Selling Your House Tips for Less Stress

Moving house tops the list of most stressful life events time and again. For sellers, there’s a lot to think about — how much should I set as the asking price? Which estate agent should I choose? Should I use a solicitor or a conveyancer? How much will it cost to sell my house?

Our team of property experts at House Buyer Bureau have shared their top “selling your house” tips to make your move as smooth and stress-free as possible. As soon as you decide to sell, start researching, planning and preparing. The more effort you put into getting things right from the start, the fewer delays and the less stress you’ll have further along the sales process.

Top tips for selling your home fast

Consider How You Want to Sell Your House

If you want to sell your home fast, there are plenty of different options you can explore. A traditional on-market sale with an estate agent can be quick if you set the right price and pick the right agent. A private sale can be done without an estate agent if you know what you’re doing. You might qualify for a part-exchange scheme if you are selling to buy a new-build property. Failing that you could try your luck in an auction, or use a quick house sale company that can buy your home for cash in as little as seven days.

Picking the one that suits you best is a balance of how much you want, how quickly you want to sell, and how certain you need to be about the sale actually going through!

Choose Reliable and Proactive Professionals to Help You

Estate agents, solicitors and conveyancers are not all created equal.

According to research by The Advisory, 50 per cent of all estate agencies in the UK — there are nearly 26,000 — deliver an “average” service, 25 per cent are “great”, and 25 per cent are “bad”. If your estate agent isn’t working hard enough, your home will take longer to sell. When choosing an agency, don’t focus solely on price. Consider what services they are offering for their fee — will they manage viewings? Do they have excellent knowledge of the local market? Can they provide online viewings?

Sellers can choose from high street, online or hybrid agencies. Each has a different offer and pricing structure. Shop around, ask for recommendations from friends and if you make a mistake, don’t be afraid to switch to another agency — avoid any that insist you lock into a contract for an extended period or who want to claim exclusive rights to selling your house.

Solicitors and conveyancers are both qualified to manage the legal paperwork involved in selling your home. As with estate agents, it’s a good idea to ask around for recommendations from people you know and get several quotes before instructing a legal professional. Your solicitor or conveyancer will not begin completing the paperwork until you accept an offer, but it’s a good idea to instruct one early in the house sale process to avoid delays and stress later on.

There is no legal requirement to use an estate agent to sell your property, but you must instruct a suitably qualified legal professional to manage the transaction.

Prepare for Viewings or Skip Them Altogether!

Having strangers enter your home and appraise it — often verbally — can be one of the most stressful aspects of selling a house, especially if you are selling for difficult reasons such as a death in the family, ill health or the breakdown of a relationship.

Minimise the stress by giving yourself plenty of time to prepare for viewings. Tidy up clutter, clean surfaces and stage your home to look its best, for example, by placing fresh flowers in the lounge or lighting scented candles. If you have young children or pets, try to arrange for them to be taken care of elsewhere.

If you choose to sell to a house cash buying company, there will be no viewings to endure. House Buyer Bureau can complete the whole house sale process, from valuation to completion, remotely.

Keep in Touch

Establish good communication with the professionals involved in the sale of your home — estate agents, conveyancers, builders. One of the most stressful things about house selling can be the feeling of being left “out of the loop” and the consequent uncertainty about how things are progressing.

Reliable professionals who are committed to delivering exceptional customer service should put in the effort to keep you updated on the progress of your house sale. If they don’t, you are well within your rights to request updates or to switch to another provider.

Hold an Open House

It’s surprising how few sellers consider this option. Holding an open house is a great way to conduct multiple viewings in one hit, which means less hassle and potentially a speedier sale. It can also attract competition between buyers, which may help boost the final sale price.

There’s no obligation for sellers to be present at an open house — you can elect for it to be run by an estate agency, just as you might for traditional viewings. However, many buyers like to ask the current owners questions directly and seeing the current occupiers in person can help viewers to see the property as a home and one they could live in. As with regular viewings, makes sure the property is well-presented with clean furnishings, clutter tidied away and pets moved elsewhere.

Select a Removals Company as Early as Possible

It may feel premature to start shopping for a removals company before you’ve even had an offer, but it can take time to find someone you feel comfortable with who can meet your needs. The more jobs you can tick off the lengthy moving house to-do list early on, the less stressful the process will be.

