housework
ten steps to selling your home
VOLUME 01.
created by ginger estate agents
housework a d v i c e c r a f t e d f rom e x p e r i e n c e
Welcome to the evolution! housework by ginger is a series of property guides to make your next move stress free and enjoyable. This guide is for everyone, if you’re a ginger customer or if you just need a little help along the way. Our passion and experience has been weaved into each of our ten key steps. Marketing property is an art form. We embrace traditional values accompanied with great customer service, hard work and efficient communication. We may be traditional at heart but we champion modern communication and engagement to sell our properties. At the beginning and end of this guide, bear in mind the three main factors your buyer will be considering when looking around your property. 1/ Is the location right? 2/ How does this property stack up for value? 3/ Does it tick enough of the boxes on my wish list? You definitely need two of these factors to engage a buyer in negotiation, get all three and you’re on to a winner. Follow the key steps and you’ll be accepting an offer on your home in no time.
01676 533 585 - Balsall Common 0121 725 6783 - Solihull gingerhomes.co.uk
step one
presentation When you choose to sell your property you are entering a partnership with your estate agent. Agents have many roads to fulfil, equally so do you as a seller. Firstly, ensuring your property looks in show home condition is not always possible but if you can crack this you’ll be on your way to achieving an optimum price. It’s really important that once you have your property on the market you maintain these presentation and cleanliness standards all the way through the journey. Viewers will pay attention to the smallest details, so keeping on top of daily maintenance is important. You need to excite potential buyers to make them feel at home and present your property in the correct way so they can see its full potential. Use this five stage tick list to prepare your home: 1/ Excite. It’s important to excite your buyer and create a great first impression. It’s not a trick, first impressions count. Spend time tidying up the outside of your property, plant flowers, trim shrubs and get rid of any weeds. Your front door is the centrepiece of your home and will contribute to your property’s kerb appeal. Spend some time painting and cleaning your front door and make sure your doorbell is in working order.
2/ Clean. Cleanliness and tidiness should never be underestimated, buyers expect to see an immaculate home with no signs of dirt. Bathrooms and kitchens sell houses so make sure surfaces, cupboard doors and floors are spotless. Make your home a show home! 3/ Decor. Ideally your home should be neutral. It will take time but your efforts will be rewarded. Potential buyers will inevitablely want to make their own changes, a blank canvas will easily allow them to envisage this. You can still be creative by using off whites and muted natural colours, inject interest with removable artwork, soft furnishings and furniture. Just try and avoid a 90’s throwback with magnolia! 4/ The Fix. Make sure that those jobs you’ve never got round to, get done. Something as simple as a broken floor tile or mouldy grouting will make a buyer ask the question ‘Well, what else is wrong with it?’. This is your chance to give your potential buyer nothing to question, nothing to quibble about and a positive viewing. 5/ Hoarding. Clutter makes your home seem small and disorganised, less is more. If you’ve out-grown your home, start packing things away or even invest in short term storage. Create space without clogging up the garage!
step two
money talk
The marketing price should be based on factual evidence within the local market. It shouldn’t be based on the figure you’d prefer. A good estate agent will inform you of a realistic valuation. Importantly, a marketing price is a tool to attract the most interest to a property. If you choose the wrong marketing price it could impact your chances of achieving a premium price. If you set the market price too high, you may not attract enough interest and run the risk of the property becoming stale. Equally, price too low and you may miss the chance of achieving a higher price and also flood your house with property bargain hunters that won’t want to pay a realistic value.
When selecting your marketing price, your agent will be mindful of how the property will appear in an online search. For example, if you and your agent feel the property is worth £115,000 but is agreed that the best marketing approach would be ‘offers in excess of £100,000 you will appear in both searches up to and over £100,000.This strategy will maximise your audience exposure, create a demand for your property and ultimately get more qualified viewers in a position to buy. Remember the marketing price is designed to attract. Once you have attracted a good level of interest in your property, the goal is to start negotiation, ideally with competitive purchasers.
step three
marketing done right
You will go through great effort to get your property in tip top condition, that is why it’s so important to get the marketing material right. Devil is in the detail. Property photographs, descriptions, floor plans and social media will all play an integral part of the process. People love lifestyle, buyers are interested in how the property can work for them. How does your property perform when in motion? Home staging is an effective tool for property that are either empty or a blank canvass. It isn’t always necessary, if you can already have or can invest in cushions, throws, artwork and candles you can create a seamless show home look at a fraction of the cost. If you’re not the creative type or even if you are, have a look on instagram and pinterest for inspiration. Some instagram hashtags we have found to be worthwhile are: #spotlightonmyhome #cornerofmyhome #interiorstyle. Unsure? Ask the team at ginger, we’re happy to help. Photos are the first thing buyers look at. Quality sets the benchmark; professionally taken photographs and lifestyle images are essential.You really only have one attempt at getting this right so make sure you’re prepared for your photographer and you are happy with the outcome. Property descriptions should be informative, not boring. Ideally you should have descriptions that are creative and factual. Descriptions that use the character and charm of your home are far more readable than the standard ‘neutrally decorated with white radiator’!
