Tag Archives: strategy

If your house has been on the market for more than three months, there are some questions you need to ask your estate agent to find out why it hasn’t sold so far, and what to do about it. A good agent will be able to answer all seven – let’s see how many your agent can answer…..

1. Who have you sent our brochure out to? – to what kind of buyers? How many had asked specifically for your property details, and how many had been sent out to their mailing list? How many did they print, and how many do they have left? Sometimes, agents won’t reprint when they run out, preferring instead to keep costs down by printing off the office printer – tacky!

2. Can you show me our Rightmove Performance Report and your analysis? – (see blog post Your Rightmove Property Performance Report). Most agents these days can provide you with one, but can they analyse it? If they can’t – send it to me! [email protected] – I’ll tell you what you need to know.

3. Can you change our main image and test the results? – if your online activity is low, I’d suggest you change your main house shot. However, this is only useful to you if you can then measure the results. If it doesn’t improve your statistics, try another, and keep trying until you get the click-through rate you need (see post as above). Sometimes, a fresh new image improves your rate temporarily, so try changing it regularly to keep your results as high as possible.

4. What did our viewers buy? – this is a great one! Your agent should be keeping in touch with your viewers to discover what they eventually went on to buy. By doing this, you can build up a picture of the types of buyers looking at your house. For example, if they went on to buy a completely different style of property, it could be that your marketing is appealing to the wrong target market. If they bought somewhere very similar, you need to compete better. Even the best agents need nudging to find out this information, so nudge!

5. What’s happening on any comparable properties? – who is achieving viewings, and who isn’t? Which houses have been reduced in price, and has this made any difference? Which are under offer, after how long, and at what kind of value? If you aren’t getting viewings and everyone else is, ask why!

6. How do you think our marketing can be improved? – ask your agent for a marketing review, and analyse as dispassionately as you can, your brochure, photography and online advert. Identify areas that can be improved, and make sure they are acted upon.

7. Why hasn’t our house sold – other than the price? – I have often asked agents this question, and listened to them trying to come up with an answer. The truth is, there are often several reasons, and it’s highly likely that none of those reasons will be the asking price! Ask your agent for constructive ways you can help him to attract viewers, and make sure he knows he can be honest. If he can’t come up with anything, call me, and I’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.

The UK housing market is at an all time high since 1998 and research by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) showed that on average, 22.700 homes were sold each month since the start 2014. People up and down the country are taking advantage of this “time to sell” and investing money back into their properties through redecorating and DIY.

It used to be that a lick of paint and a few nice light fittings were enough to generate interest in a house but people are getting savvy with their use of space, especially in the cities where converting an attic into a second or third bedroom could increase the average value of a house by 12.5%.

In order to entice people to buy, sellers are taking it one step further and totally revamping rooms in their houses.

Cellars, for example, if large enough can be converted into a second living room or entertainment room. This type of conversion is the most expensive however it yields the highest return on investment when it comes to adding value to a property.

As the “Help to Buy” Scheme increases in popularity more and more younger people are considering property as an investment so sellers need to provide the right incentive to cater for a younger audience in order to achieve a successful sale.

If there isn’t enough space to totally transform a cellar or loft then remodelling other rooms can also prove profitable in the long run.

This infographic by Evolution Money called “The Real Cost of Home Improvements” gives you an idea of what rooms can be renovated, how much you would expect to pay and what the average percentage of value you could expect to add to the asking 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.

Welcome to Wednesday and the third in my series themed on Wimbledon.

In his book, Adapt – Why Success Always Starts With Failure – Tim Harford explains we must adapt—improvise rather than plan, work from the bottom up rather than the top down, and take baby steps rather than great leaps forward, in order to achieve success. Thus our great tennis players are constantly adapting in order to improve their games, often one tiny step at a time. Only by losing a point or a game can they re-evaluate, review, adapt and apply a new technique. In other words, without failure, there can be no success.

If your house is languishing on the market, with no viewers in sight, it is very easy to become disheartened and disillusioned with the entire selling process. It certainly isn’t often easy, especially when you are selling a unique home. Maureen O’Hara once said, “To cope, people need to be certain enough to act and uncertain enough to learn”, in other words, to have the courage of your convictions whilst still being humble enough to accept you may need advice and help. Not an easy conflict to deal with.

If you don’t have any viewings, review your marketing, and make some small changes to effect overall large improvements; if you have plenty of viewings but no offers, critique your home; maybe commission a professional home stager. If you are getting offers but they are below your target sale price, read up on negotiation skills, or even engage a professional homebuyer to negotiate on your behalf. In short – raise your game, and adapt, adapt, adapt.

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.

It is probably safe to assume that if you have ever sold a property you will have considered dropping your asking price.

Some of you may have been asked by your agent to think about a price cut, others may have been advised it is the only way you are going to secure a sale. And did it work? If the answer is yes, chances are your house would have sold anyway.

At HomeTruths we believe you should never lower your asking price. And here’s why:

8 reasons why you should stick to your asking price:

1. In most cases the drop in price you make probably won’t make any difference to your buyers… whatever their budget. Unless you can afford to slash the price by at least 25% (and why would you?), it really won’t make an impact.

2. Your property was originally valued based on some sound research and by an expert in the industry. What’s changed?

3. A price drop can cause suspicion among buyers, what’s wrong with it? Why have you lowered the asking price? Not a good impression to make on your potential buyers!

4. Unless there is good reason, your house shouldn’t be the cheapest on the street/estate/area. Buyers want to feel they are getting something special. Lets face it ‘cheapest’ and ‘special’ don’t often go together in the same sentence.

5. If you are feeling pressure from your agents to drop your price, ask them what else could be done to secure that sale… put the onus back onto them. That’s what you are paying them for.

6. In today’s market most buyers will most certainly make an offer, not many people will go straight in with the full asking price. If you have already lowered your price, and then go on to accept an even lower offer, how much money have you lost? You do the math.

7. Dropping your price may lead to other properties in the area doing the same. Not only will you have driven down the overall value of homes in your area, but you will still be in the same ballpark as everyone else in terms of price. The net effect? You will be in a similar position as you were before you, except slightly worse off!

8. And finally, have confidence in your price, if you don’t, no one else will!

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 you first engage an estate agent, you may find that you get a flurry of viewings, that your agent calls often, you get full feedback of each and every viewings, and your house is profiled in the office window. You feel that you’ve chosen the right agent, and are busy between viewings patting yourself on the back.

Six months later, it may be a different story. You didn’t receive any feedback from the last viewer, and in fact you haven’t had a viewing in weeks. You can’t remember the last time you heard from your agent, and he seems to have stopped returning your calls. When he does eventually call you back, it’s only to suggest a price drop.

It’s all going wrong – what can you do about it?

One strategy is to reinvigorate your agent by incentivising him. This will only work if he’s going to actually benefit personally from this, but my advice is to get the branch manager involved and offer an extra commission if they sell your house within a certain time period.

Have a strategy meeting with your agent. Thoroughly examine all the marketing and advertising – online advert, photography, brochure, print advertising – and look at ways it can be refreshed and made more efficient.

If none of the above works, take your house off the market for a short break, then put it back on with a new estate agent. That way, you can recreate that initial burst of enthusiasm and activity, and this time, it might just work.

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.