Looking to sell your home
There are 5 discreet phases involved in selling your house. Or at
least there normally is. Some people do away with the preparation
period, simply putting their house on the market speculatively then
suddenly finding it has been sold after several whirlwind months of
activity. But normally, there are 5 phases, each of which can be relatively
fast and pain free, or protracted and painful, depending on your circumstances,
the property, the market and luck:
During the preparation period (which incidentally should include regular
visits to this website to read up on all sorts of property matters),
you should be doing three things:
Deciding how you are going to sell your house. In other words, whether
you are going to use an estate agent or try to sell it privately,
or even at auction. This is actually quite a big decision and one
which may have quite a large bearing on the speed at which you sell
your property and how much the sale process ends up costing you, so
it should be given considerable thought. Find out about selling privately,
using an agent or selling at auction.
Once you have worked out how you are going to sell your home, you
can work out how much it is going to cost. This may not seem too important,
especially if you are sitting on a fat profit from the sale, but the
chances are you are going to have all sorts of relocation costs to
cope with, let alone the purchase costs associated with buying your
new home, so it is definitely worth figuring out exactly where you
are likely to stand.
The final area of preparation involves your home. Now if you're like
all of us at TheMoveChannel, you keep your home in absolutely immaculate
condition and never let a single thing fall into disrepair, become
dirty, or even lose its lustre. But if you're not living in cloud
cuckoo fantasy land as we are, then there are probably things that
you can do to make your house that little bit more attractive to a
buyer.
Once everything is ready to pass even the stiffest of inspection,
you are ready to put your home on the market. At the moment this is
nice and easy to do. All that is required is for you to get a valuation,
generate some publicity (either yourself or through the activities
of your estate agent) and then be a charming host when hoards of desperately
keen buyers come round to view your property.
It's time to shed that nice guy (or gal) persona, don your ice cool
poker face and get down to the nitty gritty. How much are you prepared
to accept for your home? If you think that money is the be all and
end all of the negotiation you should click here, as the negotiation
process should take more into account than just cold hard cash.
Once you have agreed the sale with a buyer, your solicitor will take
over the reins from here on in. Unless you are extremely skilled or
brave and are doing your own conveyancing work. Although the conveyancing
process takes the same length of time for buyers and sellers, for
the time being there is much more onus on the buyers solicitor in
terms of the amount of work required. Nonetheless, your solicitor
will still have plenty to do.
This is the last stage of the process. And lasts only for an instant.
It is the precise moment at which the sale is complete and you no
longer own the property. If you try to stay in your old home after
completion, you will eventually be turfed out by the strong arm of
the law.
There are 2 final points to bear in mind about the selling process:
On first appearances it may seem like you aren't exactly going to
have your work cut out in selling your home. It's in good condition
and perhaps just needs a quick clean, you know of a good local agent
that has recently been selling homes similar to yours more quickly
than Aunt Maude's lovely hotcakes and you've got a good solicitor
who you know can handle the conveyancing. That opinion is all very
well, but it fails to account for two things:
: Gazumping is a well
known term for sellers blindsiding buyers with last minute acceptance
of a higher offer from another party. Buyers have some tricks up their
sleeve as well, such as the less well known gazundering, or simply
pulling out of the sale. Until contracts are exchanged never assume
that you can rely on a buyer.
: It may look like
there's not all that much to do, but bear in mind that you are unlikely
to be doing this in isolation. Aside from the normal stresses and
strains of everyday life, you are likely to have to contend with finding
a new home to buy, going through the purchase and then moving house.
Ensuring that everything happens smoothly and at the right time is
never easy.
The process of buying and selling property has come under a lot of
scrutiny in recent years, and the end-to-end catalogue of activities
is in the throes of undergoing radical change. In five years time,
e-conveyancing will mean that the whole thing will take place in a
fraction of the time, at a much lower cost and with much less stress
incurred by all parties. However, as the vendor, you are going to
see an increase in responsibility and workload on your side of the
sale with the introduction of the seller's pack.
Useful links
Rent or buy UK property
Selling your property:
Local estate agent search
Home and property news
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