Author Archives: Sam

Show homes are professionally and specifically designed to sell a property, but making the most of its every aspect. Lighting, colour and furniture placement all play a part in making a home more desirable, and adding value to a prospective buyer. At the same time, staging a property throughout ensures that a buyer doesn’t have to use their own powers of vision – if they have any – it’s all laid out for them so they can see exactly how they could use the space.

We can learn a lot from show homes, and the designers that stage them. Here are my top ten tips to help you add that show home style to your own home, and sell it quicker – for more:

1. Define each room – your buyers need to know how they would use each room, so bedrooms need to be bedrooms, not offices, wherever possible. Similarly, a dining room needs a table, and box or junk rooms won’t do you any favours.

2. Add the right lighting – lighting creates mood, so keep it light and bright in practical areas like your kitchen, whilst table lamps will add atmosphere and ambience to your living room and bedrooms.

3. Use colour cleverly – don’t go bold when you’re selling some buyers just can’t visualise their style in a room that’s acidic yellow, or Ribena-purple. You don’t have to paint every room magnolia, but keep colours subtle and elegant to appeal to most buyers.

4. Make rooms feel as spacious as possible – mirrors and shiny surfaces help to bounce light around spaces, making them feel bigger. Try adding oversized mirrors to otherwise dim corners to really open them up. Remember, space adds value!

5. Invest in new bedding – cheap or old bedding can really devalue bedrooms, and make them feel dated. For a relatively small spend, you can transform your bedrooms with new bed sets in neutral colours.

6. Buy new cushions to dress your beds and your living room suites. It’s a safe area to add a touch of accent colour and texture, whilst allowing you to show you’re on trend.

7. Accessorise to bring up to date – pack old ornaments away and replace with new, modern alternatives. Vases, candles and other little touches can really improve an otherwise lacklustre room.

8. Reduce non-show home elements – pet paraphernalia, children’s toys, and evidence of hobbies all need putting away out of sight so as not to overwhelm or distract your buyer.

9. Swap personal photos for stylish artwork – nice pictures for your walls don’t have to be expensive; there are plenty of high street shops selling affordable wall art, and these will give your walls a real lift. Choose art that won’t offend (no nudes!) and try to pick out colours from your existing décor to add a sense of balance and harmony.

10. Add the right flowers to all key rooms – big rooms need big flowers; if your ceilings are high, pick tall, elegant flower arrangements; farmhouse kitchens look better with handpicked posies from your garden, if the season allows. Flowers add scent and colour, and are the perfect compliment to any room.

If you’re still stuck for show home inspiration, try browsing the new home sections of the property portals, or better still, go visit some!

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.

To make sure that your property sells faster make sure that your estate agent realises that they are not selling a property. No, really.

Today’s post comes to you from Colleen Babcock, the Marketing Manager for Northfields – an award-winning estate agent in London. A firm believer in, and advocate of, lifestyle marketing, Northfields use emotion and lifestyle imagery to sell the dream – not the bricks and mortar! I’ll let Colleen explain the concept:

Think about the last property you bought. Why did you buy it?

Chances are it wasn’t that it had the most square footage or even the cheapest price tag. It will have been because you could picture yourself living there.

As estate agents we really don’t sell property, we sell a lifestyle. It could be just a clichéd sound-bite, but at Northfields we know that “lifestyle marketing” is what sells property – faster and for a better price. It’s not just something that “sounds good”.

At Northfields we’ve had over 27 years of experience and we’ve learned that a home is more than just 4 walls and a roof. What makes a property a home is how someone will feel living in the space.

It’s whether or not you can pop out on a Sunday morning to a local shop for a pint of milk when you’ve run out, or whether or not you can cook dinner in your open plan kitchen while watching the children.

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.

These days, 93% of property searches begin online. But ‘online’ means the property portals – Rightmove, Zoopla, On the Market and Primelocation. Not Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the other social media platforms. At least, not yet….

You see, the issue isn’t the capability of social media to advertise a property – every platform could carry a very credible property marketing campaign, in fact. No, the barrier to using social media to sell your property, is that buyers aren’t looking there… yet.

UK buyers simply go to one or more of the four main property ‘databases’ (aka portals) to find their next home. If they went to Facebook, for example, where would they start in their property search? No – the way to sell your property using the might of social media, is to use it for one very important task – to drive buyers to your Rightmove (or other portal) advert.

