“We found the whole experience interesting and enlightening and we now understand the reasons why our property did not sell and feel more confident that it will do once we go back on the market. Sam was pleasant and tactful whilst being honest and a joy to work with.”
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.
“I have to admit to being very sceptical. I’ve been in business for a long time and have come to have a low regard for ‘consultants’! However, I couldn’t have been more wrong. HomeTruths engaged a great agent who we would never have thought of using, make some changes in our house that we both really loved, and insist on a higher asking price for our house than we had been advised to go for. HomeTruths was also an invaluable guide through the whole stressful process. When at the end of three long years on the market, we received an offer of £5,000 over the asking price, and in only 8 days, we were absolutely over the moon! If you’re trying to sell your house, my advice is – don’t hesitate. Engage HomeTruths today and get your house sold.”
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.
“We took your excellent advice and took the house off the various web-sites and since it went back on we have been inundated with viewings and had 3 offers and we’ve exchanged contracts at the asking price today – so thank you very much for your advice and for the lucky charm which you obviously cast when you were here !!”
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.
“We’ve had an offer at the full asking price! Couldn’t have done it without you, wish we’d known about you when we went on the market 2 years ago. A huge thank you for all your help. Please come and see us in our new house anytime.”
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.
Wing of a Georgian manor, on the market for 3 months at £850,000
Sale achieved in 5 days, achieved £865,000.
“HomeTruths renewed my confidence in my property sale. Crucially they recommended the right estate agent who produced a superb brochure and highly effective advertising. As a result Queen Anne House sold within 5 days of re-launch. A very successful outcome. – Andy Richardson”
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 a property brochure for your home, you shouldn’t settle for anything but the crème de la crème. Your brochure is an essential tool that viewers will use to get a feel of the lifestyle they can achieve in their potential future abode. Most individuals read up on travel destinations prior to booking, and a property brochure is the same; it provides the essential and inspiring information, and makes your home look beautiful for anyone ‘planning’ a visit.
What if your brochure isn’t working for you though, or – even worse – what if you don’t have one?! As you can read from this previous post, some agents don’t believe in brochures. Some don’t create one, and your online advert for your home on Rightmove will simply link to the agent’s website. Something printed off the agents printer in a flimsy folder with dark photos and copied text, isn’t a brochure either. To a buyer, this indicates lack of care and attention, which they will also attribute to your home.
A brochure sells the lifestyle of your home, its quality and everything that makes it wonderful. You can print it, save it to your phone and email it around to show to family and friends. It gets people excited, and makes them want to view your home even more. It should contain beautifully presented and professional images, floorplans to dazzle and emotive text to describe each detail of the home you have loved. It is there to sell your home.
If you want to refresh your home selling strategies this year, the brochure is the place to start. If your inspirational brochure sits amid a pile of monotonous brochures, yours will be the one the buyer chooses. Be proud of your home, and create a brochure that shines.
If you are now looking at your brochure and wondering if it would meet the HomeTruths’ grade, give us a call, and we’ll tell you!
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.
Zoopla.co.uk property news author Robin Stenson writes about a homeowner who enjoys a cuppa in the bath and who posts his home ad on YouTube, gaining thousands of hits.
A couple hoping to sell their house by less “conventional means” have made a short comedy video that’s been viewed nearly 4,000 times on YouTube, and retweeted on Twitter, where the soundtrack is now available to buy for charity.
Iain Rooney, who lives in Fife with his wife Lisa and 14-month-old son Danny, started feeling anxious when after six months their home had had only one viewer. Planning to move to Pittenweem, the couple are keen to sell their four-bedroom villa, which overlooks the small town of Cellardyke in eastern Scotland.
So Mr Rooney wrote a song, and took a variety of pictures for a slideshow that presents the stone-built home and its attractive features, which include a spacious lounge, kitchen with modern fittings and his-and-hers closets. After uploading the video to YouTube, Rooney hoped a buyer would be enticed by the house’s charms.
He explained to the Scotsman: “We’re just trying to do something different to create a buzz. When we put the house on the market, we thought it would sell quickly but in six months we’ve had only one viewing. We were getting a bit demoralised, so I decided to do something about it.”
