Author Archives: Sam

Firstly, I always advocate professional photography of your property as the best option to sell your house effectively. However, you may have had your photographs taken in October, and now we’re almost in May, they’re looking decidedly out of season. Your agent will be very reluctant to pay for another visit from your photographer, and may offer to take a new front shot himself, to show in-season foliage, but I suggest that with a little coaching from me, you can probably do a better job. Here’s your 9 point action plan to getting a fabulous new front shot of your house:

1. Beg borrow or steal a good digital camera, unless you have one already. An SLR is best, though compacts these days can also take great images. Unless you’re confident of the settings, pop it onto automatic, and you’re ready to go.

2. Wait for a sunny day. Ideally you want a blue sky, and the sun fairly low, on the front of the house.

3. Ok, the sun is shining, today’s a good day for your photography. Leave your camera inside, grab a stepladder, and go for a recce: walk around the front of the house, looking at its best features, and deciding on angles. Does it look better from directly across the road, or on an angle? Perhaps you can frame the door with your hedge, or garden gate? Try looking at the house from up the stepladder, as it will often look more attractive from height. Plan your angles, then go get your camera.

4. Now you have your camera in hand, look through the viewfinder, and see how your house looks. Don’t go too wide; it’s important that your house fills the screen as much as possible. Take a couple of test shots to see how it’s looking. Too much in the shot? You don’t want to distract a viewer from your house, so zoom in a little. Take another and check the results.

5. Make sure you take the photographs in ‘landscape’ – in other words, horizontally, not vertically. This is so it fits in with the adverts on the property portals.

6. Take all the shots you planned earlier, focusing on keeping the camera straight and very still. If you can rest it on the stepladder, even better. Take each image at three different zoom distances, so you can see what looks better.

7. Now try being a little creative. See if you can add some foreground interest in the shot with maybe some colourful foliage, or over your garden gate. This way, you’ll end up with a range of ‘safe’ images, and also some that may be more interesting.

8. Right – let’s see what they look like! Upload the images to your computer, and start going through them, preferably with someone you trust to give you a second opinion. Be ruthless, and discard any that aren’t attractive and interesting. Look carefully at any distracting objects, shadows and lighting.

9. Once you have your shortlist, pick the absolute best three, and email them to your estate agent for him to pick the final one, and upload it to the property portals.

And there you have you new front shot – well done!

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

Whether you have a solitary budgie or a whole menagerie, any pet you have will doubtless be a very important member of your family. However, even though it’s sometimes difficult for pet lovers to imagine, there is in fact a large proportion of the population that just doesn’t like animals in the house. So what to do when you have a viewing arranged?

To make sure you don’t alienate your viewers and put them off your home from the moment they step through the door, it’s best to eliminate all traces of your pets if at all possible. If your agent accompanies viewers, then take the dog out for a walk; if you conduct the viewings yourself, and the weather allows it, let your dog have a sleep in the car, or leave it with a neighbour.

Move out of sight all pet paraphernalia: litter trays, pet food, dog beds, cat toys, etc. Close the cat flap, and ask a friend to look after the budgie.

Whilst you may prefer to sell your home to a pet lover just like you, in reality it doesn’t make sense to limit your market and you need to look at selling your property in a dispassionate and logical way. Give your buyers the chance to fall in love with your house and your beloved pets will soon have a new home to move to.

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

Ahh the Delorean…a timeless classic car that graced our screens in the 80s. But we aren’t here to talk about movies. The car however, is important to the point I want to relay; with its time travelling abilities, it would be perfect for jumping back a few months to show buyers what your house looks like in winter or autumn…but that isn’t what buyers want, and it certainly isn’t what works. Unfortunately though, that is what a lot of prospective buyers are being presented with online: a house stuck in seasons past.

Why should your photography not show signs of the seasons? Read on…

Dated – As soon as your photography is taken for your home and placed online, it enters into a time portal. While those spring flowers look so picturesque against the backdrop of your home, within a few weeks those flowers will be out of season, and your home is instantly dated. The snow too – while lovely, no one wants to see the white stuff on your property portfolio. It masks your property exterior, and in the swing of summer will be an instant put off.

Length of time on the market – In the same topic, your dated photography is an immediate indication of how long your home has sat on the market. If you’re in the depths of a hot summer and outside your home sits Mr Frosty, this suggests your home has been on the market for a fair few months. Do you want buyers to know this, or keep it under wraps?

Look at your photography, are there any seasonal signs in sight? A trawl through Rightmove will find you dozens of homes buried under snow. Talk to your agent about redoing the photography to make it more current, and point them in our direction if they question why!

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

Your house is finally on the market: it’s looking wonderful, your photography looks great, your brochure enticing; time to sit back and wait for an offer, right?

