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Many people who are looking to purchase any type of leasehold or freehold property might place an emphasis on finding a home that has parking for their car or other vehicle. If you’re trying to sell a flat or house that lacks parking, you could find it’s not as easy to attract buyers, but this guide shows how getting a quick and fair offer can still be achieved.
- Preparing to sell your house or flat that doesn’t have any parking
- Why no parking at your home could be a dealbreaker for some buyers
- Are you required to tell buyers that your property doesn’t have parking?
- Alternatives to parking at your flat or house when selling
- Four top options for selling a property without any parking
- Frequently asked questions about selling a home that lacks parking
Preparing to sell your house or flat that doesn’t have any parking
There are more than 32 million cars licensed for driving throughout the UK, according to data reported on the website NimbleFins. And many people who own cars to travel for work and leisure also have parking spaces available at their house, flat or other property.
Parking spaces at residential homes can vary widely – it might be a detached house with its own driveway, a block of flats with a large private car park for people who own units in the building, public street parking outside of a semi-detached home and many other situations. Regardless of the type of parking, it’s often seen as helping with the sale of a property.
A great number of people who might be interested in potentially buying your home will likely have cars or other vehicles, and therefore will want to know if they’ll have space to park if they purchase the house or flat.
If you are looking to sell a freehold or leasehold property that does not have any parking, you might be wondering if it will be impossible to attract a buyer.
The good news is that it won’t be too hard to still get a fair and fast offer for your home, for several reasons as detailed in the following sections of this guide. You’ll also get advice on the best actions to take to increase your odds of securing such a sale.
Why no parking at your home could be a dealbreaker for some buyers
The lack of a parking space at your property could be seen as a major negative factor by many car-owning buyers and cause them to completely lose interest in your home. That’s because they’ll have a priority focus on owning a property where they can keep their car.
As space for property development becomes more in-demand across the UK, some local authorities are considering allowing building of homes over existing car parking spaces,
This creates controversy from existing residents, as one recent article on GloucestershireLive reports. If your home is in an area where there’s more demand for parking than available spaces, this could discourage a car-owning buyer.
These buyers might not have the option of deciding to sell their car and use public transportation, so if there are no decent choices available for parking near to your property, or if options exist but are under threat, then you may automatically lose these buyers.
Are you required to tell buyers that your property doesn’t have parking?
Depending on where your home is situated, there might not be many good options for parking, such as being located near traffic lights or areas that don’t have the space for vehicles.
You might be wondering if you can opt against disclosing the lack of a parking space to potential buyers, but it’s important that you inform anyone who shows an interest in possibly purchasing your property about the fact that the home does not have any parking. This is particularly crucial as soon as a prospective buyer asks about whether you have parking.
Being direct in response to buyers’ queries is vital, because if you try to hide information from them that could sway their decision on whether or not to make an offer – such as the lack of a parking space – and they discover it after purchasing your property, they might try to sue you for penalties, arguing that they’d never have made an offer if they knew it.
Still, remember that not all buyers will be car drivers, and therefore parking will not be a major factor in their decision on whether to make an offer on your home.
The Health Foundation reports that as recently as 2019-2020, a total of 21.7 percent of UK households did not have access to a car. People in these households will likely walk or use public transportation for work, shopping and other tasks, and they’ll be more interested in your home’s ease of access to buses and trains than any parking space.
It’s this category of buyer for which you should take some time to find out in-depth details on public transportation connections near your home, so that you can share them. Buyers will look more favourably on you and your property if you have this information available upfront, because it may help reassure them that commuting won’t be an issue when living there.
Alternatives to parking at your flat or house when selling
Just because the house or flat that you’re trying to sell does not have any parking is not automatically a sign that a potential buyer with a car will lose interest in your property.
Indeed, you have a few options for how you might still be able to convince this type of buyer to still make an offer on your home, depending on their specific transportation needs.
One approach is to educate yourself about various parking options that might be available close to your home, so that you can share these details with prospective buyers. This could include the latest information on zero-cost street parking near your property, paid parking spots, private parking options and other potential places where they could leave their car.
Although none of these options will be considered part of your property, if there’s a choice that’s convenient to your home and low-cost or no-cost, it might convince some otherwise reluctant car-owning buyers to decide to proceed with making an offer on your home.
Alternatively, as noted in the prior section of this guide, some buyers might not have access to a car, or they could be thinking about selling their car when they purchase your home. If that’s the situation, they will want to know about the viability of using public transportation to get from your property to their place of employments, shops and other amenities.
