Furnishing and dressing a property before sale

Should I Furnish and Dress My Property Before Selling?

When you’re preparing to sell your home, there are a few different areas that you need to think about. In an ideal world, any actions that you take should result in your property being sold for the best price possible. To make sure that this happens, there are a few different enhancements and tweaks that you can consider before putting your property on the market.

One of these potential enhancements involves considering whether or not you should furnish and dress your property before selling it. In this article, we’re going to be sharing our expertise and insight with you to enable you to make the decision that best matches your situation.

Before we begin, if you would like to receive a tailored offer for your home, you can reach out to the team at LDN Properties for a hassle-free offer today. Alternatively, there is plenty of information regarding our buying process over in our Knowledge Base.

Furnishing a Property to Your Advantage

When you know that you’re going to be selling a house, every decision that you make needs to be made with the overall value of your property in mind. Does what you’re doing improve the value of your property? Will it attract more potential buyers and make your property sell faster?

We believe that furnishing your property before you sell it can work wonders when you are looking to make a quick sale. It has an impact for a couple of different reasons:

Potential buyers will be able to see how much space they have to play with

When a house is furnished, it becomes much easier for potential buyers to envision how they will be able to interact with the space around them. Instead of viewing an empty space, they’re viewing a property that already has items of furniture in it. In doing this, they will be able to see how big those items are and imagine how their furniture will look.

This can make a house much more attractive from the perspective of the buyer. They will be able to see in an instant what will and won’t work for them. If a house isn’t furnished, a potential buyer might not be able to work out whether or not the space that they’re looking at is big enough to suit their needs.

A homely atmosphere can be relaxing

When people go to view a property, they will often spend more time in properties that have been dressed. We believe that this is partially because furnished properties create a homely atmosphere. In dressing a property for a sale, you’re helping to create a natural environment in which people will feel comfortable in.

Open-plan spaces are much more aesthetically appealing when furnished

Open-plan spaces can be a nightmare to work with when they’re empty, especially from a sales perspective. As a seller, you have to remember that spatial awareness really doesn’t come naturally for most people. What looks like a large space to you might look much smaller to the next person.

When you’re selling a property that heavily relies on an open-plan layout, it will be difficult for potential buyers to imagine how the space will work without some furniture in there. This is even translated in photographs of the property, with many unfurnished open-plan spaces looking much smaller than they actually are.

An empty room doesn’t have the natural charm of a furnished space

Character will always speak louder than words. We can all be charmed by character, but not very many of us would be charmed by an empty box unless it offered an incredible view and an amazing location. By adding a few special touches when dressing your property, you can allow potential buyers to lose themselves to the details. Even things like cushions that complement the colour scheme can add an extra layer.

More people will view your property

As we are sure you can imagine, photographs of furnished properties almost always look better than photographs of unfurnished properties. When the photographs of your property are aesthetically appealing, they are more likely to stand out from the crowd and more people will want to come and look around.

If more people come to look around, your property will be more likely to sell quickly. In this way, dressing your property creates a win-win situation.

Setting a Scene

When you’re dressing a property to sell it, we would recommend creating a scene that your potential buyers will fall in love with. Most people can’t enter an empty room and imagine their household items in there. You need to set the stage and show them how to use it, rather than making them use their imaginations and creativity.

Once the scene has been set, photographs of your property will perform better than the unfurnished photographs would have. By ensuring that you keep everything simple and well-presented, you will find that your potential buyers are able to picture their own furniture in place of yours.

Right now, some sellers are even including furniture packages with their properties. These function as rental packages, enabling buyers to either purchase new furniture or move their own furniture in at their own pace. This can make things easier as a seller if you are planning on targeting potential buyers who are buying their first home.

Remember, your property has to make a good first impression. If it can do that, it’s the property that potential buyers will remember. Selling a piece of art is easier than selling an empty shell.

The Financial Side

As we are sure you can imagine, dressing a property can end up costing quite a bit of money. Is it really worth it? We would like to believe so, especially if you are looking for a fast sale. Remember, some properties will always be easier to sell than others regardless of whether or not they’re furnished so we would also recommend looking at the market as a whole.

