Author Archives: Sam

When it comes to choosing an agent to sell your home, your first choice might be to seek out the one in town with the swankiest digs; lighting that changes colour, freshly painted walls, swish cars in the driveway, silver edged coffee makers. However, image isn’t everything. Some of these agents may be wonderful, but in some cases they aren’t necessarily the best. When choosing an agent, treat your selection like you would pick at the crop of a dating website; be fussy.

So what sort of things should you be looking for, when seeking out your house marketer? We’ve picked our top tips; use them wisely.

Website – ALL agents should have a website in this day and age; if they don’t, this is an immediate bad sign. To gain full marketing exposure of your property, putting it online is imperative. This is where most house hunters start their search. If your agent does have a website, check how often it is updated. Yesterday? A month ago? A year? If the length of time is longer than a few weeks, think again. If they don’t keep their properties and website updated, they won’t be keeping your house marketing updated either.

Reviews – Just like a product review, people review their experience of a service. If someone has received outstanding service at the hands of an agent, some will choose to write about it, just as many will with negative reviews too. It goes without saying that occasionally one negative review will slip through the net for most agents, but view all reviews as a percentage. If an agent has over 10% negative evaluations, read what their downfalls are, and what happened. On some review websites, some agents might even comment back on some reviews, so look out for these points too.

Photography – As we discussed in this blog, photography is paramount when marketing your property correctly. Get it wrong, and no one will take a second glance at your house. With this in mind, analyse your agent’s photography skills. Is it professionally done, or does it look as if they took a few shots with a camera phone? If they care about the look they are trying to achieve when marketing your home, they’ll care about you as a client too.

Reliability – To gain a little bit of insight into how reliable your potential agent is, ask around for word of mouth opinions. People at work, friends or family are bound to know someone who has recently moved, and used the same local agent. Get to know how dependable the agent was in terms of contact, marketing, pricing and other things important to you. If their approach was rushed and impersonal, that’s how they’ll be with you too. It’s a no-go.

Popularity and experience – How long has your agent been in the market? If many years, this is a great sign that they’re doing their job well, and are trusted. While new agencies do grace our towns every few years, without the knowledge of how they work, you won’t know what to expect. Getting an agent with solid experience and a hearty background in helping their client’s sell their house well, is what you need.

By looking at the things that matter when choosing an agent to market your home, you’ll ensure you choose the right one who will only want the best for you as a client. Be picky in the property market; it’ll guarantee you end up with the right ‘date’ for 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.

Picture the scene: you have got someone coming to look around your property Saturday lunchtime, but something’s come up, and you’re desperate to rearrange the viewing. In a word, don’t. Why not? Well, they might just not come back! Read our reasons for not cancelling or rearranging below…

The 24 hour paradigm – A lot can happen in 24 hours. Even if you just rearranged the viewing until the very next morning, a potential buyer can see half a dozen houses in this time, and be already making calls to arrange their mortgage.

Tardiness – Unless they’re already head over heels for your home, most buyers just won’t want to rearrange a time to see your house, especially if it is last minute. Unless you have a genuine reason, they’ll expect you to do it again. Don’t be the canceller.

They could be ‘the one’ – What if your buyer was the person who was going to buy your home, and because of your shifting around, your home has to sit in your agent’s window for another six months? Any viewer is a potential buyer; don’t lose the opportunity to show your home off.

If you are considering rearranging an appointment in the near future, keep this list in mind. Unless your reasoning is something you really can’t cancel, delay that event by half an hour instead of your property viewers. Why delay, when you want to sell?

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 all been there. You know your home is a great catch, you’ve read all the magazines, and you’ve followed all the tips to a T. But it’s still not budging. And to make it worse, Stuart and Lesley’s barn conversion next door was snapped up the first week it hit Rightmove. You’re starting to wonder if you’ll ever see a sold sign hanging out front. So what’s left to do? Instead of following tips to a T, you need to follow them to a P. And that’s three P’s to be precise.

P is for Price

Having the right pricing strategy in place is a great start. Listing for £499,995 seems logical; it looks friendlier sitting just under the big 5, and will position your house as a steal, right? Wrong. Selling a home isn’t easy, but sitting inside as many people’s price brackets as possible is key. The more people that see your home, the more likely it is to sell. A home listed on Rightmove for £500,000 will be included in searches for £500,000-£600,000 as well as £475,000-£500,000. If the same home was priced at £499,995, it would fail to show in the latter bracket. So £5 could be the difference between doubling your potential viewers, and finding the right buyers for your home.