For this type of buyer you could research information on public transportation options in your area, such as a recent statement from the UK Government on new investments in bus routes. Providing these facts and others to buyers may help with persuading them make an offer on your home.
And, as explained in further detailed in the next section of this guide, another viable solution would be contacting a quick home buying company such as LDN Properties. These businesses make fast and fair offers to purchase almost any type of flat or house, and unlike private buyers with cars, quick buyers won’t see the lack of parking as a dealbreaker.
Not only could this help you overcome any hurdles to selling, but you’d get the additional bonuses of not having to pay any commission and finalising the sale within a few weeks.
Four top options for selling a property without any parking
There are four typical methods available for selling a home that does not have any parking, and they all have notable advantages – and some have prominent disadvantages.
Generally, you can choose from selling at an auction, selling to a quick buyer, selling with an estate agent or selling on your own. To find out the best method for your situation, you should note down your top aims with selling, including your goal asking price, the amount, if any, you’re willing to pay in commission, and how long you can wait to sell your home. Then compare this information against the four options below to discover the closest match.
Selling at an auction
Auctioneers will save you a lot of work when selling your home, because they take care of most of the steps – starting with producing a listing that describes your home and includes photographs of it, advertising this listing to get buyers interested, and hosting the auction.
For doing all of this work, the typical auctioneer will charge commission at 2.5 percent of your home’s final sale price. This will be deducted from the final sale proceeds, which will add to your expenses. You might be able to negotiate with an auctioneer to lower their fee or have the buyer pay some of your costs, so it’s always worth asking about this potential.
You’ll be asked to choose a reserve price when selling at an auction, and this is the lowest price at which you agree to sell your home. Remember that if you get just a single bid at that price, it’s considered a binding legal agreement to sell your property that the winning bidder could sue to enforce if you try to walk away from the sale after the auction.
That’s why it’s so vital to choose a reserve price that should produce a profit for you, even after you pay the auctioneer their commission. Your ultimate goal is to have many people interested in your home, placing bids of increasing value, resulting in a decent profit.
Selling at an auction can involve a lot of waiting, including many weeks or months between the day on which you decide to sell your home this way and the day on which the auction is held. And then if your property manages to sell at the auction, the buyer usually has 28 days to sign the legal papers and complete the other steps needed to finalise the purchase.
There are some auctioneers who may be open to setting a shorter deadline for the buyer to do these tasks but beware that other companies could allow even more than 28 days. If you’re looking to sell your home in a hurry, then you may want to look at other options.
You may also be asked to choose between selling your home using the traditional method of auction or the modern method of auction. With the traditional method of auction, your listing will be advertised for a set number of weeks or longer and then the auction will take place for a limited amount of time on a designated day. With the modern method of auction, your listing will be advertised for a specific number of weeks or months and during this time people can place bids of increasing value on the property 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The top bid when the listing expires is deemed the winner and buyer of your home.
Just note that some auctioneers may not know how to get prospective buyers interested in a property that does not have parking, so they could find it hard to sell your house or flat. You should always inquire with individual auctioneers about their past success in selling homes like yours and avoid selling your property with a company that lacks this experience.
Quick buyers, like LDN Properties, are companies that have the funds available to make immediate purchases of almost any age, condition, location, shape, size or type of home. They don’t need to wait for many weeks or months to get a mortgage to buy a property.
This cuts the selling timeline down to a handful of weeks, and that covers the important steps of paying the homeowner their sale proceeds and exchanging contracts. This speedy schedule means quick buyers are often the swiftest way to sell your property.
And these companies are well known for making fair and fair offers on homes regardless of any factors other buyers could see as negative, like the lack of a parking space. They won’t be looking to live in the home and keep their car there, so the fact that your property does not have a space to park a car will not be seen by a quick buyer as reducing its value.
For example, since 2003 LDN Properties has made competitive and speedy offers to buy a long list of homes throughout the UK, such as flats without parking, houses with low Energy Performance Certificate ratings, properties without a kitchen or bathroom, flats that have a bad roof, houses without a garden, homes that have solar panels, mixed-use properties, flats that have a high service charge, houses with mortgage arrears, properties situated close to a motorway, vandalised flats, houses where the owner cannot find the title deeds and many other situations.
Also, legitimate quick buyers will never charge homeowners any commission when purchasing a property, which will help you to keep your costs low when selling, which is perfect if that’s a top priority. But if you opt to use an auction or estate agent, you’ll pay them fees which are taken out of the proceeds, and this will add to your net selling expenses.
Selling with an estate agent
A traditional way of selling a home is via an estate agent, and like an auctioneer they will do much of the work needed to find a buyer. This covers everything from making and advertising a listing to organising the viewings and fielding serious offers from buyers.
