How to sell your home quicker

Our series of live Q&As, designed to help you succeed in lockdown, continued this week. We looked at the key pieces of prep everyone thinking about selling a property in the coming months can do now to save time in the future.

Once again we had thousands of you send in your questions, both before and during the session, to help guide our conversation and hopefully made it as useful as possible for those thinking about selling.

Helping us answer your questions this time was proud Liverpudlian Joanne Hughes, Director of Greenbank Property Services, a highly regarded estate agency firm in Kirkby.

Just some of the questions we answered:

• Why does it take so long to sell a property?
• What can I do to minimise this time?
• I’m a first-time seller, what’s the first thing I need to do?
• What documents will I need ahead of putting my home on the market?
• What do I need to do to get my property ready for sale?
• My home is already on the market. Should I be allowing viewings?
• How do I pick a good agent?

 

If you missed the live session, don’t worry, you can watch it on-demand here:

Some of our favourite pieces of advice from the session:

Start with the maths:

If you already have a mortgage, check your balance and your equity so that you have a good idea of the size of deposit you’ll be taking with you. It’s a valuable first step in understanding not only what you can afford if you’ll be buying a new property, but also how much you actually want to spend.

 

Solar panels can add time:

When you reach the legal, conveyancing stage of selling a property, solar panels can take longer due to the many different types and ways in which they may have been funded (i.e government funded). The more information you can find out about them upfront, especially if you’ve inherited the property or didn’t install them yourself, the better.

 

Buyers currently want properties that look to be in better shape than their own:

In the past 8-9 weeks, many of us have come to know every crack, broken tile and creak in our homes. Right now, Joanne has seen an increase in demand for homes that require little or no work, so helping your property to look as good as a show home will most certainly help it attract attention quicker. She advises never to make big changes (new kitchens, carpets etc) but to instead focus on retouching paintwork, fixing fence panels and de-cluttering.

 

Remember: Only essential moves should be happening (and even those need to follow strict social distancing measures). Stay safe.

 

READ MORE: I’m selling my home… has lockdown impacted asking prices?