Although it’s almost always the job of an estate agent to market your home, promoting your property on social media is something you can do yourself, giving you the best possible chance of promoting your home to the widest possible audience. If you’re remotely socially-savvy, there are some steps you can take to showcase your property advert, encourage clicks, and potentially get more viewings – especially from those buyers who have a search criteria that doesn’t match your home. After all, a ‘wild’ card’ property is often the winner on tv property shows!

Here are the top four social platforms on which to promote your Rightmove (or other portal) link:

Facebook is a great platform for selling properties, as it’s so visual, whilst still having lots of room for accompanying text. Creating a page for your property is easy and free, so set up your page and add attractive details and images. Make sure your photos really sell your home and showcase the lifestyle it offers. Also include its location and local amenities, local pubs and beauty spots and anything else that may appeal to a buyer about where your home is.
Instagram is such a visually-rich platform that you need to make sure your property photos are in keeping with the best Instagram accounts, so they get noticed. Colourful, enhanced lifestyle-themed images work best on Instagram, together with relevant hashtags of any interesting features and your location. Eg #lakedistrict #periodhome #hottub. One unique feature of Instagram is that links are not clickable on posts, so add your Rightmove link to your bio, and reference this in your posts.
LinkedIn is not an obvious platform on which to promote a property, but if your home has any commercial potential, it’s worth a try. A holiday let (or suitable to be a let), development potential, or any other feature that might make your home of interest to investors, are worth promoting on LinkedIn, especially if you have a sizeable number of followers.
TikTok – the short-form video platform – now has as many users as Instagram, in less than a quarter of the time. With its entertaining filters, easy editing features and fast-growing audience, TikTok is a perfect place to promote your beautiful property, in a short, fun video. Some property accounts to check out for inspiration are:

@Dkrizestates – Los Angeles
@pillerproperties – international real estate
@AshdownJones (our account) – Lake District
@jamiefranksestateagent – East London
@curransunique – Chester
@Summernewmann – UK wide

However, you decide to promote your beautiful home for sale, have fun and experiment with it. Showing some personality and injecting its individuality into your advert will help it go further, faster.

Happy selling!

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.

Sam

Styling a house that already looks good: The Reveal!

Today’s guest post comes from Anna Hart – a fabulous homestager and good friend. She has been working on a client’s home for me to prepare it for photography, and over three Saturdays she’ll be sharing her secrets with you! This is the last of my 3-part blog detailing a styling shoot for one of Sam’s clients. Read Part 1 Preparation and Part 2 Style-it-up for the whole story. It took a few days for fabulous photographer Andy Marshall to send the images over to us, and boy was I excited when I saw them – especially looking back to see the original estate agency listing photos, well the difference is huge! In the previous photos the house looked a little dull and uninspiring. But in the new images a large, bright, versatile home comes to life! My particular favourites are the bathroom which looks absolutely amazing with its injection of red, and the third bedroom because of the transformation we made from ‘work-a-day office’ to ‘sophisticated study that could be anything else you wanted’. And I just love the breakfast tray shot!

Doesn’t this make the kitchen look inviting?!

The kitchen now looks bright and welcoming

The third bedroom now looks amazing

Looking like the pages of 25 Beautiful Homes – gorgeous!

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.

Styling a house that already looks good: Style it up!

This is Part 2 of my 3-part blog for Sam, taking you through my styling for photography process. Read Part 1 to find out how I prepared for the shoot – preparation is so important in this game!

Our fab photographer Andy Marshall arrived and we planned our route round the house. Taking the exterior shots while the sun was out was important, so we had to remain flexible with one eye on the sky! For each set-up, my priority is ensuring that the photographer sees the best angle and that everything in shot is carefully placed to enhance the appeal of that image. I rush around moving unattractive items out of shot and strategically controlling what is in the frame, trying to create balanced and attractive images that draw the eye the right way and show off the best features of the room.

There are two types of photography that I try to style for – the standard, ‘show the essence of the whole room in one photo’ shot that is essential for Rightmove, and the closer, ‘make the viewer want to live this life in this house’ shot that is great for use in brochures. Getting both in one shoot is hard work and needs a great versatile photographer, but it’s well worth it because you not only get fabulous photos of your rooms, but the lovely extra lifestyle images that could make a potential buyer fall in love with your house.

The two rooms that needed the most attention:

The kitchen needed a warm accent colour adding in to give some life to the very neutral colour scheme, so I added red with flowers, accessories, a picture and two lifestyle set-ups, one of which became my favourite shot of them all!

