Tag Archives: property marketing

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.

Are you wrestling with the decision of exactly what the marketing price of your house should be?Worried you’ll make a mistake, and concerned about the consequences?

Selecting just the right asking price for your house can be a challenging task.; one that should be made easier by the advice of your estate agent, but often that’s not the case. After all, if you’ve interviewed three or more estate agents to give you an up to date market appraisal, you may have found yourself in possession of three different asking price recommendations.

We’ve been advising homeowners on pricing strategy for well over a decade now, and in that time, we’ve tried and tested some simple guidelines to help you select the best asking price for you to go to market with.

Rightmove’s search bandings

If you choose a strategically optimised asking price, it will make sure your house is found in a Rightmove search:

When you use the drop-down search in Rightmove, you’ll see the price ranges become further apart as the prices go higher. So for searches below £300,000, the bands jump in £10,000 rises, whereas between £1,000,000 and £2,000,000, the price bands are in £250,000 increments.

If you select an asking price that’s just below a Rightmove price band, say £599,999, your property will only show in a search up to £600,000, but not including it. This is what we call the ‘Rightmove Zero Pricing Strategy’. By pricing your property at £600,000 exactly, it will appear in searches that both start and end at £600,000. Simply put, pricing your property at the exact same price as a Rightmove property search band, your house will show in more searches; potentially up to double the number of searches you’d get found in, with a non-optimised price.

The psychology of pricing houses

Estate agents often like to use a price with all the nines, because they believe it’s a psychological price point. But this is an outdated viewpoint, that doesn’t work in today’s digital world. Let’s face it, a price with all the nines like £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 with a ‘John Lewis’ price.

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

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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.

When to put your home on the market, and why timing is so important.

Often, when we decide to sell our property, we simply engage an estate agent and then ask them to market it immediately. However, putting your house on the market at the wrong time of year for your particular buyers may mean that your property launch is more of a dribble. You need early and strong interest from buyers who want to move, and that takes a little planning. Newsflash – certain times of the year are better for selling particular properties than others.

The key is to know your buyer and plan according to their timescale, not yours. Different types of buyers like to move at different times of the year, according to their own needs. It’s not healthy for your eventual sale price, or for your emotional wellbeing, to have a property languishing on the market for months, so the better you can plan your launch, the more likelihood there is that your property will sell quickly.

Who buys when?

Young couples and singles: First time buyers often begin their first home search very early in the year. Perhaps they have spent one Christmas too many at home with their relatives, and realised it’s time to move out. Their search often starts in earnest in January and February, and their purchases at the lower end of the market – apartments and terraced homes – then supports the second and third time buyer market – semi-detached and detached homes. This, in turn, supports the larger properties, and so the cycle goes on. One thing to remember about young couples and singles, is that they tend to look at lots of different properties, and as they are not in a hurry, their search can go on for months, and even years. So be patient with them, and let them take their time to make up their minds.

Families: Family buyers tend to buy at three distinct times of year: autumn, spring and early summer. Do you recognise the significance of these times? They are school term times. Buyers with children don’t usually like to house hunt during the holidays. First, they have better things to do, perhaps going on holiday, and second, it’s a whole lot more stressful viewing a home when you have a bored and whiny child to contend with. Mums and Dads tend to wait until the children are in school, so they can view the house in peace.

Downsizers: Older couples and singles usually prefer to look at homes during the warmer months, so bungalows and retirement homes will often languish on the market over the winter time. The elderly don’t want to venture out to look at homes in the rain and snow, and nor do they want to move house in the winter time. For them, summer is the ideal time to sell, and to buy, and this type of buyer tends to look at fewer properties, and make their minds up more quickly.

If you know who is most likely to buy your home, you can plan your launch to market more effectively. Remember that the less time your home is on the market, the closer to your asking price you are statistically likely to get, so plan for a quick sale!

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.

Making sense of the Mortgage Market Review and how it affects us all

I recently sold a house I’ve owned for eight years, but my successful sale at a great price had a sting in the tale….

Although I lived in the house originally, I’d left it rented out whilst it recovered equity (having bought at the very top of the market, as we property experts do). When the tenant gave notice, I thought it would be a good time to finally buy, having rented since I’d moved out.

I went to my lender and asked for half the mortgage I’d originally had for those eight years. They said no.

“But it’s half the mortgage I’ve been paying every month without fail for eight years!” I protested. Not only that, but my income has shot up during that time.

They wouldn’t be swayed. And after a few conversations with friends and on social media, I realised that I’m not alone. Far from it, in fact. There are many, many homeowners who are trapped in their homes because they cannot borrow sometimes a fraction of the mortgage they currently have.

In April 2014, the Mortgage Market Review (MMR – not to be confused with the immunisation) brought into force new rules about mortgage lending. These rules, introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority, were designed to ensure that lenders would be more careful about thoroughly checking how affordable and suitable the mortgage product was to a particular borrower.

I recently attended an event hosted by Experian, at which they explained the ramifications of the MMR, one year on, in their report The Mortgage Muddle, One Year On From the MMR. Here are some highlights:

12% of borrowers can’t get the mortgage amount they want
5% don’t meet the lending criteria
11% have no idea why their application was refused

Not being able to move home can have huge implications for your quality of life; maybe you have children and as they grow, you urgently need more space, but can’t buy a bigger house. Or perhaps your children have grown and left, and you need to downsize, but can’t afford to buy a property outright with your equity.