In exchange for this effort, the average estate agent will charge you a fee within a range from 1.15 percent to 1.40 percent of your property’s final sale price. This commission is deducted right away from the sale proceeds, which will increase your overall selling expenses. If you’re looking to avoid fees, you could sell on your own or sell to a quick buyer.
You could always ask individual estate agents if they might be open to charging you a fee at less than 1.15 percent but beware that other companies may charge over 1.40 percent.
This can be among the slowest methods for selling any category of property, and it may take a number of months or even a full year before you’re able to attract a genuine offer. For those owners looking to sell as quickly as feasible, you should pursue other approaches.
You could get a genuine offer from a buyer through an estate agent but then they could rescind it and force the sale to collapse, which would significantly extend your selling timeline because you would have to start again with trying to find a buyer. And someone can do this and not face any penalties if they withdraw the offer before contracts are exchanged.
Some estate agents could also struggle to know how to sell a property that does not have any parking, so it’s always worth asking individual companies about this experience. If they’ve never managed to sell this type of home, they could find it difficult to market yours, which indicates that it might take even longer to get any buyers interested in the property.
Selling on your own
Another method for selling is doing so alone, which means no help from an auctioneer or estate agent. Therefore, you’ll need to do all the steps for finding a buyer, such as creating and advertising a listing, organising viewings and hearing serious offers from buyers.
This is a significant amount of work, and it can take up most of your time, so it’s only recommended if you have past experience with selling properties without parking, or there’s a qualified friend or family member that might be willing to assist you at no cost. If not, you could be facing a very stressful process that could take more than a full year to complete.
Selling on your own shares one problem of using an estate agent, in that someone can make an offer on your home but then withdraw it and make the sale fall apart – and they are able to do this without the risk of facing penalties if the contracts aren’t yet exchanged. This would cause you to begin again seeking a buyer, delaying the sale timeline much longer.
The only obvious benefit of selling on your own is that you will not need to pay any commission to a third party like an auctioneer or estate agent when you sell your property, which will assist in reducing your total costs. However, you could find that this cost saving is eliminated by the money you’ll spend on advertising your listing and various other actions.
Instead of the potential stress and waiting involved with selling on your own, you may want to think about contacting a quick buyer like LDN Properties. These companies will commit to not charging you any commission to purchase your home, so you’ll still avoid fees, but you’ll get a further benefit of a much quicker selling schedule of only a handful of weeks.
Top queries and answers about selling property without parking
If you are considering selling your home fast, you can contact us with any questions you have ranging from the speed we can buy your house through to selling your house without a garden. These are some of the questions you may ask when selling property without parking:
Your top questions when selling property without parking
There are tens of millions of cars licensed across the UK and many of these belong to homeowners who have parking space at their home, either private like a driveway or public like street parking. If you are trying to sell a house, flat or any other type of property and it does not have any parking, you could find that it’s more difficult to get buyers’ attention.
Many car owners in the UK rely on those vehicles to get to and from their place of work, as well as to shops and various other reasons for traveling. And therefore, they’ll want to own a property that has space where they can park their car that is either immediately at the home or nearby, so that they don’t have to walk far to get to the vehicle or worry about its safety.
Not everyone in the UK owns a car, and some statistics suggest that almost 22 percent of UK households don’t have access to a vehicle. This category of buyers likely won’t be interested in knowing whether you have parking space at your property and instead they’ll want information on public transportation connections available near the house or flat.
Yes, because it’s always better to be as honest as possible with prospective buyers, even about aspects of your property – like the lack of parking – that may make some people view your home as less valuable, or even lose any desire to make an offer to purchase it. And failing to disclose that there’s no parking could make it appear you’re hiding other issues.
The four typical choices that homeowners have for selling a property that does not have parking is doing so to a quick buyer such as LDN Properties, trying your luck by listing the home at a property auction, selling using the services of an estate agent or selling without any third party help – and there are unique pros and cons linked to each of these methods.
Your swiftest choice for selling this type of home or almost any other category of property is by getting in touch with a quick buyer like LDN Properties, because the timeline is only a handful of weeks, and that covers exchange of contracts any paying you the proceeds. It can take at least several months to sell on your own, at an auction or with an estate agent.
If you try to sell your home without any help from a fee-charging estate agent or auctioneer then you won’t pay any commission, and the same is true if you sell to an honest zero-fee quick buyer such as LDN Properties. But you will have to pay commission when selling at an auction or with an estate agent and this will be subtracted from the final sale proceeds.
