Pricing your property will require some work
The first step in selling your house is figuring out what it’s worth, because this price will perhaps be the deciding factor for interested buyers in whether to proceed with a purchase or not.
You can either have a professional value your house, or you can try to do it yourself. Either way there will be some work involved, and there are pros and cons of both approaches. But the amount of time and money that you might end up spending on assessing your home’s value and deciding the right price can make the difference between it selling or remaining unsold.
Without taking some steps to first calculate a suitable price for your property, you create the risk of pricing it far above the value of homes similar to yours in the same location. Potential buyers will notice this difference and many will draw the conclusion that your house or flat is overpriced, and this could make them lose all interest in making an offer to buy it.
One recent article in The Telegraph describes a woman who agreed to sell her home through an estate agent that gave her a higher valuation for the it compared to other companies – even though they secretly know it will only sell at a much lower price. They use this trick to convince people to sell with them, so they profit from commission on a sale.
The article notes that initial offers from prospective buyers were far below the asking price, and the overall pace of the sale was so slow that the owner eventually gave up on it altogether. This highlights the very real problem of turning buyers away immediately with a price that’s too high.
But on the other hand, setting a price that is too low creates the danger that you might end up in a situation where you only just break even on the sale by agreeing to a price that is close to what you initially paid for the property, or even worse ending up making a loss on the sale.
This guide is here to help, offering crucial information on the various actions that you can take to get a more accurate idea of your property’s viable sale price, some tips on ways that might potentially boost your property’s value, and your options for how to eventually find a buyer.
Hear from professionals – but don’t rely solely on their advice
Local estate agents might be willing to visit your house and give you a free valuation, because it’s good business for them as they might be able to take you on as a client for selling your house or flat. But you shouldn’t accept the price they suggest right away, because the estate agent might be telling you an inflated value with the hope of convincing you to sell through them.
You could also discuss your property valuation with a qualified surveyor however there can often be a charge for this.
Doing your own work to assess your ideal house price
Whether or not you first get a quote from an estate agent or mortgage lender or other licensed professional, you should then do you own work to further assess your ideal sale price.
You might have heard of free online property valuations, and these can be a good way to get a general sense of the value of homes in a certain area. A leading example is the property website Zoopla that has a tool where you can enter your home address and within seconds it will give you a price estimate, typically presented as a range rather than a single number.
But you should know that these online home valuation tools are essentially calculators that make their projections based off a host of data, including past home sales in the area and more. This information can sometimes be quite out of date and therefore the estimate it gives you isn’t exactly accurate. And an online valuation tool can’t assess any changes you’ve made to your home, for example extensions, or other features that might raise or lower its value.
You can also try looking on the website of the government department known as the HM Land Registry. This site has an impressive collection of details on properties registered in England and Wales, including exact sale prices. Look up houses nearby to yours to get an idea of how much they have sold for in recent years.
Your home price needs to account for positive and negative factors
When setting your sale price, you need to account honestly for both the positive and negative factors about your home so that you settle on a value that is fair.
There are several free tools online that can help you assess the beneficial value of certain improvements you might have made to a home, including extensions or renovations. The value of these can sometimes help to increase your property’s worth quite significantly.
But you must also take steps to assess any problems with your property that might reduce its value; issues like the presence of Japanese knotweed or if the house is starting to show signs of subsidence. If you do not have the time or money to fix these problems, you will have to assess how much it will cost to fix them and consider that in setting your final sale price. A prospective buyer must be made aware of these problems and will look to subtract the cost of fixing it from their final offer.
Steps you could take to boost your home’s value
After following some or all of the steps outlined in the previous sections of this guide, you might find that the estimate of your house or flat’s value is below what you had hoped or believed.
At this point, you could consider whether or not to pursue some actions that might help with potentially increasing the property’s viable sale price, although this is not guaranteed. There are some tasks that won’t require much effort and can be completed fairly quickly, whilst other ways to increase a home’s value might need a lot of time and may be very expensive.