The 3^rd bedroom also needed quite a makeover – it’s used as a full-time office so it wasn’t feasible to turn it back into a bedroom like I normally would, so I shifted out one of the 2 desks, all of the box files, and removed the framed certificates from the walls. The photos now show a suggested use for the room, instead of a room that had OFFICE stamped indelibly on it so no-one can imagine it as anything else.

Find out what the results look like in next week’s Part 3 – The Reveal!

The office is looking beautiful!

So pretty and they really add colour and interest to the bathroom.

Find out what happened during the shoot in Part 3 Style-it-up next Saturday!

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.

Styling a house that already looks good: Preparation

Today’s guest post comes from Anna Hart – a fabulous homestager and good friend. She has been working on a client’s home for me to prepare it for photography, and over the next three Saturday she’ll be sharing her secrets with you!

When Sam asked me if I’d head up to Bolton and style a bungalow ready for top photographer Andy Marshall to shoot, I was intrigued. The house had been on the market for a few months and just wasn’t getting any interest, so the owners enlisted Sam’s help with the photography and the online Rightmove listing. Good move!

Looking through the lacklustre and uninspiring photos that the previous agent had taken, I had mixed feelings about how the shoot might go. I could see that the owner already had a good sense of how to accessorise a room, but the photos just weren’t inspiring in any way, and I worried that since the presentation was already ok, the house itself was the cause of that.

Pushing my worries aside, I started to plan my styling, looking at each room in the house and the main elements I had to work with. I chose an accent colour for every room, one that would complement the existing wall colour, flooring and furniture. I always try to use what’s already in the house as far as possible, only adding styling props where absolutely necessary, because then the house has a better chance of still retaining the styled, photographed look for viewings.

Fully prepared but still a little apprehensive, I arrived on the day of the shoot and was totally relieved to find that on entering the house, it’s SO much bigger, lighter, taller and has oodles more life to it than the listing photos suggested! See how important it is to get really amazing photos of your house?! If I’d been a potential buyer I probably wouldn’t have got this far…

‘Bedroom 3’ before my magic wand!

The kitchen was lovely, but looks so dark and drab!

Find out what happened during the shoot in Part 2 Style-it-up next Saturday!

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.

Twenty years ago, a search for your next home would start and end with the estate agent. Agencies were town centre offices, busy with buyers and sellers all day, and the phones ringing off the hook.

Ten years ago, agents’ websites were the place to look for your new place, which often meant trawling through a slow and clunky website for each of perhaps ten or more agents in your chosen area. (Then give up and phone the office anyway.)

Today, it’s a whole new world. Homebuyers conduct their searches on Rightmove, Zoopla and Primelocation, at their leisure, over a glass of wine, watching tv, or during a break (or not) at work. Agents now have no influence over which properties a purchaser will view, moreover, that buyer is completely anonymous and invisible to the agent, right until the last moment, when they call or email to book a viewing on a property they have chosen to see.

Because of this new way of searching for homes, your property advert on the portals becomes the only method of persuading a buyer your property is worth viewing. It’s vital therefore, that it works. A buyer needs to take 5 steps before they book a viewing, and you can help facilitate this journey, and give yourself the best possible chance of that buyer choosing to view your house:

STEP ONE: Get found in a property search:

If your property doesn’t show up in an online search, you have zero chance of generating a viewing! Firstly, check the agent has listed you correctly, in terms of postcode, number of bedrooms and type of property. Mistakes here are surprisingly common so do check carefully. Next, make sure your asking price is optimised for the portals. (This post gives more information on this subject.) Simply put, your price needs to exactly match one of the drop down price bandings in the property search box, complete with the three zeros on the end.

STEP TWO: Sell the ‘Click’

The ‘summary advert’ that appears in search results has only one job – to persuade someone to click on that advert. It is not there to sell the house. No one will book a viewing from this page; they need to see more information, and they can only see that by clicking your advert. To make your advert clickable, you need to have a terrific main image, and a really punchy, carefully crafted headline.

STEP THREE: Get them excited with your photo gallery

An interested buyer will look through your images at least two or three times. It’s vital therefore, that these images all really sell your property. They need to be professionally taken (ideally), well lit, of beautifully presented rooms, with the external shots taken on a blue sky day. Don’t overwhelm them with 40 photos (read more here), but do give the buyer enough to want to see more. I’d suggest you need around 12 images for a 3 bedroomed home, less for a small flat, more for a mansion. But definitely no more than 20, or you will be showing so much that a buyer doesn’t need to view!

