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If you are the owner of a house, flat or any other type of property on a hill, you might find that there are a few additional hurdles to clear when selling this category of home compared to those not on a hill. The following guide shows how you can best attract a speedy and competitive offer from a buyer and details the various steps involved with selling.
- Deciding to sell your house or flat on a hill
- Reasons why buyers may want a property on a hill
- Drawbacks when selling properties on a hill
- How to prepare your home on a hill for sale
- Your choices for how to sell your flat or house on a hill
- Answers to top queries about selling a home on a hill
Deciding to sell your house or flat on a hill
Throughout the UK there are many flats, houses and various other types of properties that are located on hills. They might be at the bottom of a hill, halfway up or at the top of a hill, and they can be found in cities, suburbs, the countryside and elsewhere.
Definitions of hills compared to mountains vary around the world, but Wikipedia explains that in the UK a hill has an elevation under 600 meters (or 1,969 feet). Anything over that elevation is considered to be mountain land for the purposes of legal and other definitions.
Therefore if you own a home on land that meets the threshold for being designated a hill, you will be trying to sell a property on a hill when it’s time to start searching for buyers.
Homes on a hill differ from properties in somewhat similar situations such as flats or houses located near the coast, which can be a hilly terrain but has other issues that can create problems with trying to find a buyer.
The next two sections of this guide detail the various pros and cons with which people might view a property that is located on a hill, and how that may affect your ability to sell it.
Reasons why buyers may want a property on a hill
When someone is trying to sell a flat, house or other category of residential property, they will find that buyers will view the home as having certain pros and cons, as an article on the website Graana notes.
Understanding the reasons why a prospective buyer could look more favourably on your property because of its position on a hill can help as part of the selling process, because you could focus on promoting these aspects to help with persuading a buyer to make an offer.
Any of the below factors could explain why your property located on a hill is considered a dream home for some buyers.
Great scenery: One of the main reasons why someone would like to purchase a property that’s located on a hill is the views that they’ll be able to enjoy, because the elevated position of the home usually means that the windows of the property provide excellent views of the area.
Open space: Many homes that are located on a hill often have much larger gardens and other green spaces compared to properties situated in built up areas like cities. This can be very appealing to buyers that place a priority on finding a property with lots of open space.
Expansion potential: The fact that houses or flats on a hill can have lots of unused green space can also make it easier for any construction expansion plans, because there is more land for such projects, in contrast to properties that are located in already crowded areas.
Drawbacks when selling properties on a hill
Although there are several explanations for why someone might place a priority on owning a property located on a hill, other buyers may view such a home negatively.
It’s possible that some buyers might view a home on a hill as a problem property because of its location and the potential disadvantages of owning it. You should review these cons as it may help you to understand why you might be struggling to get any interest in your property from buyers.
Drainage problems: A common problem with homes on a hill is that they don’t have great drainage systems, which can result in a host of issues in the property from flooding to leaks and more, and that’s because it’s harder and more expensive to fit such systems in these properties.
Environmental erosion: If your property on a hill is located in a region that often experiences heavy rain downpours then this can sometimes lead to soil erosion, landslides and other problems on the hill that could damage the house or flat in certain worst case scenarios.
Remote location: Many homes that are situated on a hill can be in rural areas like the countryside, and this could be seen as a negative factor for some buyers because the property might have more limited access to shops, public transportation and other amenities.
How to prepare your home on a hill for sale
When you are getting ready to sell your home on a hill, you can take certain actions that might help with speeding up the process of attracting a buyer who’ll make a suitable offer.
Taking some simple and low-cost or no-cost steps to improve the appearance of your home before selling it can assist with making it seem more attractive to prospective buyers, as the website MoneySavingExpert explain. This includes actions you can take both inside and outside the property.
For example, with the exterior of your house or flat you should assess whether there are minor fixes you can make such as replacing any missing roof tiles or broken glass. And if you have any garden, yard or other green space at your property then you should mow and weed it. First impressions count when selling a home, and a buyer that approaches your house or flat and sees that it is kept in good condition may look more favourably on the property.
Steps that you can take for the interior of your home include cleaning each room and removing as much clutter as possible, because this will make the rooms appear larger and more valuable. If you have any pets then you should also tidy up after them and keep them locked away during viewings when prospective buyers get to tour the inside and outside of the property.
But remember also that there are some methods for selling your home that may only require a single viewing, in particular selling to a quick buyer like LDN Properties. As the next section of this guide explains in further detail, you’ll only have to go through one viewing from a representative of the company and also get to finish the sale within a handful of weeks.