Smaller, less costly projects that can help with boosting the value of a house or flat can include redesigning the garden or any other green space that you might have, renovating or otherwise upgrading a bathroom or kitchen with more modern fixtures and fittings, making minor fixes such as giving walls a new coat of paint or repairing missing roof tiles.
Your property might have larger-scale issues that could be harming its overall value, and you may want to think about whether to resolve those before selling. This could include problems like overdue ground rent charges, physical damage like dry rot, legal fights and more.
If you try to sell your home “as is” without resolving the issues, buyers may either lose interest in the property because of the problems, or significantly reduce the offer that they make, to account for the money they think it will cost them to fix the flaw as the home’s next owner.
Taking care of such problems before selling would prevent such a situation from occurring and, depending on the work done, could help to increase your property’s total value. But many big repair projects can cost hundreds or thousands of pounds and take several months or more, regardless of the type of house or flat that you have. And that’s not a viable outcome for those owners who want to sell their home as fast as possible, keep their expenses low, or both.
Anyone that has a “problem” property can contact a quick home buyer like LDN Properties to still get a competitive offer for the home at a price that doesn’t undermine its value. These businesses are experts at making fair and fast offers for all types of properties, no matter their age, condition, location, shape, size, or type, or because of any flaws that they might have. You can learn more about selling to a quick buyer, and other ways to sell, in the next section.
What are the options to find a buyer for your home?
After you have determined the price that you would like to ask for your flat or house, you’ll next need to make a choice on how to find a buyer. Your options are usually selling through an estate agent, selling to a quick home buyer, selling without any assistance, or selling at a property auction, and each of these methods have their own advantages and disadvantages.
By way of example, the average time taken when selling a home to a quick buyer like LDN Properties is just a handful of weeks, and this includes the time needed for paying the seller the proceeds and the exchange of contracts. But choosing to sell via an estate agent or without any third-party assistance can take much longer, sometimes more than a year in certain cases.
It can be useful to think of your top goals when selling your home, such as the maximum amount of money, if any, you are willing to spend on commission, and how speedily you want to sell. Compare these issues against the detailed information about all four selling approaches below and this should assist you in identifying the one that best pairs to your aims.
Selling through an estate agent
When you sell a home with an estate agent, they’ll put in a lot of work to find a buyer. They’ll first create a listing that features photographs of the property’s interior and exterior and describes its main features, and then they’ll advertise this online, in local newspapers, and in their offices. Next, they’ll arrange viewings for people to tour your home, followed by hearing offers from anyone seriously interested in it, and finally try to get one to the exchange of contracts.
Whilst this saves you a lot of time and energy, if an estate agent sells your home then they will charge you commission, often within a range between 1.15 percent and 1.40 percent of the house or flat’s sale price. This fee is taken out of the sale proceeds straight away, adding to your costs. And some estate agents may charge even more than 1.40 percent.
Selling with an estate agent can often also be slow, and you should be prepared to wait many months or even more than an entire year before you are able to find a buyer. And even if you get an honest offer, the buyer might later cancel it, making the sale collapse – which they can do without penalty if contracts are not yet exchanged. You would then have to restart the search for another buyer, which would inevitably add even more time to your selling calendar.
Selling to a quick home buyer
Quick home buyers can be a great choice for sellers that want to keep their expenses lows, because the legitimate companies like LDN Properties will never charge them any commission when purchasing their homes. That compares favourably to selling through an estate agent or an auctioneer, as those two options will charge commission that adds to the total costs.
As their name implies, quick buyers can also provide a rapid sale, usually taking just weeks to exchange contracts and pay you the full sale proceeds. They are able to move so fast because they already have the funds in place to buy your home, so there’s no waiting for weeks or even months for them to initially get approved for a mortgage in order to afford the purchase.
These companies are also a straightforward and no-hassle way to sell a home that other buyers might view as a “problem” property because of some structural damage or other negative element. You’re guaranteed to get a competitive and swift offer when selling this type of home to a quick buyer, as they are renowned for making such offers on problem properties.