STEP FOUR: Make your brochure accessible

Has your agent produced a digital brochure for you? Take a look at your Rightmove advert – can you find the link?

Rightmove made some changes to their advert format a couple of years ago, and unfortunately, in their wisdom, decided that the best place for a brochure link was right down at the very bottom of the page. (It used to be at the top, above the map, which was much better.) The problem is that buyers need to see the brochure before they book a viewing. Rarely will they decide to view your home without reading the information in your brochure. Therefore it stands to reason it needs to be at eye-level when they are looking at your advert. The only way to do this, is to remove almost all of the ‘Full Description’ text. I suggest that the ‘Main Feature’ section is limited to 5 bullet points, and the text below is written especially for this advert, rather than simply drawn out of the brochure. If you keep this to a 100-150 word paragraph, you’ll see that the brochure link now sits just below the level of the bottom of the map. Now add a final line which states “Click the brochure link below for more photographs of this beautiful home”.

STEP FIVE: Reward them for opening your brochure:

There’s something very disappointing about opening a digital brochure and seeing exactly the same images and information as is contained in the online advert. You need to reward your buyer for going to the trouble of finding the link to your brochure and downloading it to view. Add new, different images and lots of well-written words, so that they will feel interested and also satisfied that they now know enough to book a viewing on your home.

So that’s it – five steps to helping your viewers on a journey that will hopefully result in a viewing for you. If you need more information on this critical area of your marketing, or your agent is less than cooperative over making changes to your advert, please get in touch; I’d be glad to hear from you and help you to reach your moving goals.

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.

This special guest post comes to us from Andy Jones (FRICS), a practicing Chartered Building Surveyor tells it like it is!

Andy and Sam walking our dogs and talking work!

Hi, I’m Andy, and I’m here to share with you my thoughts on how you can sell your home more effectively – which really means quicker, and for more!

If you really want to speed up the sale process after the buyer has made an offer and you have accepted it, there are some simple but effective steps you can take to make sure your buyer sticks around. First lesson is – make the buyer’s surveyor happy. Do not complain the surveyor has caused you delay if you haven’t got your act together.

How to make it easy for the surveyor: we surveyors like an easy life just as much as anyone does. Access all areas is the order of the day, so get your teenage son or daughter or lover out of bed, clear the way to loft hatches, unscrew them or unstick them; just don’t be awkward – instead, do all you can to help us do our jobs. Be willing to move furniture, clear the way to floor traps, take the dog out of the way, and clear the lawns and paths of doggy do so it doesn’t get trodden into your house! Have the keys available for windows, doors and garage and find that remote door control before the visit, to saving you rummaging around during.

If we don’t get access to any particular area, we have to mark this down in our report, which could lead to buyer’s doubt, which often leads to reduced purchase price offer to cover that risk.

Get copies of the following together and place them on the breakfast bar so the surveyor can study them, while you put the kettle on (please).

Certificates. We love them, the more the better. They give us confidence in the history of the property. These could include current Electrical Test Certificate, Gas Safety Certificate, Building Regulation Completion Certificate and plans for those extensions and alterations and loft conversion.
Planning Permission Notice
Energy Performance Certificate
Guarantees. Now we are in surveyor’s and buyer’s heaven! For example, replacement windows and doors, boiler and central heating, timber and damp treatments, get the idea?

If you have something to hide, perhaps your DIY-mad partner never did get Building Regulation approval for that dodgy loft conversion, you need to be prepared for delays while you and your solicitor frantically try to regularise matters. Be warned – competent surveyors are inquisitive and very very thorough.

Putting your house in order before marketing applies equally to the paperwork as it does to decorations and repairs. Oh, and we are partial to a nice, buttered scone……

Follow Andy on Twitter @JonesCoRICS, or read his blog here – never dull but always useful tips and advice.

From Andy and me, happy selling!

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.

Today’s guest post is by Andy Davies, of James Neave Estate Agent in Walton on Thames. It’s a great insight into what an agent actually does all day! (PS this post was the size of War and Peace and has had to be cut to shreds by me – suffice to say Andy packs a whole lot more into his day!!)

A day in the life of an Estate Agent – Me!

Waking up before the alarm I’m in the office at 7am, raring to go. I use the time before the team arrive to focus on my aims for the day.

The team arrives, and our morning meeting starts. To wake everyone up, I ask “where does Kylie Minogue get her kebabs from? Jason Donner Van.” It’s terrible but gets the reaction I am looking for as energy and laughter fills the room.