Wrong!

When it comes to selling your home, patience is not the virtue it’s cracked up to be, and the most successful sales are always the early ones. It’s vital to spend some time each week to ensure you’re doing all you can to keep interest in your property as high as possible. Here’s my 20 minute weekly workout for home sellers:

Call your agent – make sure you speak to them every week, without fail. It’s so important to keep your house in their minds, and keep the relationship as warm as possible. You should know all the staff on first name terms, and even if you just call to ask how the market is doing, your house will be the first one they mention to their next enquirer. 5 minutes

Check your sale board – is it straight? Is it clean? A grubby, damaged board sends all the wrong signals so make sure it looks as if it was only just put up. 2 minutes

Monitor your Rightmove Property Performance Report – make sure your agent knows to send it to you every week, and watch the trends. If interest starts to dip, ask your agent to swap the leading image, and try a new headline. Test and assess the results on a regular basis to make sure your property is getting the attention it deserves. (Find our more about your Performance Report here ) 5 minutes

Check out your competition – spend some time on Rightmove and the other property portals each week, so you can see what’s just come to the market, what properties have gone under offer, and how they compare with yours. 4 minutes

Clean your front door – and make sure any plants at the front of your house are looking their best. Take away dead leaves, wipe down pots and check your doorbell works. 2 minutes

Check for any light bulbs that might have gone around your home; extractor fan lights and underlighting in kitchens are the usual culprits. 2 minutes

Spend just 20 minutes on your house sale each week and it’ll most likely be 20 minutes more than your competitors are spending. It’s all about standing out, in all the positive ways you can stand out. Snag your buyer’s attention long enough to pique their interest, create a desire and with a little bit of luck, they will take the right action – to buy your house!

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

“The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight.”

~ Edward Kennedy

Have you been trying to sell your home for months, or even years, without success? You’re certainly not alone; did you know that only half the properties on the market last year actually sold?

Did you decline an offer in the first month or so that, in hindsight, you now would take? It’s a familiar story. In fact, around 75% of sellers who contact us would now accept that offer – gladly – and now regret having rejected it.

A property is never more desirable than when it first goes onto the market. The initial flurry of interest can even occasionally generate an offer in excess of the asking price, such is the draw of a newly-marketed home. The interest curve for those all-important first few weeks looks something like this.

However, once all the buyers who have been searching for a while for their next home have seen it, then it’s only the new buyers coming to the market who are around to show any interest, and this may be only a handful a week, at best. This just isn’t sufficient to instill any sense of urgency in a buyer, who may view 15 – 20 or more properties before making an offer on one.

Once your property has been on the market for more than a couple of months therefore, the interest curve looks more like this:

If you drop your asking price, and keep dropping it in an attempt to counteract this downwards trend of interest, all you’re doing is ‘chasing the market down’, in effect.

So what’s the answer? Here’s my expert guide to keeping your property marketing fresh, and avoid it becoming stale and forgotten:

1. Don’t dismiss out of hand any offer you receive in those crucial early weeks of marketing. It will probably be the best offer you will ever receive on your home;

2. If you’re several months (or years) down the line, you need to break the vicious cycle that is no one wants a house that no one wants. Take it off the market completely for at least two months, and preferably up to six months.

3. Re-launch at the right time of year for your property, ie at the time of year when your buyer is most likely to be searching.

4. Don’t scrimp on your re-launch: engage a professional home stager, commission a professional photographer, and choose a proactive agent who believes in quality marketing.

5. If you get an early offer when you go back to market, take it! Within reason of course…. As a general rule of thumb, anything in excess of 85% of your asking price is definitely worthy of consideration in this market, and over 90% is a terrific offer.

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If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

Property pricing is of paramount important these days. I don’t mean the question of ‘value’ – but instead the art of setting the right price so that the portal searches are optimised. For example: you have a house to sell worth approximately £1 million. The agent suggests an asking price of £999,999. “It’s a psychological price point” they tell you. I don’t agree. At all. I say – market at £1,000,000, and here’s why:

£999,999 is a cheap ploy – an ‘Asda’ price. Your buyers aren’t daft, so don’t treat them as if they are! Give them some respect and a ‘Harrods’ price. Make it £1 million straight.

£1 million is actually an aspirational price point – your buyers WANT to spend one million pounds on a house, and tell their friends and family that they have done;

£1 million is a very confident price – it says “my house is worth a million pounds” £999,999 is apologetic, humble: it says “make me an offer”;

£1 million gets your property shown in more searches. At £999,999 on Rightmove, your property will only appear in searches up to £1 million. At £1,000,000 straight, it appears not only in searches up to £1 million, but also those over: potentially doubling traffic to your property advert.

After all, as my Dad would have said, “Look after the pennies, and the pounds will take care of themselves”.