P is for Promotion

Which Rightmove pictures catch your eye? The dimly-lit, awkward looking ones, or the professional lifestyle images? The latter not only look special, they look magazine-worthy, and they tell a story that a buyer wants to be a part of. Now take a read of your house description. Is it something along the lines of: ‘The XYZ Estate Agents are proud to offer this realistically priced, and generously proportioned, detached family home,’? Or maybe it’s littered with lovely generic phrases like, ‘features’, ‘briefly comprising’ and ‘duel-aspect.’ These go-to phrases are simply meaningless, and who drops ‘dual-aspect’ into daily conversation anyway? If the copy isn’t interesting, persuasive and meaningful, your home isn’t going to talk to buyers. And since emotions sell a home, the words and images need to give a warm hello, and a lasting impression, if they are to stand out and be remembered.

P is for Presentation

So you’ve priced the home just right, and the photography and copy have caught people’s attention. Now for the viewings. This is where it gets exciting. Home styling, or how we dress our home ready to impress, is the final hurdle. And without a little help, it’s easy to fall here. Draw your viewers’ eyes to your home’s natural beauty, and show how each room could work for another family is key.

So Price, Promotion and Presentation. Follow these three ‘P’s, and you’ll be passing over the keys in no time. A home is more than just bricks and mortar, to both you and potential buyers; it needs to capture their hearts, as well as their heads.

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

This month we’re talking about reviewing and refreshing where your property is at in the selling process. If it’s been on the market longer than it should have been, it is a great time of year to decide what your next stage is!

Today we’re revisiting the topic of social media, and how it can actually be used to help you sell your home. Read more…

Social media such as Facebook and Twitter is on everyone’s lips nowadays, from university students using it to network with their classmates, to businesses sharing their latest venture or new creation. Networking with people – from your own town to those across the world – has become the norm. With this is mind, could social media marketing be used to sell your home? It’s being used in much more productive ways than simple friend connection, and with just a few simple guidelines, your home could be reaching your target audience within hours.

Here are our Top 5 Tips to sell your house effectively using social media:

Do your research – Have others done the same in your area? Have a search around your local area via social media, and see if you can find any success stories. Ask them questions, and learn any helpful facts about your area and its social media selling potential from those with experience.

Lay the foundations – Set up a social media page for your house via Facebook and Twitter. Both have advantages: Facebook is great for imagery, and Twitter is ideal for networking locally. Create a page you would want to look at if you were a buyer. Have a strong cover and profile photo of the property, and details of its location in the text boxes.

Sell it! – If you want to attract potential local buyers, ensure your images are spot on. A professional photographer would come in handy here. Get rid of clutter, and make each room look homely. Facebook has the advantage of videos too; why not get a video made? A showcase or walk-through of your home is an ideal way to let people see more of the property. Make your home sellable through quality creative content. Is it near good schools, for example? Tell them so.

Share it – Share your pages via your Facebook and Twitter accounts with your friends, and ask them to share it on to their friends too. This immediately opens your network. Do you have a blog or a website? Share it on here. Put it on the footer of your personal emails. Network on Twitter too; search for people looking for property in your area, and comment on their tweets.

Be interactive – You hopefully will start getting likes and comments from potential buyers; ensure you check the page daily to answer these, or risk losing prospective viewers.

One of our favourite examples of how successful social media selling can be, is a woman called Betsy Talbot who was setting off around the world with her husband, and wanted a quick sale. By networking and running the Twitter account to sound like the house was doing the talking, the house was sold within two months. One of our favourite lines: “I love watching you stroll by me on the way to Fremont Sunday Market. If you lived here you could park in my garage!”

In the next few years we could well see more properties being sold through social media. With such interesting developments in the property market happening all the time, it’s worth spending a little effort seeing if you can make it work for 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.

How long has your home been on the market? More time than you’d like it to have, and more time than it really should have been? If you’re beginning to lose hope and faith, don’t. This is time for a review, and to refresh the strategies that you’re currently applying, which clearly aren’t working. It isn’t the time to drop your asking price; this isn’t the magical solution, because buyers don’t buy on price.

So what can you do? Over the next few weeks, we’re going to be looking at how you can refresh and review what is currently happening with your home, and how you can revive your tactics to sell, sell, sell. Your home can and will be sold, it just needs an evaluation of what might not be working for it in the current market. Is your marketing tired and weak? Is your estate agent right for you?

We’ll be looking at these questions and more in the coming blog posts, so stay tuned. Can’t wait for the next few weeks of advice?