When you’re selling a dressed property, you can usually expect a slightly higher profit margin and a faster turnaround time. Your efforts will make someone fall in love with your property, as they see that other people have already loved it before them. You should also make sure that your property is clean, tidy and in a good state of repair.

If you don’t want to put any money into your property and you want to sell it quickly, one of our experts would be happy to discuss an offer with you today. We will factor in any work that you have done to your property. We can also suggest other methods that you can use to enhance your property value.

Will I still be able to sell my property if I don’t furnish and dress it?

You might be interested in furnishing your house or flat before attempting to sell it, but then discover that you do not have the funds or the time available to achieve this. And this may cause you to have concerns that it will be much harder to find a buyer.

There are many homeowners that set a firm budget for selling their property, and this could make it impossible to afford buying new furniture in order to dress the rooms ahead of seeking a buyer. And when you’re thinking about selling your home, you should try to set a firm budget that accounts for possible costs, otherwise the process can quickly become quite expensive.

Other homeowners might have a very specific timeline for selling their property, perhaps because they are counting down to starting a new job in another location, or any other reason. And taking the time to buy and dress furniture might not work with their planned calendar. Yet they might worry that selling an unfurnished home fast could still be impossible.

Don’t panic, because you still have options available.

If you do not have the time, money or interest available to furnish and dress your home before selling it, you could consider trying to sell it to a quick home buyer. These are companies that have the funds available to buy almost any type of leasehold or freehold home immediately, and they can usually complete the entire process within just a handful of weeks. And the honest quick buying companies like LDN Properties will never charge you commission when buying your property.

Quick buyers will give you a fair and swift offer even if your property is unfurnished, which removes that issue as a concern. Later on in this guide you can learn more information about how to sell your home to one of these companies, as well as other choices for selling.

Deciding how to find a buyer for your furnished and dressed home

One of the last important decisions that you will need to make when selling your flat or house is choosing the approach you want to take to find a buyer. The four standard options are selling with an estate agent, selling to a quick buyer, selling with an auctioneer or selling on your own.

There are prominent disadvantages and advantages linked to all of these methods in terms of their average timeline, whether or not they charge commission and other issues. By way of example, you will need to pay commission if you enlist the services of an estate agent or an auctioneer, whereas you won’t pay fees by selling without any help or selling to a quick buyer.

Before making a final selection, consider making a note of your main priorities with selling, including whether you can accept having to pay commission, how speedily you want to sell, and your ideal sale price. Then compare these details against the specifics of the four options below, as this should help you with finding out which strategy best suits your needs.

Selling with an estate agent

If you want to avoid putting much work into selling your home, you could enlist the help of an estate agent, who will handle the main tasks needed to find a buyer. They will put together a listing that features photographs of the property’s interior and exterior, then advertise this in local newspapers, online and in their office. Next, they will arrange viewings to give people a tour of the home, hear offers and aim to get one to the last step of exchanging contracts.

This can be a slow process and you should not be surprised if it takes more than a full year to secure a buyer. If you are trying to sell your home as fast as possible then you may want to consider other options, for example selling to a quick buyer like LDN Properties where the entire timeline should only take a few short weeks, and you also won’t have to pay any commission.

If an estate agent is able to sell your home, they will require that you pay them a fee for putting in the work to find a buyer. Expect this to be charged within a range from 1.15 percent to 1.40 percent of your property’s eventual sale price, and this fee will cause your costs to rise because it will be subtracted right away from the sale proceeds. Note that some estate agents might charge even higher than this range, whilst others could charge lower than 1.15 percent.

You could discover that some estate agents will try a trick through which they quote an impressively high possible sale price for your flat or house, only for them to secretly know that buyers are likely to make offers at a much lower value. Estate agents do this to persuade you to sell using their services, so they can profit from the fee they’ll charge you if they find a buyer.

One way to prevent falling for this trick is to start by asking multiple estate agents to give you free, zero-obligation estimates for the price at which they think your home could sell. Next, visit property sales websites like Rightmove and Zoopla and note down the current and past sale prices of homes like yours. Finally, calculate the average value of all these prices to get a better rough estimate of your property’s potential sale price.

