When it comes to selling your home you’ll want to get the best possible price. Set aside any sentiment and realise that your bricks and mortar property is a huge financial investment that could – and should – deliver great returns.
Yet going through a house sale can bring with it twin pressures. Yes, you want to get every last penny possible but what if you need to move in a hurry? If your work or family circumstances suddenly change then time will be of the essence and waiting the 65 days or so that it takes to sell can be a real drag.
Yet the dual ambitions of selling for a big price and selling quickly needn’t compete with one another. You can have a fast sale that makes you the money you want. You just need to bear in mind the following…
Be realistic
Do your research, understand the market and get a feel for what a ‘good’ price is. Over or under valuing your home will cause you headaches for different reasons and neither will help you to get the price you want. Under-pricing brings a pretty obvious problem, but by putting a big price tag on your property you risk being out of reach for buyers in your sector. This is especially true in a world in which people will set upper price limits to online searches, meaning they might never even come across yours. That all leads to a period of little or no progress.
Use the online tools available to help you to be as specific as possible. Look at the value of every home in your street and similar properties in your post code, paying particular attention to recently completed sales and properties that are on the market at the moment so that you know exactly what you are able too achieve.
Stage your home
Our friends across the Pond in America have long understood the value in ‘staging’ a property to get it ready for sale and it’s becoming popular here too. This can help to overcome your concerns over speed and price. As this piece from American site Bankrate points out, young couple and families are not going to want to buy a property that looks like their grandma’s home. Staging is about more than just tidying up and a lick of paint. It’s about fresh flowers, the right sort of magazines on the coffee table, candles and ornaments and, overall, creating a home that the buyer can imagine living in. You’re selling them a lifestyle, not just a building.
By doing this you are fast forwarding a potential buyer’s thought processes and helping them to see themselves in your property rather than having to imagine it for themselves.
Photos
Once your house is ready for sale then you need photos. Make sure these are good quality and that you have pictures of every room and feature of your home. If you’ve got a great kitchen, for example, don’t be afraid of taking plenty of pictures of this in order to showcase it properly. If people can get a good look at your home online then it will answer plenty of their questions and mean that anyone coming for a look at your property is already suitably interested. On top of this, make sure you have floor plans, measurements and descriptive information ready and available. Be prepared so that none of the delay is on your side.
Flexibility
Speaking of people looking around your home, it is important to be flexible about this. Make sure buyers can look around whenever they want. Delaying this will hold back your sale. Putting in some extra effort here to make yourself available – be that early, late or on weekends – will pay dividends.
Call in the experts
Above all else, don’t do this alone. You need to tap into the wealth of knowledge that experts possess – their industry and local expertise can be priceless. In many cases you’ll also be able to read research and insight into this sector online. This is your chance to get up to speed, for free, so grab it. Challenge your agent to help you achieve the price and time scale you want to achieve and they might well be able to deliver. Remember, these are the people who do this sort of thing every single day. It pays to listen to them, literally.
Prepare your home, make yourself available, get your price right, take good photos and call on the experts to achieve the speed and price you need.
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