paid for me to prepare the cottage the way I wanted to, which in turn, has resulted in a much better offer than I would have received.

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

It’s Friday and the last in my mini-series of learning from Andy Murray to help you sell your house!

However on top of their game Andy is, if he wants to stay there, he knows he has to defer to his coach for advice and, well, coaching! He has to put his total trust and faith in Ivan Lendl, and believe whole-heartedly that he has Andy’s success at heart, wanting the win as much as the player themselves do. It must sometimes take a lot of courage and ability to overcome his own misgivings in following advice that might seem counter-intuitive, but he knows that without this faith, Andy would be on his own and success would almost certainly evade him.

If you’re trying to sell your home and it’s just not going very well – perhaps you’re suffering from a lack of viewings, and maybe you’re trying your best to resist pressure from your agent to reduce your asking price – you may be wondering what on earth you can do. That’s where HomeTruths comes in. think of us as your personal property coach! We ask you to put your trust and faith in us, and in return we will advise and coach you through what can be a very difficult and emotionally-trying time. We’ll be there for the inevitable ups and downs, to tell you what to do when the feedback is less than flattering, or when you get a very low offer. We will do everything we can to get you a sale at the price you want. Sometimes, as I’m sure happens from time to time between Ivan and Andy, you might think we are wrong, that our advice is counter-intuitive, but stick with us, and keep the faith, and together, we’ll get you moving!

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

Where do your viewings end? After you’ve shown them round the house, do you then take them into the garden? The problem is with doing this, is that as they are already in their garden, possibly in sight of their car, it’s very easy to say goodbye and for them to simply go at that point. what you really want them to do, is to have another look around the house alone, to give them chance to talk to one another in private, and ask their partner, “what do you think?’.

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.