Housing desk / Buying and selling
Selling a home, step by step
A seller controls three things: the condition the home is presented in, the price it is launched at, and the speed with which paperwork is returned. Almost everything else is somebody else's decision.
Preparation is mostly subtraction
The changes that help are the cheap ones: removing enough belongings that rooms read at their real size, fixing the small defects that suggest a house has been neglected, cleaning the parts nobody cleans, and cutting back whatever obscures the front of the building.
Large works undertaken purely to sell rarely return their cost. A new kitchen installed to taste is a bet that the buyer shares that taste. Repairs that remove doubt, such as fixing a leak or a broken gutter, are a different matter, because doubt is expensive.
Pricing: the first three weeks decide a lot
A home attracts most of its attention in the period immediately after it is listed, because that is when the people already looking see it for the first time. A price set too high burns that window, and the listing then carries a visible history of reductions that reads as weakness.
Pricing is a judgment about a range, not a single figure. The useful question is not what the home is worth in the abstract but what the next few people looking in that area at that moment are likely to pay.
Marketing material
Photographs decide whether a viewing happens. Floor plans reduce wasted viewings by letting people rule the home out on layout, which is a service to everybody. A written description does less work than people think, but a vague one invites suspicion, and an obviously evasive one invites more.
Offers, and judging them properly
The highest offer is not always the best. Ask three questions about any offer: where is this buyer's money coming from, do they have a property to sell, and how long is the chain behind them. An offer slightly below the best, from someone with nothing to sell and funds in place, often completes when the higher one does not.
Until exchange, an offer can be withdrawn or reduced. Sellers who understand this treat acceptance as the beginning of the process rather than the end of it.
Paperwork, which is where sellers actually lose weeks
The forms a seller completes about the property, along with certificates, guarantees, permissions for past work and evidence about boundaries, are requested early and are usually returned late. Every week of delay here is a week added to the whole chain.
Assemble the documents before listing. Anything that cannot be found becomes an enquiry, and an unanswered enquiry becomes an excuse for the buyer to renegotiate.
Chains, and what a seller can do about them
A chain moves at the speed of its slowest link, and the slowest link is often invisible from where you stand. The only real controls a seller has are choosing a buyer with a short chain, keeping their own onward purchase moving, and answering every question the same week it is asked.
Between exchange and completion
Once contracts are exchanged the date is fixed and the sale is binding. The home is expected to be handed over in the condition it was seen in, with fixtures matching what was agreed in the fittings list, and with rubbish removed. Disputes at this stage are almost always about items nobody wrote down.