INSIDER’S GUIDE FOR PROPERTY SELLERS

1. Introduction
Moving house is well known to be one of the most stressful things you can do, with large sums of money involved and the process potentially fraught with difficulties and frustrations. Luckily, you will not do it very often, but we at Browns deal with it every day, so we have written this short guide to remind you of how the process works and some of the challenges you will face and to give you the benefit of our “inside knowledge”.
This can only be an introductory guide, but we will be happy to talk with you in detail about your property and the moving process.

2. The process
This is an overview of the process for the property seller. See our legal guide for all of the main stages of the legal and conveyancing work and see our seller’s check-list for all the practical things you will need to do.
Make a decision to put your house on the market
Appoint an estate agent
Agree the property details
Agree on a target selling price and the marketing plan
Show prospective buyers the property
Accept an offer from a buyer
Progress the legal work and exchange contracts
Complete the sale and move out

3. Appointing an estate agent
The estate agent is there to work on your behalf to advise on the sale of your property, market it to potential buyers and deal with all the communication and administration involved in arranging viewings, dealing with offers and price negotiations and completing the sale. The agent is paid by you and is only paid if the sale is completed.
You want to appoint an agent that understands your requirements and is committed to helping you achieve the results you want in the times-cale you want. Every house and every sale is different and you want the personal attention of a senior person in the business, not just to be put on a conveyor belt to go through a standard process and see what happens. You also want to appoint somebody that you trust and feel comfortable with personally, because you will be talking with them a lot!
You should talk with a few local agents, get their views on likely prop-erty prices (see below), visit their premises, talk with the office manag-ers or partners, look at their window displays and advertising and come to a view on who you would like to work for you. Sellers and buyers cannot normally contact other people up and down the prop-erty chain so you will be relying on your estate agent to make these contacts through other agents in the chain. Your agent is the person who will sort out any problems on your behalf, so you want someone who is committed.
It is not usually a good idea to just appoint the agent that gives the highest initial price indications – it is whether buyers will actually pay that price within the timescale you require that is important, and whether the agent can work with you to complete the sale smoothly.
It is also important not to lose the scale of numbers involved when looking at valuations and fees. If an agent is charging a fee of 1% on a property priced at £200,000 that is a fee of £2,000.00. If the price is later reduced to £190,000 to sell the property, you are £10,000 worse off but the agent only loses £100 from their fee. If the same agent quoted a fee of 1_%, they would only need to obtain an extra £500 on the price of the property to cover that extra _%. The point here is that you want to achieve the best overall deal for yourself and you will need to balance price indications, fee levels and what you really think the various agent can achieve for you.
You can place your property with more than one agent and possibly be exposed to more buyers, but they will charge a higher fee percentage as they will incur costs but possibly have someone else sell the property and therefore get no fee. You will probably get more focus and personal attention by appointing a sole agent, at least to start with, and you avoid the duplication and confusion of having to deal with more than one person at a time.
You need to balance all of these factors when deciding which agent to appoint, but make sure you get someone with experience who you like and trust and believe will really get you the best overall net price for your property.

4. Valuations
Estate agents are not officially “property valuers” and can only give you an indication of the likely market price for your house. However, they have experience of the local property market and current condi-tions and have constant feedback from potential buyers so are well placed to help you decide the price to market your property at.
There is generally a balance between price and speed of sale. If you can afford to wait as long as it takes to find the perfect buyer who falls in love with your house and will pay a premium price, it is worth mar-keting at a higher value. If you are desperate for a quick sale, a lower price would probably attract more buyers.
There are dangers in over-pricing a property, even if you can afford to wait. The vast majority of viewings come in the first few weeks a property is on the market. If it is over-priced, some well-placed buy-ers may decide not to view it and, if it stays on the market too long, people begin to wonder what is wrong with it. Also, if you drop the price later that can also undermine confidence and it is difficult to res-urrect the interest of people who have previously turned it down at the higher price. As a practical issue, even if you can find the perfect buyer at the higher price, the mortgage valuation may well come out below the agreed price and lead to the sale falling through anyway.
The price is generally a compromise by both seller and buyer – the seller would have liked more but will accept a fair offer from a well-placed buyer so as not to lose the property they have found. The buyer was looking for something slightly different and will have to spend money to get the property the way they want it, but will pay more than they had planned because of the position / garden / kitchen etc.
Every buyer has different requirements and the amount they have to compromise those requirements with your property will determine the offer they will make. Most buyers have seen a lot of properties similar to yours in the area and are well qualified to take a view on the price.