Selling with an estate agent also includes the risk of a buyer making an honest offer but then soon after changing their mind and cancelling it. This would make the sale fall apart, and require that you resume your search for a buyer, possibly extending your selling timeline by many weeks or even months. And unfortunately there is nothing that you can do to penalise the person for withdrawing their offer if you have not already exchanged contracts.

Selling to a quick buyer

Quick buyers are companies such as LDN Properties that already have the funds needed to purchase your home immediately. They are able to move swiftly because they don’t have to wait to get approved for a mortgage first, a process that could take many weeks or even months.

This unique quality means that quick buyers are often able to complete all of the necessary steps for purchasing a property within just a handful of weeks, and that covers the time required to exchange contracts and pay you the full sale proceeds. On average, this option is typically much more rapid than the timeline you could expect when selling via any other method.

Another important benefit of selling to a quick buyer is that the legitimate companies like LDN Properties will never charge you any commission, so you can count on receiving the full proceeds from the sale. This compares to selling via an estate agent or an auctioneer, where you would have to pay them a fee that would be subtracted from the eventual sale proceeds.

Quick buyers are also a great option for selling a property even if it is unfurnished, as they make fair and fast offers on homes no matter their age, condition, location, shape, size or type. They won’t reduce their offer based on whether or not your house or flat is property furnished, and regardless of any legal disputes, physical damage or other potential negative factors.

LDN Properties, by way of example, launched more than 20 years ago and since then it has purchased and made offers for a broad range of homes throughout the UK. Some examples include properties with a regulated tenancy, houses with a bad roof, flats that have expensive ground rent charges, buy-to-let homes, underpinned properties, houses with equity release, flats in buildings without a lift, homes with a boundary dispute, properties near an electrical substation, houses with drainage problems, flats near a petrol station, Woolaway homes and many other scenarios.

Selling with an auctioneer

You might also be considering selling your home through an auction, where the auctioneer will have the responsibility to do most of the steps needed to find a buyer. They will create and advertise your property’s listing, host the auction, and oversee completing a successful sale.

But this might take quite a long time and you should be prepared for the whole process to take a number of weeks or even months. There is a long time to wait between that day that you choose this selling method and the day that the sale occurs, and then if your house or flat does sell, the buyer often has about a month to complete all of their mandatory actions that are needed to finalise the sale, for example signing all of the relevant legal documents.

One way that you could try to speed up the sale is to ask an auctioneer if they are willing to reduce the amount of time that the buyer has to do these tasks. But note that auctioneers are not obliged to do this, and they might even give the winning bidder more than a month.

Trying your luck with an auction can also end up being relatively expensive compared to some other of methods, such as selling to zero-fee quick buyer. That’s because auctioneers will make you pay commission if they manage to sell your home, and this charge will be deducted right away from the auction proceeds, which will increase your total costs. Plan on an auctioneer charging this commission at about 2.5 percent of your property’s eventual sale price.

There are some auctioneers that might be willing to have the winning bidder pay a share of your expenses, or alternatively to lower the rate of commission that they charge you after the sale, so you should inquire with individual auctioneers about whether this is possible. But they are not obliged to grant this request, and some might charge commission at an even higher rate.

Selling on your own

One of the more stressful ways to sell a property, whether it’s furnished and dressed or not, is to do so without any support from a third party like an estate agent or an auctioneer.

If you choose this option, you will need to first create a listing, then advertise it, followed by scheduling viewings, hearing offers and trying to take one to the exchange of contracts. This will need a lot of your time and energy, so it’s only recommended if you have sold a home before or have a suitably skilled friend or family member that can help you out with the sale at no charge.

Without this experience, it can take many months or even more than an entire year to sell on your own. And remember that someone could make an offer but then later cancel it, causing the sale to fall apart – and they can do this without penalty if contracts are not yet exchanged. You would then need to start over with looking for a buyer, delaying your sale even longer.

The only clear benefit of selling this way is that you will not have to pay any commission to an auctioneer or an estate agent for their work in finding a buyer, and this will reduce your expenses. But you may discover that this saving is cancelled out by the money that you will need to spend on various steps of the selling process, for example with advertising your listing.