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.

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The market is definitely quiet at the moment, it’s true. The buyers seem to have receded with the summer sun, and may not reappear until the daffodils emerge in the spring.

If you’re in a huge hurry to sell, then you may be considering dropping your asking price, probably egged on by your estate agent, looking for a quick sale at your expense.

However, dropping your asking price should never be a knee-jerk reaction to a slow market. There are many factors to consider. At best, even a large price drop could make absolutely no difference to your viewings whatsoever, and at worst, it could actually damage long-term your likelihood of selling at anything close to the price you were originally hoping for.

So, let’s look at the psychological effects a discounted asking price could have on a potential buyer:

1. Wariness

The initial surprise a buyer may feel which draws his attention to your advert is very quickly replaced by wariness and cynicism that something must be ‘wrong with it’ to have such a low price.

2. It invites analysis

Selling on price causes buyers to be more analytical of the offer – the bricks and mortar. Because their decision to buy is rational (based on £s) and not emotional (based on feelings), they will be searching for the downside – that leaky tap will be an issue, the soggy garden a serious problem. Buyers making their decision on emotions are looking at your house with roses-around-the-door-tinted glasses.

3. Low price = low quality

Buyers usually want to spend at least their budget, and often end up spending more. Think back when you bought your house – did you stay within your budget? We are conditioned to believe you get what you pay for. After all, if we bought on price, we’d all buy our clothes from Primark and drive around in Skodas. The truth is we like quality; we aspire to it; we deserve it. Show us a property slightly beyond our means and we will want it all the more. A confident, optimistic asking price says ‘buy me – if you can’.

4. Lack of confidence

What buyer wants to offer on a decreasing asking price? Would you buy shares as they were falling? When will it stop? Will your investment prove foolish? Each price decrease indicates the seller’s lack of confidence in his own asking price. If the seller isn’t confident, why on earth should the buyer be?!

So before you drop your asking price, remember the passionate belief of all of us at HomeTruths –

People do not buy homes on price.

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.

There’s a lot to be said for using an established estate agent. You know what you’re getting; you probably know friends who have used them; their services have been tried and tested over several years. You could see them as the safe option.

But what if there’s a new agent in town? Would you trust them to do a good job of selling your home?

The established agents would warn you off, for sure. They would tell you that these agents are untested, inexperienced and even desperate for your business. They will accuse them of over-valuing, under-valuing and under-delivering. But then they would, wouldn’t they?

Maybe it’s time to rethink that point of view.

Time for a rethink?

Next time you see inexperience, remember that they have a reputation to build, and they want to do that on your success; if you see they have a small portfolio, remind yourself that they will have more time for you; and if you wonder if using an agency with only a tiny team will be up to the task, think about how you’ll feel calling the office and always speaking to someone who knows who you are, without your having to give them your address, postcode and inside leg measurement…..

Is there a new kid on your block too?

I often work with agents like Victoria. They are a breath of fresh air in an industry that is often stale and complacent. Here are some new and innovative agents I’ve had the pleasure to call my clients:

Angela Westgarth

The Personal Property Shop, Bishop’s Stortford

A bundle of energy, Angela is dedicated, determined and a real dynamo!! Check out her Property Selling Tips and fabulous Facebook page.

Lucie Wishart

Wishart Estate Agents,York

With beautiful branding and an elegant website, Wishart looks like it’s been around for years. Award-winning and super-focused, with a keen eye for detail, Lucie Wishart is definitely a new generation agent who is taking agency to a new level.

Perry Power

Power Bespoke,Reigate

Not so much the new kid on the block any more, but one of the most different looking agencies in his area. Everything Perry does is with style and panache, and his content marketing – blogs, videos and tutorials – mean that clients flock to him to find out more, attracted by his flair and originality.

Do you have a new kid on your block?

If you know a new, (or newish) agent in your town, who is determined to make a difference, and isn’t afraid to innovate and disrupt, I’d love to know about them! Tell me in the comments.

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 home is for sale, and you have a viewing booked. How exciting! Let’s make sure your home looks amazing and seduces your viewer, so that they turn into a buyer.

Check out our 7 steps to wow your viewer:

1. Clean and clear – buyers judge room sizes by how much floor space they can see, and in the kitchen – how much work surface. Get rid of anything that doesn’t add to the presentation, and that could be distracting to a viewer. If you’re short of time, grab a washing basket and walk around your house, gathering up anything that shouldn’t be there. Stick it in your car until after the viewing when you have time to sort it out!