Selling without any assistance
One of the more challenging ways to sell a home is on your own, meaning without any support from an estate agent or an auctioneer. You will be responsible for every step needed to find a buyer, starting with putting together and advertising a listing, scheduling viewings, hearing offers from serious buyers, and guiding a legitimate offer to the final exchange of contracts.
Unless you have previously managed to sell a home, or you have a suitably experienced family member or friend that is willing to help with the selling process at zero charge, selling without any assistance can easily become a highly time-consuming and stressful experience. You could find that it takes many months, or possibly even more than a full year, before you sell.
Note also that selling this way has the same risk as using an estate agent, in that someone can make a genuine offer but later rescind it, which they can do without penalty if you have not yet exchanged contracts. This will cause the sale to fall apart and would then require that you start over with the process of looking for a buyer, delaying a final sale much further.
The only clear advantage of selling this way is that you will not have to pay commission to an estate agent or an auctioneer, which helps with lowering your costs. But this saving might be cancelled out by the money that you’ll spend on marketing your listing and other tasks. As an alternative, consider selling to no-fee quick buyer like LDN Properties, as you would achieve the same result of not paying commission, but with a much faster sale that takes just a few weeks.
Selling at a property auction
When you choose to sell your home through an auction you need to be prepared for a relatively slow process. There’s a lot of waiting involved, starting with many weeks or months from when you select this approach and when the auction is held. If your property sells at the auction, the buyer then has about 28 days to sign the required documents and finish the other tasks that are needed to complete the sale.
You will also need to pay an auctioneer commission if they are able to sell your flat or house, and this fee will cause your expenses to rise as it will be taken out of the auction proceeds right away. Many auctioneers charge this at 2.5 percent of a property’s sale price, although the exact rate could be above or below this amount so you should check with specific auctioneers.
Auctioneers charge commission as payment for the effort that they put in to selling your home, which includes preparing and advertising its listing, arranging and hosting the auction, and then overseeing the last stages of a successful auction. This means you won’t have to put in much effort when selling, which might appear to sellers for who that is a particular priority.
Just remember that there is no guarantee you will get any offers on your property during the auction, which means that it goes unsold. If that happens, you will then need to begin again with trying to sell your home, which might extend your overall selling timeline significantly.
Pricing your property: frequently asked questions
Among the many questions that we’re often asked about pricing properties, whether houses or flats, these seven come up frequently:
No. You can use a number of useful online tools to try assessing the value of your home without having to pay any money. These include websites that will give you a free instant estimate of your home’s value, as well as other tools that can tell you the value of an extension or other improvement you have made to your property.
You don’t have to. Estate agents might be willing to conduct a free assessment of your home’s value because they hope to get you as a client who will sell through them. But because that’s one of their goals, you should be aware that sometimes estate agents might give you an inflated price in a bid to win your business.
Never rely solely on an internet tool for assessing your property’s value, because many of them used outdated data. And they also cannot account for various changes you might have made to the home. Instead, you should look at such tools as a general guide but understand your actual true price might be much lower or higher.
Determining the most appropriate price for your house or flat is vital when you’re getting ready to sell it because it will have consequences for both the selling process and the end results. Setting a price that’s too high may make it harder to attract buyers, whilst setting a price that’s too low risks you selling at a loss or only just breaking compared to what you paid for the home.
You will need to choose from one of four standard options available for seeking a buyer, and they are selling with an estate agent, selling to a quick home buyer, selling without any assistance, or selling at an auction. There are important benefits and drawbacks to consider with each of these strategies based on their total time taken, cost and other factors.
Selling to a quick home buyer is often the swiftest selection, as these companies, such as LDN Properties, are able to complete the entire process of buying your home within a few weeks, and that includes exchanging contracts and paying you the full proceeds. That compares to at least several months when selling with an estate agent, on your own, or at an auction.
No, you will only have to pay commission if you enlist the services of an estate agent or an auctioneer and they manage to sell your home, at which point they will charge a fee as a percentage of the sale price and deduct this from the sale proceeds. You won’t pay any fees if you sell to a zero-commission quick buyer like LDN Properties or sell without any help.