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

“Price on application” is a tag applied to some properties on the market, the price of which, for one reason or another, the agent or owner wants to keep secret. The theory is that an interested buyer will make the effort to call the agent, to find out the price, and even then, agents can prove to be cagey, to say the least.

So what is POA all about, why are some properties marketed this way, and most importantly, does it work?

A price can be kept secret for a number of reasons: the owner could have requested it, perhaps to keep this information from his neighbours or family; he could be a celebrity, and value his privacy generally, so this is just a natural extension of his cautiousness. There is usually only one reason for an agent to choose to market a house at POA: if he has absolutely no idea what it’s worth. He doesn’t want to commit himself to an asking price, so by marking the property without a price, in essence, he may hope to generate enquiries to help him gauge the likely interest and so determine a suitable asking price.

But – and it is a big but – if this property is marketed on the internet, POA doesn’t work! Once upon a time when the internet was just a baby (and so were most of today’s agents) an agent could make up an asking price on the spot when challenged by a buyer. These days, nothing is secret thanks to the internet. You see, when a property is uploaded to a property portal, POA is merely the descriptor; an asking price has to be selected. Therefore, all a buyer needs to do is to enter a wide search, in terms of asking prices and area, and the so-called secretly-priced property will magically appear in the slot allocated by the uploaded asking price.

Let me give you an example: if I enter ‘Reigate’ into Rightmove, with no upper price limit, I may get a list of properties with a POA property right at the top, with no way of knowing its real asking price. If however, I extend the area to say, 10 miles of Reigate, the POA property will then show in order and I will be able to see roughly where it sits. The reason the POA will probably show at the top of my list by the way, is that POAs tend to be in the upper price brackets, typically at more than £2.5 million.

POA is in my opinion, a little bit arrogant, misguided and it doesn’t work. Can you imagine if next time you go into your local newsagent, all the stickers on the cans of Coke and the baked beans simply say ‘price on application’?!

If you’re a seller with a unique, hard-to-price house for sale, don’t let your agent talk you into it, and if you’re an agent, re-educate your client so they understand why it’s such a bad idea.

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

When buyers are property perusing, the first minute of a potential home viewing is imperative. An initial positive sixty seconds puts them into a great frame of mind, where as if they pick fault in those vital moments, chances are they won’t be signing on any dotted lines. A good first impression will make your viewer want to live in your home, and that’s what you need to establish in those first moments.

We’ve previously discussed kerb appeal, and the stamp your home has already made before buyers even get to the front door. If this is flawless, read our tips on the first sixty seconds when they step through the door…

Maintenance – How’s that broken light fitting in the hall, are the wires still dangling from the ceiling? A minor five minute job for you can lose you a sale. Showing a lazy attitude to your general DIY before a house viewing, can leave people deflated and wondering what else you might not have fixed, especially things that can’t be seen. Complete all repairs in the house before you have people over.

Cleaning – You may have enjoyed your eggs on toast this morning, but the buyers won’t enjoy the pots on the table, or the leftover smell. It may seem like a minor detail, but if it’s one of the first things they see, it’ll leave an impression. Do the dishes and make your kitchen shine. Hoover and dust each corner and crevice of your home to perfection, wash the windows, and make people want to live there.

Clutter – De-cluttering is vital for the first minute of a property viewing. If buyers walk in to a hall or living room that is full to bursting, it makes rooms look smaller and your home immediately feels chaotic. To envision themselves living there, buyers need clear open spaces to picture where their belongings and furniture can go, and it’s hard to imagine this with piles of stuff in their line of vision. If you have a lot of clutter, spend a weekend sorting it out. If it’s easier, store things at a friend’s house, although throwing out things you don’t need now will save you time when you move.

Smells – Just like the eggs example, any lingering smells will hit buyer’s noses instantly. Open the windows (weather permitting!) to let fresh air into your rooms. Put any pets outside or ask someone to look after them. Create a nice smell for the air, such as baking. Read about smells in your home in more detail here.

Colours – Even if you love your very darkly painted entrance room, heading into a dark room could give a bad first impression. Research has shown that a lot of buyers prefer natural colours such as magnolia, and this is a sensible choice for a hallway. Heading into a light and bright room, works wonders.

If you want to create the right first impression with your buyers and generate a positive viewing, the points above are crucial to pay attention to. If a sale can be generated from a few hours of work, it will be worth it when you are shaking hands with the agents for your property.

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

Have you heard of guerrilla marketing? The term was coined and defined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his book Guerrilla Marketing and was invented as an unconventional system of promoting something, that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget. Typically, guerrilla marketing campaigns are unexpected and unconventional, and consumers are targeted in unexpected ways and places.