Your choices for how to sell your flat or house on a hill
A crucial decision that you’ll need to make when trying to sell your property on a hill is selecting the method that you want to use for finding a buyer. The four standard options are selling with an estate agent, selling to a quick home buyer, selling with an auctioneer or selling on your own.
There are specific benefits linked to some of these approaches, such as not having to pay any fees when you sell to a no-commission quick buyer like LDN Properties. Other strategies for selling have rather notable disadvantages, like the fact that it might take more than an entire year before you’re able to find a buyer when you try to sell a home without any assistance.
You can simplify the decision process by writing down your priority goals with selling, including how long you are willing to wait, whether you are open to paying any commission to sell, and your dream selling price. Then you can contrast these details against the details of the four options below and this should help with finding the one that’s the best match for your needs.
Selling with an estate agent
A classic strategy for selling any type of property is through an estate agent, who will handle the bulk of the required tasks for attracting a buyer. This can significantly reduce your stress with the selling process because you won’t have to do much to help them find a buyer.
The process of selling this way begins with the estate agent preparing a listing that describes your home and includes photographs of the interior and exterior, and they advertise this listing in their office, online and in local newspapers to generate interest from potential buyers. Estate agents also schedule viewings where they give tours of your home to anyone interested in it. And they’ll hear offers from serious buyers, ideally taking one to the exchange of contracts.
Whilst this means you’ll have a minimal workload selling this way, estate agents do charge commission for the work that they do. Typically you can expect to pay commission within a range of 1.15 percent to 1.40 percent of the final sale price you get for the property. This will increase your selling expenses because the fee is deducted from the sale proceeds.
An estate agent can be one of the slowest ways to sell a home, and you should be prepared to wait more than a year to find a buyer. And be warned that someone can make a genuine offer on your property but later withdraw that offer and make the sale fall apart, and they won’t face any consequences so long as the contracts have not yet been exchanged. You’ll then have to start again with finding a buyer, adding even more time to the overall selling schedule.
Unfortunately, some estate agents are also known to engage in various tricks that deceive sellers as discussed by the Daily Mail. One example is when an estate agent will quote a very high price at which they think your house or flat will sell, even though they secretly know that the property will only attract genuine offers from buyers at a much lower value. They use this trick so that you agree to sell your home using their services and they can profit from the commission they charge on a sale.
But it’s fairly simple to avoid falling for this particular trick – start by browsing property selling websites and noting down the current and past sale prices of homes like yours. The next step is to ask multiple estate agents for free quotes about your property’s possible selling price. Finally, calculate the average of all these prices and it should give you a more reasonable estimate of the potential price at which your house or flat could attract offers from buyers.
Selling to a quick home buyer
Quick home buyers, like LDN Properties, are known for making quick and competitive offers to purchase almost any age, condition, location shape, size and type of house, flat or other property. And they won’t lower their offer price just because your property may have an issue that other buyers consider to be a major problem, such as non-standard construction.
By way of example, LDN Properties’ long list of varied homes that it has purchased and made offers on throughout the UK since 2003 include not just houses on a hill but also properties with high interest rates, flats with a right of way, Wimpey No-Fines houses, off-plan properties, maisonettes, flats with a leak, houses with squatters, homes that have chancel repair liability, properties that have a bad roof, flats with a low Energy Performance Certificate grade, houses that have noisy neighbours, buy-to-let homes, British Iron and Steel Federation houses and many other varied situations.
These companies only take a few weeks to finalise the purchase of most properties, and that covers the time needed to exchange contracts and pay the seller the full proceeds. It means that selling to a quick buyer is usually the speediest choice for selling any type of home.
The reason that quick home buying companies are able to purchase properties so fast is that they don’t need to wait for many weeks or even months to initially get approval for a mortgage that would pay for the purchase. Instead, they have the funds available to buy homes immediately and this explains why the overall selling timeline is typically so short.
Another advantage of selling your home to a quick buyer is that you will not be required to pay any commission, which will help you to reduce your total selling expenses. That compares very favourably to selling through an estate agent or auctioneer because those two approaches will require that you pay commission and this will be taken out of your final sale proceeds, which isn’t a good outcome for those homeowners who want to cut their expenses when selling.
Selling with an auctioneer
With an auction you will never know what price you might be able to get for your home, because people can place bids of always increasing value on the property, resulting in a great profit. But you will need to choose a reserve price, and this is the lowest value at which you agree to sell your house or flat on a hill. If you don’t any bids that reach this value, your home doesn’t sell.