5. Preparing for viewings
Creating a good impression with potential buyers is important and may well help sell your house faster and for a higher price. You can ask your estate agent to show people the house for you and they will often accompany buyers anyway, but is usually best if you are there yourself to give a personal tour and answer questions about the property.
Small things can make a big first impression and you want to make sure your house seems well-maintained and cared for and is presented is the best possible light. A well-loved and maintained home will al-ways sell easier than a house that seems to need a lot of attention, even if it is only small things.
Keeping the house and garden tidy, especially the initial access areas like hedges, fences, paths, front door and hall, will make a real differ-ence. Make sure that outside lights and doorbell work and that the front door is in good condition. Avoiding clutter in rooms will make them seem bigger. It is best to actually do all of those little repair and maintenance jobs that you have been putting off for ages, even though it is someone else who will get the benefit!
It may seem like a lot of unnecessary work to do all of this tidying up and then keep the house in “show” condition, but it will definitely pay off in selling your house. You want the house to look “lived-in” but buyers will appreciate the effort you have made.

6. Dealing with offers
Before a potential buyer makes an offer on your property, they will consider a lot of factors:
How close is the property to their ideal?
How does the price compare to other options they have?
How much money do they have available?
Will someone else make a better offer?
How much pressure are they under from their own chain?
All buyers are different and their offers need to be considered on their merit and given your own changing circumstances. A quick offer at the full asking price does not necessarily mean the house is under-priced, any more than offers at much lower prices mean it is over-priced – they are all just balances of many changing factors.
You may refuse all offers below the asking price if you are willing to wait for the right buyer or if you need to achieve the full price to fund your own purchase. On the other hand, you may accept a low offer from a well-placed buyer if you have also obtained a lower price than expected on your own purchase.
Your estate agent will help you evaluate offers and, as far as possible, research the real position of the buyers for you. This is the time at which you will want a close relationship with your agent to make sure you are achieving the best possible price without losing good buyers.

7. Getting the deal completed
Once you have accepted an offer, your solicitor or conveyancer will manage the process through to completion. Remember that neither you nor the buyer are legally committed to the sale until signed con-tracts are actually exchanged.
The key stages for the seller’s solicitor are:
Obtain Title Deeds and Land Registry information
Complete questionnaire of property information
Prepare draft contract
Answer buyer’s solicitors additional enquiries
Obtain redemption figures from mortgage lender
Agree exchange and completion dates
Receive fee accounts and prepare financial statements
Confirm funds received and authorise release of keys

8. Surveys and price negotiations
The buyer will have a survey of some sort done and this often brings up issues that have not been considered previously – whether they are major problems or just minor issues. There will usually be some dis-cussion about whether the financial impact of these matters was in-cluded in the original offer or not. The seller will take the position that the house was “sold as seen”, whereas the buyer will say that the offer was made on the basis that the house was “perfect”. In practice, both sides will need to be flexible to come to a mutually acceptable position.
The other thing happening at this time is solicitors preparing detailed schedules of what is and what is not included in the price and that can also bring out problems. If the lovely garden shed or expensive cur-tains that the buyer thought were included are actually being removed by the seller, there will need to be a discussion!
The estate agent can be a great help at this stage by being in the middle of the discussions and avoiding them becoming personal issues for the buyer and seller. They are really just clarifications of the position as more information becomes available and have to be resolved if the sale is to complete.
This is the stage at which things become difficult and may fall apart, particularly when the difficulties are multiplied by the number of stages in the chain and made worse by time getting short and tempers getting frayed! A lot of the problems can be avoided by being open and clear from the start about any potential problems with the property and ex-actly what is included in the sale price.

9. Checklist for sellers