Hints & Tips on Selling Your House

When it comes to selling your home there are a number of things that you need to bear in mind in order to enjoy a successful and affordable sale. Selling your home means looking at not only the condition of your home in order to increase saleability but also looking at the costs involved in selling your property to ensure that you don’t get ripped off and end up paying a fortune in order to make your sale.

Firstly, if you want to improve the saleability of your home you need to make sure that it is in good shape. You should carry out any necessary repairs so that potential buyers won’t have any unnecessary gripes to moan about.

You should also carry out any necessary aesthetic work, such as painting and cleaning – although works such as these will not increase the value of your home they can improve saleability because they will affect potential buyers’ first impressions of the home.

You can even think about carrying out more indepth improvements to improve both the value and the saleability of your home, such as replacement windows, a new kitchen or bathroom, and improved heating within the home – often, even if you take out a home improvement loan to carry out these works, you can recoup the costs through the increase in value of the home.

Once your home is shipshape and ready to sell, you can start looking for an estate agent to sell your home. There are a number of options available here – no longer is the homeowner stuck with a small choice of estate agents.

You can look at Internet home selling sites such as Right Move, and these days you can even get your local supermarket to advertise and sell your home at a fraction of the cost that many estate agents choose. Tesco is one supermarket that has now started to offer this service.

If you do decide to go through a traditional estate agent, make sure that you get clear information with regards to the fee that will be charged, either in terms of a flat fee or a percentage of the value that the property sells for. If you are selling on a no sale no fee basis, you will pay slightly more than if you pay upfront.

You should also find out whether you are able to advertise with multiple estate agents, and ask your agent where he or she will be advertising the property (e.g. online, newspapers, leaflets, etc.)

You also need to make sure that you get a good deal on your solicitor fees, and often the estate agent will recommend a solicitor. Do not assume that this will be the cheapest option for you – shop around and find the best deal, or better still use recommendations from friends and family.

The cost of a solicitor can vary quite widely, so you should make sure that you get a solicitor that has a good reputation, is not likely to delay the whole process, and does not charge way over the odds for his or her services.

You will also need to get your home valued, although this will often be done through the estate agent if you are using a traditional agent to advertise and sell your home. However, before you put your home on the market with any particular agencies make sure that you get a few valuations on your home.

You can then get a better idea of the true market value of the property and won’t have to worry that a particular agency may have under-valued your home simply to try and get a quick sale.