step four
launch
So, you have set your marketing price and your agent has been Viewings take careful consideration too. At ginger we accompany busy designing your marketing material, ensuring every detail is every viewing, this is essential. A carefully planned and structured accurate and ready to launch. presentation of your property is key. Online property portals such as Rightmove, Zoopla, On The Market and Boomin are the go-to places a buyer will start their search. 98% of buyers search online and 70% search for property, outside normal high street agent’s office hours.* The use of mobile devices has increased too, with figures suggesting over 70% of buyers use mobile platforms to search.* So when choosing your agent, check out they are employing leading property portals and that their own websites are integrated to function on mobile devices.
It is your responsibility to ensure your home is ready. Your agent should arrive in good time ahead of the buyer to check through and prepare your property prior to guests arriving.
Premium promotion- Stand out in the crowd.When advertising on leading internet property portals, ask your agent about premium listings. There is usually an extra cost to this but by having a premium listing you are expected to achieve 40% more interest.* If you’re marketing your home with ginger, we include this on selected packages at no extra cost.
It’s important to let your agent know what your viewing ability is. Where possible, be flexible so your agent can offer multiple viewing times. Keeping property excitement by facilitating same day or immediate viewings which make for enthusiastic viewers that feel like they’ve beaten the market flurry.
Most buyers will be set to receive alerts from property portals who notify them when a new property comes to market in their search criteria. So you need to strike while the irons hot and have your property ‘viewing ready’ within the first few days of marketing should any immediate interest come your way.
*Source: Rightmove, Which
quality. Interacting through several mediums to the right demographic with a constistant message will bring meaningful leads.
step five
blue sky thinking As mentioned in step four, it’s clear that property portals are now the first port of call for the majority of buyers. They provide huge amounts of information about the local area: schools, transport links, property prices, street maps etc. These platforms get more advanced and detailed year on year. The property industry is changing with a greater focus on estate agents that are heavily active online. At ginger we understand these changes and have created our company ethos around an advancing era of estate agency. We all lead busy lives, resulting in buyers requiring access to view properties 24/7 and outside of normal high street hours.The need to think outside the box is essential to a successful estate agent in accommodating the needs of today’s buyer. Having a real person as your agent is number one, you can’t beat that experience and better still, if it is backed up with the right technology and marketing tools. It is important that your property is being actively marketed outside of online property portals too. Active buyers will be regularly searching online, but what about our ‘passive buyers’? These are the buyers who aren’t actively looking. These buyers are opportunistic. Such as the buyer who noticed your property as they drove by on the school run or even better, the buyer that always had their eye on your house, and wanted to buy if it came onto the market. A ‘for sale’ board is great for the local passive buyer, but what about those passing buyers that aren’t local? Facebook, social media and hyper-local media campaigns are a powerful marketing tool, an opportunity where your agent can really target specific buyers. Advertising in ‘outside of area’ property journals is another goody. Especially in our local area where we have many buyers moving in from further afield for work, or companies like JLR relocating employees. At ginger we utilise all these avenues and many more to reach your potential buyers. Make sure your estate agent is actively involved with the likes of: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest etc.
step six
keep it fresh
You’re over half way through, you can appreciate how much work it takes for both yourself and your estate agent to get your house on the market with a view to effectively sell in a reasonable time frame for a premium price. Don’t just sit back and hope. Most estate agents are pro-active in keeping your property fresh, however, you need to have an interest in what’s going on. The first two weeks after your property goes live are the most important. This is where you are likely to get the most hits online. It’s vital your agent is analysing the click through rate (CTR), This is how many people see your property online and ‘click through’ to read more details. Don’t miss these stats, your agent will send the CTR figures to you, read with interest and, monitor what’s happening over a period of weeks- you might need it later to make decisions on how you proceed with your marketing. After two weeks, the CTR normally falls by 50% so your agent needs to keep things fresh. One great way to do this is to rotate property images and change the lead image. Potential buyers searching online see a different image as the days go by, renewing interest is what you’re aiming for here. We’ve all dismissed a property based on the first photo but maybe at first glance it just didn’t suit your style or needs. It’s always good to encourage your viewers to look deeper- your professional photos on a rotation will support this. For example, you might swap the front property image of the front of the house for a photo of the landscaped garden, this could prompt the initial flourish of clicks, lead to an enquiry, a viewing and with a bit of persistence, an offer.