Note that if you do get just a single bid at the reserve price, this is considered a legally binding agreement for you to sell your property and the winning bidder can sue you to force the sale through to completion in the event that you attempt to walk away from it after the auction.
Selling any type of home through an auction can often be a rather slow process, because there’s plenty of waiting involved, including a delay of many weeks or longer between when you choose to sell this way and when the auction happens. And if your property sells at the auction, the buyer then has about a month usually to sign the required papers and do the other tasks that are necessary in order to complete the purchase of your flat or house.
You might find that some auctioneers allow the buyer even more time than a month to do these tasks, whereas other auction houses could set shorter deadlines. Ask specific companies about their post-auction schedule and see if they’re open to negotiating a swifter timeline.
Auctioneers will also charge you commission if they’re able to sell your property, usually at about 2.5 percent of the final home sale price. The fee will be subtracted right away from the sale proceeds, which means you’ll face an increase in your net selling expenses. If you’re trying to reduce costs when selling then you should review some of the alternative no-fee options.
An auctioneer charges this fee to pay for the work they’ll do in creating and advertising a listing for your home, hosting the auction and overseeing the completion of a successful sale.
There are some auctioneers that might be willing to either make the winning top bidder pay a share of your costs, or to reduce the rate of commission that they’ll charge you. So it’s always worth at least inquiring with individual auctioneers about the possibility of this change.
Selling on your own
Finally, you could try selling your property on a hill without any help from an estate agent or auctioneer. This can be very stressful because it will be your duty to handle every task from the initial creation and advertising of a listing through to scheduling the viewings and hearing offers.
It’s a massive amount of work and should only be attempted if you have experience with selling homes on a hill or you have a qualified family member or friend that can help you for free. If not, it can become a very slow process that may take over a year to find a serious buyer, making it far from a good choice for those owners wanting to sell their homes as fast as feasible.
One of the few clear advantages of selling without any help is that you will not have to pay commission to a third party such as an auctioneer or estate agent, and that can help with reducing your selling costs. But this financial saving might be cancelled out by the money that you will have to spend on advertising your listing and various other steps to sell your home.
If you are committed to avoiding paying fees when selling but would like to find a buyer on a much more rapid timeline, you could consider as an alternative selling your house or flat to a quick buyer such as LDN Properties. These companies never charge commission to owners when buying their homes, and they also are able to typically complete the process of buying a property on a much faster schedule, usually finalising it within just a handful of weeks.
Top queries and answers about selling a house on a hill
If you’re thinking of selling your property fast, you may have some questions that need answering, ranging from the areas where we can buy through to selling a home in a flood zone. Here are some of the top questions we’re asked about selling a house on a hill:
Your top questions when selling a house on a hill
There isn’t a single international legally binding definition for what constitutes a hill compared to a mountain, but in the UK the general approach is to classify anything with an elevation above 600 meters (which is 1,969 feet) as a mountain. Therefore if your home is on land with an elevation below that threshold, it’s considered to be a flat or house on a hill.
There are a number of reasons why someone could be more interested in making an offer to purchase a property located on a hill compared to another type of house or flat. Some of these factors include the great views and scenery that these properties tend to have, as well as these homes often having much more green space, like a garden, than other types of properties.
Whilst there are a number of explanations for why some prospective buyers could be interested in making an offer on your house or flat on a hill, you could find that there are several possible downsides about this type of property that can hinder a sale. These include environmental erosion and landslides, and the fact these homes may not have good drainage systems.
When you’re attempting to sell your home on a hill, there some zero-cost or low-cost and minimal effort actions to take that may help with increasing interest from potential buyers. These steps include tidying up the inside of the flat or house and removing clutter from every room, and outside it can mean mowing any lawn you have and replacing missing roof tiles.
There are typically four main options for selling any type of property, including homes situated on a hill. You can choose from trying your luck with a property auction, selling the house or flat using the services of an estate agent, attempting to sell the home without any assistance from a third party, or selling to a no-fee quick buyer such as LDN Properties.
The timeline for selling your house or flat on a hill will vary depending on which approach you use for selling. If you attempt to sell the property without any help or through an auctioneer or estate agent then the process could take at least many months. If you sell to LDN Properties or another quick home buyer than the timeline should only be a few short weeks.
You’ll need to pay commission on the sale of your home if you sell it using the services of an estate agent or auctioneer, and this fee will be deducted from the final sale proceeds, which will add to your costs. But if you opt for selling your house or flat to a zero-commission quick buyer like LDN Properties, or selling without any third party help, then you will not pay any fees.