There’s a lot that estate agents could learn about guerrilla marketing techniques, and how to apply them to selling houses. In this still-tough market, sellers need all the help they can get. But don’t leave it to your agent; there’s plenty that you can do to give yourself the best possible chance to attract interest and beat the competition. Here’s twelve guerrilla marketing tips to get you started:

1. If you have an unusual feature, design or story about your house, try to generate free PR by getting onto local radio or in the press.

2. Offer a financial referral incentive to all on your email contact list, and ask them all to pass it on. Make it a really worthwhile reward – several thousands of pounds – to make sure they get excited about it.

3. Leave your brochure between the pages of some of your used magazines, and then take them to doctors’ and dentists’ surgeries for their waiting rooms.

4. Attach a lidded, waterproof brochure box to your for sale sign so people can help themselves to your brochures when they are driving or walking past.

5. Your largest employers in the area will probably have noticeboards where you can pin a brochure, or at least an index card..

6. Put your asking price on your for sale board. This particularly works well on a busy road, or on the rear fence of a house that backs on to a playing field or park.

7. Have some small postcards printed with your property details and contact information; wherever you go, make sure you have some with you and can leave them in appropriate places.

8. Calculate the price per square foot of your house, and compare it to your competition; if it is favourable, print a table showing how you rank and make it available to buyers.

9. If you have a family house, make sure any children are well catered for, and encourage them to play on swings, slides, trampolines etc, leaving their parents free to look around in peace. Pester power can work a treat!

10. Follow the developers’ lead, and place some signs around the house detailing appliances and any other features, such as pull-down loft ladders and garage door remote switches. Men in particular, love any gadgets, and it gives them permission to try them out.

11. Ask your friends and neighbours to write some nice testimonials about the house, the neighbours and the village or town. Leave these printed out on the table for them to take with them. Include any interesting local stories and famous or celebrity residents.

12. Facebook sites are really easy to create – make one to showcase your house complete with local information, photographs, details about local stories and famous neighbours etc. Share the link with your email list, and add it to any marketing.

The message here is, don’t leave it all to your estate agent – there’s so much you can do. At the very least, you’ll feel that you have taken back some control of the marketing of your property – and at best, you might just find yourself a buyer!

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

When it comes to spreading the word about your home, sometimes mainstream marketing doesn’t do enough to find that perfect buyer for your house. The spoken word is sometimes overlooked when it comes to home-selling, when it is in fact a very useful and expedient tool. We aren’t talking about the words that drift from your estate agents mouth, but your own. In the surrounding area, use tools at your own disposal for marketing your house on your own time. We’re talking about the local community; one of the most powerful promotion tools you can operate.

The majority of people who will be interested in your home will be local, and by following our suggested ideas below, your home will become a topic of great interest in no time.

Neighbours – While some of them will be your best friends, and some will be nosy, their penchant for news is useful when spreading the word about your home. They may have seen the For Sale sign, but drop a word by them that if they know of anyone who is looking, to please recommend. Just like the ingenious creativity of social media networking (read more here), networking among people can open a thousand potential doors. Once a neighbour tells their friends at work, half a dozen of them mention it to potential buyer friends and so on…

Local churches and meeting houses – If you attend church, the majority have a bulletin board where anyone can advertise anything of interest. By placing an advert here (and ensuring it is appealing to the eye), you’re drawing an immediate crowd of several dozen eyes a day. Even if they aren’t looking for a property, a recommendation to a friend or family member will likely follow. A good idea would be to add cut-offs at the bottom of the advert for people to take with them. Add your contact details and possibly an estate agent reference, and you’ll love how eager people will become.

Supermarkets – All supermarkets have notice boards, and most allow you to place an advert for free for up to a month. Many eyes grace these types of boards throughout the day; by placing an advert similar to the one above, you’re directly advertising to the local area. If you really want to see how far your free advertising can stretch, ask a manager if an advert can be placed in the staffroom too. Why not appeal to as many people as you can!

Local school newsletters – If you have children who attend the local school, ask the secretary or head teacher if you can place a small advert on the newsletter that goes out to parents. Add any details to your advert that will appeal to parents, such as close locality to the school, a real ‘family home’, and any other amenities that will draw interest. Put your name on here, and parents who know you will recognise your name. Looking for remote Front-End (Angular) developers? Contact us.

Your own workplace – It goes without saying that you should be advertising your home where you work. Even if you don’t know everyone in the building, by telling a few people that you’re selling up, word will quickly spread. Take advantage of staff newsletters and bulletin boards, and even advertise your home for sale via the footer on your email (with a link to the estate agents website).

By following such simple and unique ideas within your own community, you immediately have remarkable and free marketing tools at your disposal. Networking is a powerful tool, and by using it correctly, your home will be sold in no time.

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.