This is evident in the song’s chorus, which goes: We haven’t sold by conventional means, so have gone for a gimmick to bring home the beans. The ‘shareability’ is certainly in the quirky images, which include Rooney drinking tea in the bath, a collection of wigs and the bottom half of a mannequin standing in the closet.
The house, which is priced at £230,000, received a lot more publicity when the video was retweeted by Ian Rankin to his 40,000 followers. What do you think? Is it desperate of droll? Watch the video and let us tell us what you think.
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.
Trying to launch your home to the market during winter can be tricky. Buyers have Christmas on their minds, and keeping your home looking its best during this time is a challenge.
One of the first hurdles you’ll encounter for a winter launch is the photography. No one’s garden looks at its best at this time of year, and trying to make sure it looks attractive to buyers through photography is definitely difficult. Here are my top tips to make sure your winter photography looks good enough to attract viewings:
Stick to these simple rules and your images will be good enough to tempt buyers to brave the rain and view!
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.
If, like me, you spend many happy hours browsing Rightmove, you can’t have failed to notice the fact that some properties are featured at the top of each page of search results, and others are are given added emphasis, with a grey box, clickable photos, and a red badge. The former is what Rightmove calls a “Featured Property”, and the latter a “Premium Listing”.
‘Featured’ listing
‘Premium’ listing
There are three types of listings on Rightmove: Regular, Premium and Featured. The Regular version sees your property marketed on the portal. The Featured Listing sits at the top of the search results and is highlighted with a blue banner top and bottom, so it stands out, whereas the Premium Listing appears in search in price order, but is a larger box with a big green banner. The cost for a Premium listing is £50 per property, whereas the Featured property spot is a bigger investment, at £180 per month. If you’re using a full-service agency to market your home, this cost will usually be covered by your agent, if they use these features. If you use a DIY agency, like PurpleBricks or Yopa, for example, both Featured and Premium listings are available at extra cost.
Is there any benefit to you or your agent paying the extra for Rightmove added features?
We’ve tested these features in our own agency, AshdownJones, and whilst we found the views and clicks on our enhanced property listings did increase, the number of actual viewings did not. It seems unlikely to me that using one of these upgraded listings would refresh interest in a house that had been on the market for a prolonged amount of time, and when a home first goes to market, it often has a flurry of interest anyway, so an enhanced listing would be a waste of money.
I’m sure there will be other estate agents – and Rightmove themselves of course – who will argue it’s a worthwhile investment, but it hasn’t proved to be for us. Instead, we focus on creating the best possible showcase of a home on a Rightmove standard listing.
Lifestyle photography, professionally-written copy and a beautiful brochure will all motivate quality enquiries and encourage serious viewings, much more so than paying for an enhanced listing. In fact, I’ve seen some pretty awful listings on Rightmove in the Featured or Premium spots, which is just lazy marketing, in my opinion. After all, there’s little point in paying for your shoddy listing to appear in a Featured or Premium spot if it’s not going to appeal to the right kind of buyers in the first place.
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.
Where do your viewings end? After you’ve shown them round the house, do you then take them into the garden? The problem is with doing this, is that as they are already in their garden, possibly in sight of their car, it’s very easy to say goodbye and for them to simply go at that point. what you really want them to do, is to have another look around the house alone, to give them chance to talk to one another in private, and ask their partner, “what do you think?’.
The answer, is to plan the viewing in advance. Decide where you want to start – I’d always advise the best downstairs room in the house, to create the maximum first impact (leave all the doors closed by the way, so they don’t wander into rooms in the ‘wrong’ order) – then plan the tour of the rest of the house in the most natural order. Upstairs, it’s sometimes a good idea to show the bedrooms in reverse order, so not only does the master bedroom feel bigger by comparison, but you also end the house tour on a high note. Then take them out into the garden, but come back in the same door you went out of. If this is a patio door, you may find you need to ask them to take their shoes off, or leave slip covers by the door, so they don’t trail mud inside on a wet day. Then go back into the best room downstairs, and say “why don’t you go and have a look around again by yourselves”; very few people will refuse this offer, and you could add “I’ll be waiting in the kitchen when you’re done but don’t hurry” so they know they can take their time, and that you won’t be following them round, so they are free to talk in private.
So, avoid the garden close; instead, take control of the viewing, make sure it lasts at least 20 minutes to half an hour and you will have much more chance of your viewers having the time and space to fall in love with your home. Just as you once did.
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.