How to sell a house

For about 2 years now, on and off, I've been helping a friend's Mother-in-law look for a house to buy. She's relocating to Reading from Cambridgeshire and given how long her working day is, she's been unable to spend large amounts of time house hunting.

 

I've seen a lot of houses, good and bad and here are my tips for selling your home successfully.

 

1. Go through your house and throw out all the rubbish. If there's a lot, get friendly with a skip hire company. If you've only got a small amount of stuff to throw, a small skip will set you back about £85 and a good company will make sure that whatever is recyclable will be recycled. Go out into the garden and get rid of the broken toys, pots etc. Be ruthless. If it can't be repaired, or you won't repair it, there's no point in keeping it.
2. Go through all your own personal possessions. Think carefully about each item. Do you still use it? Does it hold huge sentimental value? If it isn't used and it isn't of either monetary or sentimental value, ask yourself why you're holding onto it. Work out what you can get rid of and donate it to charity, to a friend or sell it on an auction site or offer it up on Freecycle.
3. If you have children, go through the process outlined in No. 2 with them. Get them thinking about their own stuff. Help them part from the clothes that no longer fit them and the toys they no longer use. Talk to them about giving them away to friends or relatives, or if that's not possible, about giving them to charity and helping people who don't have as much as you. And if they don't co-operate, offer them up on Freecycle.
4. Repeat the whole decluttering process by covering the garden sheds and your loft space and do the same actions with everything you have in there.
5. Be ruthless. By now you should only be left with the things that you truly use and are precious to you. Having done this, you'll find that your removal bill will be significantly lower.
6. Go an buy yourself a number of new moving boxes and some packing tape. Box up everything that you don't use on a daily basis into the boxes and label them NEATLY on both the top and the sides and don't forget to write which room the box will go back into.
7. Again, do this same process with the kids. Restrict them to maybe 10-20 toys that they use regularly and pack up the rest. Once you've accepted an offer and the sale has progressed to the point of no return, they can have some of them back and it'll be like Christmas when you get to the new home and they rediscover all their valued items.
8. I suggest that you also box up lots of your books, DVDs and CDs. Full bookcases make a room look smaller, so make sure that you can see to the back of bookcases in about 50% of your shelves. Put a few decorative items in some of the gaps to pull the eye to the back of the bookcase.
9. Clear the tops of your cupboards. Everywhere. Kitchen, bathroom, dining room, bedroom wardrobes. Seriously. If its being stored on top of a cupboard, you're not using it every day. You can afford to be without it until you move into your new home. Potential buyers will look up. If you've packed everything in up to the ceiling, your rooms will feel smaller.
10. Reduce the number of knick knacks you have out by at least half. Put away personal photos unless they're attached to the wall (because you'll have to either replace them with something else or remove the hooks and make the walls good).
11. Box up all your bed linen and towels etc except for one set for each bed and a spare set to wash, and one towel to use per person and a spare to wash. Keep the bed linen neat by putting the sets together and put them into the pillow case. Buy a set of new, white or cream fluffy towels for your bathroom/s. only put them out for viewings and threaten your family within an inch of their lives if they use them. This will cost you maybe £25 but will freshen up your bathroom considerably.
12. Box up most of your crockery, cutlery, glassware etc. Keep out only what you need. Firstly, your cupboards will look neater and you'll have less to wash up before viewings.
13. Now, where to store this stuff: your removers may be prepared to store this for you for an additional charge. This is the best solution as you don't have the hassle of getting the stuff out of the house and they'll arrange secure storage. However, if this is out of your budget, ask friends and family if they are able to store it for you temporarily. Just make sure you're able to get it all back before Removal Day. If that is not possible, then either store in a garage, loft, or a little-used room. Stack the boxes neatly and make sure they are not stacked too high so that the room doesn't feel closed in. Don't disguise them - buyers will understand that you're preparing to move and it will actually make you appear keen and organised.
14. Go through your kitchen cupboards and throw out all your out of date food.
15. Now clean everything. Everything. All your kitchen cupboards, the cupboard under the stairs, the garage, the loft, the bathroom. Wipe down all your doors, surfaces, windows. Everything. Clean out your fridge and wipe it all down - even if you plan to take it with you. Clear cobwebs off the ceiling and take down all lampshades and dust them. Dust the extractor fans in the bathrooms and kitchen.
16. Make your beds. Believe me, people do not want to see your unmade bed.
17. Vacuum. Everywhere. Mop floors that need mopping.
18. Go through the house and make a note of every little thing that needs fixing. You might like to ask a friend or neighbour to go through the house and point out all the flaws. You will probably have stopped noticing that patch of flaking paint on the ceiling in the hallway. They won't.
19. Fix all the things on that list that you possibly can. If its a patch of wall where you patched a hole, painting over the patch shouldn't be rocket science. Tighten the screws on the light switch panels. Scrape the paint off the tiles where it was left when you repainted the bathroom. If you've got a damp patch on the ceiling, have someone investigate why it's there. You might decide not to fix it, but a potential buyer will be relieved to hear that you know what the cause of it is. If you can't afford to fix it, at least be aware of what the problem is.
20. If you have coloured toilet seats, or wood ones that are a little scruffy, replace them with white ones (or ones that match the toilet if it is coloured). A new toilet seat goes a long way to making the entire bathroom work.
21. That's your house sorted. But having a badly kept house next door can harm your sale. An unkempt garden is nothing, but a garden filled with rubbish that stinks will stop dead any purchase. If you can't find the owner and ask them to clean up, contact the council for help.