There is a solution, but it won’t suit everyone. Like I did, you can simply rent your home to a tenant, and rent the home you need. Many homeowners have done this since 2007, resulting in a strong ‘accidental landlord’ market. This is coming to an end now, as property prices in most areas of the UK have finally surpassed the 2007 peak prices, and owners are again able to sell, but like me, will they be able to secure a mortgage? Not only that, but the ‘profit’ you make on your rental – i.e. the difference between the rent you charge and the interest on your loan, plus allowable expenses – is taxable, giving you even less in the pot each month. Evermore complicated legislation for landlords also means that unless you use a professional letting agent, you could find yourself in trouble with tenants who are often more clued-up than their landlords, thanks to organisations like Shelter.

What I learned at the Experian event, was that before you put your home on the market, or accept an offer, taking these six steps can help to make sure your home move has a happy ending:

1. Know what you have to spend – make a list of your available savings so you know what deposit you have to put down.

2. Do your research – use mortgage calculators and talk to your financial advisor at an early stage, to find out the best lending route for you.

3. Assess your spending – look at the last few months’ outgoings. With online banking, this is surprisingly easy. You can simply download your transactions onto a spreadsheet so you can total incomings and outgoings easily. Are you overspending each month, or do you have plenty of month left at the end of the money?

4. Check your credit report – before you take any action, check your credit report – preferably with all three credit reference agencies: Equifax, Experian, and Callcredit.

5. Improve your credit score – Experian advise to take steps early to get you’re your credit report into shape before making your mortgage application. For example, ensure you’re registered on the Electoral Roll and paying down outstanding credit card balances. This handy guide from Experian on Demystifying Your Credit Score l may help you with this.

6. Last step – check every last detail of your credit report to make sure it’s 100% accurate. Name and address spellings, date of birth and accounts – these all need to be shown exactly how you would enter them onto a mortgage application so there are no discrepancies.

Finally, Martin Lewis on his Money Saving Expert website has a great guide to credit scores here.

I’m still working out the best route for me to home ownership again, and I’ll keep you posted.

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 agent calls this summer, and a viewer will be there within the hour. What can you do to ensure they see your house in the best possible light? Here’s my ten top tips to make your house shine in a hurry!

1. Grab a washing basket, and go through each room removing any bits and pieces that don’t belong there: paperwork, laundry, dirty dishes, shoes – anything that’s cluttering up the space. Pop the basket in your car, out of sight

2. Swap the towels in the bathroom for freshly laundered ones. Even better is to have new white fluffy towels that you keep especially for viewings

3. Make up the master bed with laundered or new bedding. Again, if you can keep some new bedding to throw on for viewings, it will always look at its best. One tip is to put your usual duvet cover and pillow cases over the top of your special ones, and whip them off for viewings – ta da!

4. Open a window in each room to let some fresh air into the house

5. Fill the grate of your fire with church candles and light them for a cosy glow; this is perfect for the summertime when it’s too hot to have a fire lit

6. Unless it’s an extremely bright day, have your lamps lit upstairs, and a mixture of overhead and low level lights lit downstairs

7. Create the right atmosphere with low and relaxing music, to encourage your viewers to linger over their viewing

8. Make sure your home smells as good as it looks: spray beds with a tiny spray of perfume, pop a tumble drier sheet in the bottom of all your bins, and put a vanilla pod in the oven on a low heat for a subtle, homely scent. If you don’t have one, try some drops of vanilla or lemon juice in a bowl of water and put that in the oven.

9. Raid your garden for some summer greenery and colour, and arrange in vases.

10. Finally – give yourself a mini-makeover! Make sure your outfit is smart, your shoes are clean (never slippers!) and you are well-groomed and looking professional. Your image should reflect that of your home – neat, well-kept and stylish

Keep these 10 quick staging tips taped on the inside of a kitchen cupboard, so you can implement them quickly, and make sure your family is well-trained so they can leap into action when required!

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 Alex Sebuliba on behalf of Martin & Co.

Martin & Co are a UK based national Lettings agency who offer service to tenants, landlords, sellers, buyers and investors. With over 25 years of experience, they specialise in ensuring the specific demands and requirements of every individual are met at all times.

While many home owners have decided to sit tight while the financial crisis rumbles on despite a desire to move, those who do decide to go ahead and try to sell their property have a decision to make – sell privately, or go through an estate agent?

For many people, it’s a question they’ve not even pondered, handing over the power – and plenty of money – to their local estate agent in a bid to help them sell. But the reality is quite different, and in the last few years a growing number of people have chosen to sell their own property. So which is best?

Estate agents

Using an estate agent remains by far the most common way to sell a property. When I sold my home, I visited a plethora of estate agents in Newark, who all vowed to do their best by me, to take the stress off me and to achieve the goal of selling my home for the best possible price.

But their services came at a cost. All wanted a minimum of 1.5%, plus VAT, as a fee. The average UK house price is now £238,000, meaning estate agent fees total almost £4,000 before VAT is added.

However, if you choose to sell through an agent, you know they want to sell your property – and so they will do their best to get viewers and to make a sale. This is, surely, exactly what you want from them, after all it is their job.

Selling privately

With the rise of the internet and a change in the rules on buying and selling property online, it’s now easier than ever to sell your house yourself, and the fees that come with it could be a lot less – sometimes as little as £175 to list your property for sale.

However, this cost will likely rise if your house doesn’t sell quickly depending on the type of independent selling process you use; some websites allow a one-off fee 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.

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.