Published: 15/07/2019
Before putting your home on the market, it’s crucial that it’s completely ready for a sale and that you’ve done all you can to maximise its value.Making sure your home is fully prepared and looking its very best will also improve your chances of both achieving your asking price (or above) and pushing through a fast transaction.
What, though, do you need to consider before putting your home up for sale? Here, using our experience of working in the South London sales market, we offer some top tips.
Set the right asking price
One of the most important parts of getting your home sold is setting the right asking price in the first place. Make a mistake on this and it could seriously affect your chances of selling, or leave your home languishing on the market for longer than it needs to be.
You should work closely with your estate agent to get the price right, considering local and national trends to set a realistic figure. If you set it too high, you risk putting prospective buyers off. However, by setting it too low, you could be selling yourself and your property short.
During the sales process itself, you may need to negotiate the price up or down to push a sale through, but setting it at the right kind of level to begin with should dramatically improve your chances of selling your home quickly.
Show your home at its best
This might sound obvious, but it can be all too easy to become complacent and list your home when it’s not yet looking as good as it could be.
Before bringing your home to market is the time to carry out all those little jobs and DIY tasks that you’ve been putting on the backburner. It’s also the time to declutter, depersonalise and give your home the breathing space it needs to really shine and wow buyers.
It’s important you strike the right balance. You don’t, for example, want a home that feels hollow and characterless, but at the same time you don’t want a home that feels too lived-in and could come across as a tad shabby.
Fortunately, making sure your home looks up to scratch doesn’t take much time, money or effort. A thorough clean will ensure your home is as sparking as possible, but if you don’t feel confident in your ability to achieve the sparkling look, you may want to hire in professional help instead. Additionally, it’s vital that you tidy up any garden space you have.
Your outside space will, at this time of the year, become more important than ever to would-be buyers and you don’t want them to be put off by what they see.
Your property’s kerb appeal – in other words, what it looks like from the outside – will also need to be in tip-top condition. This is where maintaining your front garden or ensuring your driveway looks as tidy and attractive as possible will come in very useful.
Zone in on the right buyers
It’s never wise, of course, to restrict yourself to selling to one particular demographic, but it can help your cause if you narrow down your most likely kind of buyers. If you’re a second stepper selling a starter home, for example you are probably most likely to be targeting your home towards first-time buyers.
If you’re a downsizer, meanwhile, you will most likely be selling your home to third or fourth-steppers looking for a bigger property.
You may also have a home which is ideally set up for a family – plenty of space, a garden, lots of bedrooms, places to study and work, etc. Equally, you may have a home which will appeal most to trendy young professionals or downsizers who want a smaller, easier-to-maintain property.
Hone your marketing strategy
In order to increase your chances of selling quickly and for the best price possible, it helps if your marketing strategy is firing on all cylinders from the get-go.
If your home is being seen by the widest possible audience, and has top-quality photographs to showcase its main attributes, your chances of attracting buyers to attend viewings and, afterwards, place offers is much higher.
Here at Bryan & Keegan we combine traditional and modern methods of agency to give you the best chance of selling your home. We ensure the presentation of your home on our website and on the portals – where the majority of people now go to search for homes – is of the highest possible calibre. The photographs showing off your home need to be high-quality and high-res, while property details need to be engaging and snappy to ensure the initial impression of your home is an excellent one.
We use wide angle, high-resolution photography to maximise the visual aspect of your home, in turn making sure your property always stands out from the competition. On some instructions we can also offer 3D floor plans, virtual tours, a featured property slot on our website and enhanced listings. Alongside these online methods, we also provide professionally produced brochures to further showcase your home in its best light.
Home staging also plays a key role in any sale, which is why – during the instruction process – we are able to offer room by room guidance on how best to stage the home to sell.
We also conduct viewings, negotiate offers on your behalf and progress the sale, offering advice on how to speed things up from your end – for example instructing a conveyancing solicitor before finding a buyer.
To find out about the key interior design trends of the summer, which could potentially enhance the attractiveness of your home, you can read our article here.
We have offices in Brockley, Hither Green and Park Lane if you want to get in touch and discover more about what you need to do before bringing your home to the market.
Furthermore, if you would like an idea of how much your home could be worth on the current market, we offer instant online valuations.