Next we congratulate Tim for 26 viewings booked and Gareth for tying up a sale. A great start to the day. Or so I thought….

A new tenant is due to move in to her new home today but the landlord has gone abroad without approving the references. He is a top client and we are under strict instructions not to proceed without his approval. The tenant is lovely and very understanding, but clearly very worried as by the end of the day she will be homeless!

The team are galvanized into action, determined to find a plan B; I’m very proud of our customer service ethos of going above and beyond – it’s so much more than a job!

Meeting over: it’s only 9am but it feels like it’s been productive already.

I call a vendor to update him. His property has only been on the market for two weeks but viewing levels have been lower than I would have liked and we have had some cancellations. I call him up for a chat and talk him through the situation, it’s not panic stations yet but we need to keep a close eye on the property. The vendor responds well and I think appreciates me making contact and keeping him updated.

As 10.15 arrives the guys are on the phone ringing about a new property we have just taken on; we like to reward buyers who are registered with us by notifying them first of new properties, before they hit the online portals. The calls go well and within 30 minutes, not only do we have six viewings booked in, we have also organised an open day on the house.

I get a call from a client selling a lovely home; under offer but the sale seems to be dragging on forever. Two days ago, a higher offer came in than the one on the table and she asks for my advice on how to proceed.

The day is moving on quickly and the team is performing superbly. Ryan has already taken one offer and is targeting a hat trick before the day is out. Tim and Gareth are on the phones in between viewing appointments and the new viewing bookings are coming in thick and fast.

I only have time for a quick sandwich and then I am out to photograph our newest house. It’s a fantastic property, superbly located and ready for modernisation – always an attractive proposition to younger buyers.

The photoshoot goes well and as I leave, Gareth arrives with the first of our viewers.

Gareth and Tim spend an hour at the house in total and we have quite a few viewings, which is great. No initial

offers but three second viewings booked. Gareth tells me one of the viewers wants him to tell all the other interested buyers that the house is haunted so they can‘t buy it before her!

The day is progressing deep into the afternoon now and the back office is still trying to contact our missing landlord.

In the meantime, Chloe is on the phone to the tenant’s current landlords trying to buy some more time before she has to vacate her possessions. We really will do anything at all to try and help people in such circumstances.

Suddenly a big cheer erupts from Sam; an email received from the landlord has confirmed authorisation for us to move her in. BOOM BOOM BOOM Chloe shouts; I have never seen her so animated!

Before the day ends we have 30 viewings booked in, a couple of property valuations and have we have tied up several new lets – a very productive day!

Just as the day is ending Ryan comes in with a big smile on his face; he has completed a hat trick of offers with another lettings offer secured on his final viewing of the day.

What a day, its 6.45pm before I know it – time to leave the office and head home to my amazing wife and family. And the hugely pleasant realisation hits me that the whole process starts all over again in the morning!

Andrew Davies

Managing Director, James Neave the Estate Agents

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.

This guest post is brought to you by Danielle Whitby of JB and B Leach Estate Agents

Having been involved in selling property now for just short of 17 years (I do believe I look old enough) I find most motivated vendors will discuss touching up paintwork, replacing worn floor coverings, a thorough spring clean and turn their attention to worn fittings…the list can often go on and on…

As the Estate agent, I advise accordingly often offering suggestions with the least cost and most impact; that’s my job and I love it!

The focus is almost always on the “big stuff” and never on the little things that can make a difference to achieving interest and that much wanted sale.

Admittedly being slightly addicted to houses – big and small – I scour online for what the competitors are up to and who is selling what; the fundamental error I see on a surprisingly large selection of photographs is a receptacle we all know and certainly need…but don’t love…the very ugly wheeley bin!!

It exasperates me – why oh why do agents allow such an eyesore (albeit in an array of colours!) to adorn the front of the all important sales particulars ? Often the “bin” is the first thing seen as it sits with pride of place on the external photograph. Madness!

Armed with antibacterial hand gel (every agent needs some!) the first rule for me is “move those bins” when putting a property up For Sale.

In any market, but more so today, its imperative the presentation of any property matches the price tag, the little things do count, so remember … “Move those bins!” Show an uncluttered frontage, coupled with a blue Sky – that’ll do it!

Happy selling.

Danielle Whitby – proud and passionate about her job. Why not follow us @jbbleach and/or me @daniellewhitby.

We love to chat 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.