2. Get rid of kids and dogs – you’ll feel much more relaxed if you and your viewer have the house to yourselves, and so will they. You can focus on what to say about each room, and the best order to show your home without a child tugging at your leg, or your dog sniffing your guest inappropriately.

3. Freshen up – open windows to let some fresh air in, especially if you have pets, and definitely if you are partial to spicy food. Don’t make the house cold though, it shouldn’t feel chilly as you walk round.

4. Light lamps – take a leaf out of developers’ books, where their showhomes have all the lights on, all the year round. Usually, table lamps are enough to add a cosy glow, and underlighting in the kitchen if you have it.

5. Bedding and towels both need to be freshly laundered. If you’re a busy household with little time to spare, consider keeping a duvet ready dressed with a clean cover to simply pop over each bed just before a viewing. Same with towels – keep some hidden in the airing cupboard just for viewings.

6. Beautifully scented – scented candles and room sprays will make sure your home smells beautiful; just don’t overdo it! Your home should smell subtly fragrant.

7. Finishing touches – if you have time, fill vases with flowers, or simply with some pretty foliage from the garden. Pop some relaxing music on low, and get your best smile ready.

Whether it’s your first viewing, or your fifty-first, making sure your viewer feels like the VIP they are is super important if you want to get an offer. Giving them the best experience of your home will make them feel important and relaxed, and so in the positive and happy frame of mind to make an offer to buy your house, and not anyone else’s!

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 once went to view a property on behalf of a client; a lovely little cottage in Cheshire. When I arrived with a colleague, the front door was wide open and the viewing ‘rep’ was standing in the kitchen, reading the paper. He was in his fifties, scruffily dressed, and didn’t even look up when we rang the doorbell, but just called at us to come in. In fact, he didn’t look up from his paper during our whole viewing, but instead left us to look around the cottage by ourselves. Even when we went to the back door and rattled it, looking for the key, he completely ignored us, only muttering “bye” as we left.

Appalled by the lack of care he had displayed with the seller’s cottage, I called the estate agent’s office and told the manageress what had happened. Her response left me stunned, to say the least. She said, and I quote, “He’s not there to sell you the house”.

“So what on earth is he there for?” I asked, genuinely confused.

“His job is just to open the door” came her reply.

I put the phone down. And closed my mouth.

What would the seller have said if she’d heard our conversation? If she’d known that he couldn’t even be bothered to find the back door key for me? Or the fact that we were left completely unsupervised to roam around this poor lady’s cottage, without a thought the security of her possessions?

Agents need to realise their purpose at a viewing, whether it is the agency manager, or a lowly viewing rep.

Their job is to engage the viewer, to open doors, to answer questions, and very importantly, to protect the seller’s possessions.

And yes, to actually SELL their client’s 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.

Whilst it’s very tempting to leave responsibility for your property sale to your estate agent, there are in fact some steps you can take yourself, to improve the interest in your property – in other words, to get more viewings! Here are my 5 changes you can make for a quicker sale and a great post to read for each one:

1. Change your presentation – take a look at your competitors’ properties – are they better presented than you are? If you really don’t know whether it’s up to scratch, and are not sure what you need to even if it isn’t, then you need a home stager. Have a look at this post which explains what home staging is, and how it can help you to sell your home.

2. Change your photography – if you don’t have terrific images of your home, you just won’t get any viewings. Great photography is all about preparation – get your home ready and dress it for the photographer, and the finished images will be magazine-quality. Read this post to discover the secrets of fabulous property photography.

3. Change your written description – the words you use to describe your home could be the difference between a buyer wanting to view your property, and dismissing it. Use powerful, target-focused words to show a buyer that your home has what they are looking for. This post explains in greater detail what you need to do to captivate a buyer with the right words.

4. Change your Rightmove advert – your Rightmove advert is your window to your buyers. Get it wrong, and you simply won’t get viewings. Get it right, and you’ll generate a steady stream of viewers that will ultimately result in an offer. This post explains exactly how to optimise your Rightmove advert to get the maximum interest from buyers.

5. Change your estate agent – if all else fails, it may be time to change your agent. With the best will in the world, spending weeks and even months without viewings, is as demoralising for your agent as it is for you. If your agent has lost confidence in his ability to sell your property, moving the instruction to a new, motivated agent with plenty of energy might be the answer to renewing your property marketing. This post will take you through the key questions to ask your current agent, so you can decide whether or not to stick with them, or move on.

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.