Now, you can invite an estate agent. Remember that in the UK, estate agents are not required to have any qualifications, nor are they registered with any authority. This doesn't mean that all agents are bad, it just means that they might not have the knowledge you expect them to. Also remember that they are competing with other agents for your business, so they are likely to tell you what they think you want to hear in order to win your business. Estate agents have a really bad rep that isn't always justified. Be nice to them. Ask your friends if they've heard of good agents in your area. Ask at least three firms to come in and quote.

The Internet has a lot to answer for. In my experience over the last two years, because most people start their search through the various house selling websites, agents have become used to people pulling all the information from the Internet instead of using printed brochures. Choose an agent who appears to be proactive and enthusiastic about your property. Here is what I think an agent should do for you as a minimum:

• Arrange to take photos of ALL of your house and make sure that they take different angles of each of the rooms to show off each room at its best. And they should use something above a basic point and shoot camera. I'm not asking them to have a Hasselblad, but it should be better than an entry-level digital.
• Publish a brochure which includes the full EPC (energy performance certificate) and your council tax band, includes a floor plan and uses the best photos. They are only required to publish the graph section of the EPC which grades the energy efficiency of your house, but the full certificate includes estimates energy costs and that can really help some assess whether or not they can afford your house over someone else's.
• Put all the photos they took up on the Internet listing, put on a floor plan and include the size of your garden. They should also do a description of the features of the house.
• Do as many of the viewings as possible. Buyers will be more comfortable to poke around if you're not there.
• Market your house to their customer base, but only send you the ones who aren't time wasters. Depending on the market at the time, you might wish to state that only buyers in a position to move are sent around.
• That they take all offers and prospective buyers do not negotiate with you.
• They should "interview" you about your house. They represent you when showing people around, so in my opinion, they should learn as much as they can about the house. Whoever does the interview should write up a potted history that is available to all the agents to that they can appear knowledgable about your house
• They do all the chasing of prospective buyers. You should not have buyers contact details at all.

When they finally tell you what they think your house is worth, treat this with a lot of scepticism. Agents have a tendency to over inflate their valuations in order to win your business. A good agent will tell you that they'll market your house at X but you should be prepared to accept Y. There is usually at least £10,000 difference between these figures. Do not tell one agent what another's valuation is. This only gives them fuel to try and win your business. Take some initiative yourself: have a look at Zoopla. This site will compare your house with others in the area that have already sold and give you an estimate of what yours is worth. It's not definitive, but is a good guide.

The onus is on you to make sure that the information included in your description and documentation is correct. Yes, there are laws about estate agents misrepresenting your house, but if they accidentally leave a window off the floor plan, no one in authority will care but the people looking at your listing (and this is a true story) will notice the master bedroom has no windows and may not even bother to view.

Viewings

Inevitably, you will have to do some viewings. Most estate agents don't offer an extended hours service, or a Sunday service. But, if you want to sell quickly, choosing an agent who does offer this will be an advantage. But there may be the odd occasion where they just don't have someone available to do the viewing.

So here are my tips for doing viewings:

• Before the viewing, run around the house with the vacuum and dust down surfaces. Tuck toys away and make sure there are no shoes or coats in the hallway. Clear out your everyday towels and put in your white, fluffy towels (hide the towels folded neatly in the top of a wardrobe, or fold them neatly and put them at the bottom of the person's bed).
• Close all the doors to bedrooms and doors leading to the hallway. You don't want to reveal too much at once. A buyers mind becomes overloaded if they see into several rooms at once.
• Turn on all the lights.
• Make sure the front door is welcoming. If the weather is conducive, a couple of pots of flowers brightens up a door. This holds true regardless of whether you're doing the viewing or the agent is.
• Some people recommend having fresh cut flowers on display. Personally, I hate this. It adds clutter to the house and if you end up having your house on the market for 12 months, that's a LOT of flowers!
• I recommend airing the house about an hour before the viewing, but give enough time before buyers arrive to close the windows and let the house warm up again. Make sure your house is reasonably warm.
• Ask buyers to remove their shoes. Even if you don't normally have this habit, it makes you appear fastidious about your cleaning. Also, you have no idea where they've been.
• Invite them to take off their coats and make themselves comfortable. That's why you cleared to coat rack.
• In UK houses, most showings start with the Living Room, progress to the Dining Room then the kitchen, utility and downstairs loos if the house has them. Go upstairs and you do the bedrooms in order of size then the bathroom. You don't have to open the loft but be prepared to answer questions about it. Finally, collect the buyers shoes for them and exit to the back garden.
• Once you've given them time to ask questions about each space, dissolve into the woodwork as much as you can and leave them to look around the house at their leisure. Don't hover. This will make them nervous. Reassure them that they are free to look inside any cupboards and behind any doors. If the weather is reasonable, find an excuse to go out into the garden and leave them alone. A good initial viewing will take no more than 30 minutes unless your house is huge. Don't engage in casual chat with them, or give them a blow by blow account of last year's BBQ where the next door neighbour got incredibly drunk.
• On a second viewing, they'll probably have a list of questions to ask. This is where if the estate agent has done their homework, they'll earn their fee. They should know the council tax fees and approximately how much your energy bills are (the full EPC has projected costs written on it, but remember they're not required by law to publish that on the documentation). Anything they are not able to answer, they should be prepared to note down and ask you quickly.
• If you're not present during the second or subsequent viewings, make sure that you are contactable immediately after so that the agent can get answers quickly. If that's not possible, make sure they know exactly when you'll be contactable so they can tell the buyers when they'll be talking to you.
• Don't be surprised or annoyed at requests for three or even four, five or six viewings. Buying a house is usually the biggest purchase of our lives and people need time to make up their minds carefully.

My final tip is Be Patient. The whole house buying/selling process in the UK takes time. Governments have tried to streamline the process but until banks stop charging Stupid Money on bridging loans, the chain system of buying will remain in place and I, for one encourage the due diligence that solicitors, surveyors etc all do.

 

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