step seven
following leads In this fast paced world we live in, buyers like to act quickly, at least when it comes to enquiring about a property. There are limited stocks of quality properties on the market- sought after properties sell fast! All the work you and your agent have done so far should lead to the phones being red hot! It’s important to ensure your agent NEVER misses an enquiry, it could lead to a lost viewing and the loss of a potential sale. A complete missed opportunity. Let’s face it, if a buyer doesn’t have their enquiries dealt with effectively and promptly, they will just count you out and move on to the next property on their search where the other agents will be sure to be on the ball. Technology can be a godsend, there are lots of methods we use to capture enquires. Calls, emails, social media, and of course walk-in customers- all of which allow an agent to respond quickly. How is your agent capturing enquiries? At ginger, customers can chat to our team directly through several mediums: online messenger, web chat, email, phone and post comments. When a potential buyer is relaxing on their sofa browsing our website they can ask about any particular property without having to bookmark it for later or grab their phone to make a call. Some people prefer this relaxed approach and like to book viewings this way. Availability is one of our main agent features, that’s why our phone lines are open outside of standard office hours. Of course for the night owls amongst us, the website and social media accounts are a great source of information and guidance.
step eight
listening Your home is deeply personal, and we all have different tastes when it comes to style and defining our surroundings. If we receive negative feedback from a viewing it can sometimes feel like a personal attack. Detaching yourself from the property sale is key. You’ve made your mind up to move on, your focus needs to be on the journey ahead. Don’t take it personally. Listen to the feedback from every buyer, even if you don’t quite agree. It’s essential your estate agent obtains feedback, good or bad. Take it on-board and implement any realistic changes that you and your agent feel will improve chances of finding that premium buyer. If you follow the key stages then you are likely to find the feedback will be more about the things a buyer cannot change like location/building style.
step nine
process
Typically, a property that is well presented and marketed correctly should take approximately 3-4 weeks to find the right buyer. However, if you find you are still on the market after that time has passed, you need to arrange a review meeting with your agent to understand why and implement changes. As explained in the beginning, selling a property is a partnership between a seller and the agent. Study the marketing reports, click through rate reports, re-visit the feedback from previous viewers and importantly take time to study the local market. i.e what similar properties are new to the market since your property was listed and look at sale prices of other properties that have recently sold around you. You may need to adjust your marketing plan, price or just undertake simple changes based on this information. It is important you discuss how you are going to move forward. Whatever you do, don’t leave the property sitting on the market stagnating as this will damage your saleability. Communication is key.
find.
Finding a buyer is just the begining. Making sure they are committed to seeing the sale through to the end will ensure a smooth transaction.
step ten
negotiation Negotiations are the most crucial part of the selling journey. All your efforts so far would be completely wasted if your agent gets this part wrong. You would hope by now to have received a number of offers from competing buyers. So it’s important the negotiations are handled carefully. Before entering into negotiations consider these useful tips. 1/ Prepare: Assess objectives, not only yours and theirs, decide on areas of flexibility and plan your approach. 2/ Discuss: Exchange positions and issues, create a positive working climate and listen carefully, think and question. 3/ Propose: Specify what you want, seek out compromise- try to achieve a win/win situation. Remember your optimum goal and have a good fallback position. 4/ Bargain: Ask for what you want and modify if you need. Don’t concede without exchanging and reiterate the value of your situation. Remember a buyer making an offer will have an emotional attachment to your property. It is important to care about your buyer, but not too much, retain your position. Let their emotional interest work to your advantage. Don’t be offended by low offers- it’s a good sign, it means that someone wants to buy your house. It’s your agents job to achieve a realistic offer from the buyer.
Research shows that the best offers come in the early stages of marketing your property. Even if they are a little low, try and negotiate to improve rather than trying to play the market and wait for a better offer that may not come. This next tip cannot be stressed enough: research shows that 30-40% of property sales fall through before exchange of contracts.* One of the major contributors to the cause was the estate agent not doing the due diligence thoroughly. It’s a ginger fundamental practice to qualify the buyer 100%make sure your agent is doing the same. In order to do so your agent needs to see the following: 1/ Checked out the chain 3/ Proof of finance (mortgage or cash) 4/ Proof of ID Once you have agreed a sale, set a realistic timescale for completion- don’t leave it to open. Experience tells us that solicitors and buyers work more efficiently if there are accurate deadlines and dates set in place. Finally, good luck with your sale. ginger are on hand to help you sell your property or find your next one, so please feel free to speak to our friendly team!
housework
advice crafted from experience
housework from ginger is designed to help you as a property buyer or seller, whether it’s your 1st or100th property. The principle of this guide is simple: to provide you with genuine, honest advice that will equip you for the world of selling property. We understand as a customer that the process can be stressful and daunting but the key steps are in place to help you understand the process and be proactive in achieving the best price with the right buyer.
gingerhomes.co.uk