Check out customer reviews, ask for recommendations from friends and compare quotes. You won’t be able to get an exact price and confirm a booking until you have a completion date, but this research will give you an idea of what to expect when the time comes. If you have specific items that require specialist expertise to transport safely, such as a piano, make sure you ask each company if they can accommodate your needs. Many companies will charge lower rates if you can move on less popular days of the week — most house sales complete on a Friday. If this is the case, you can negotiate for completion mid-week when you know prices will be more affordable.

If you have the budget, many companies now offer a full service that includes packing your belongings before collection and unloading everything in your new home — the ultimate stress-free option!

Get Organised by Writing Lists

Aside from the main steps in the house selling process — choosing a solicitor, hosting viewings, accepting an offer, negotiating, exchange and completion — there are lots of jobs to check off before you’re settling in your new home. The best way to keep track of all of them and to chart your progress is to write lists.

We suggest the following lists may be helpful:

Organisations and people to change your registered address with (see our guide on who to notify when moving house)
Packing — what to pack, in what order and what to put in storage
Documents to find or apply for and submit to your solicitor
Utilities to cancel — don’t forget to take final meter readings
Selling house costs — payments to make and when
Contacts — removals company, solicitor, estate agent etc.
Essentials for when you first move — you’ll want ready access to certain items, such as the kettle before you have fully unpacked

Lists can help you to feel more in control and less stressed. Plus, seeing the number of checked off tasks grow will be immensely satisfying.

Undertake Basic Repairs and Cosmetic Work

It can be difficult to motivate yourself to spend the time and money on repairs and cosmetic work when you know you won’t be staying in a property. But ticking off a few quick wins could make the difference between receiving offers and obtaining a fair sale price and watching your home sit on the market for months. Many buyers will be put off by a long list of required repairs and updates. They are also more likely to battle on price.

There’s no need to undertake major renovation work, but if there are some simple jobs you can complete to increase the property’s curb appeal, they may be well worth doing. Tasks such as tidying up the garden, painting the windows and cleaning the carpets require little time, effort or money. Yet they can help potential buyers appreciate the potential of a property and see themselves living there. Selling a house that needs repairs for a fair price is perfectly possible if the homeowner is willing to put in a little extra effort.

Prioritise kerb appeal

Your property only has one chance to make a first impression and 76% of people believe first impressions are the most influential part of making a decision on a property. How your property looks from the outside will colour the opinion of many people who might consider making an offer.

So, a few cosmetic upgrades to the front of your house can pay off in the long run. There are the simple things you can get done quickly, like keeping the front garden neat and tidy, cleaning up any paths or masonry work, and even adding a fresh lick of paint to your front door.

Upgrade your kitchen

If there’s one part of your home that’s worth investing time and money into, it’s the kitchen: The Property Centre suggest that updating the kitchen will add around 10% to its value. When you think that a kitchen refurb doesn’t have to mean spending a huge amount of money, it really does make the task of a pre-sale update very worth it. You don’t have to completely strip out the kitchen – a good clean, some new cupboard doors and potentially a quick paint job can freshen things up and make a tired kitchen much more appealing to a potential buyer.

Go neutral

We all have certain colours and styles that we prefer in our own properties, and that might mean a huge brightly adorned feature wall or eye-catching wallpaper in a key part of the house. While this helps you feel ‘at home’ in your house, it often isn’t ideal when you come to sell.

When people come to see a house that they might want to buy, they’re looking for a blank canvas; something they can mould into the image in their mind. It can be distracting (or even off-putting) to see a range of bright colours or loud patterns – especially if they’re in a style they don’t like.

To get around this, spend a little time repainting the house in neutral colours, as we explain in our top tips for selling your home fast. This gives every potential homebuyer the chance to see the property for what it is, and what it could be in the future, rather than clouding their vision with your personal design style.

Update window treatments

Window coverings make a big difference to a room – if you’ve got window treatments that are carrying a few years of wear and tear, it can weigh heavily on a room. Updating your space with made to measure blinds has the potential to completely transform the way the room looks and feels when potential buyers are looking around. There is a huge range of styles available to fit any room, from the traditional appeal of wooden slats and Roman blinds to the more modern appearance of electric rollers and vertical blinds.

Make easy bathroom changes

We talked earlier about the importance of certain rooms and highlighted the kitchen as a key point of the house. One area that you might think is less important but is actually very important to potential buyers is the bathroom. They’ll want to see a bathroom they can feel comfortable in – a space to relax and unwind in.

Once again, you don’t need to make huge changes to see a big difference. For example, replacing small fittings like the shower head and the taps can really brighten everything up. And, if you’re willing to put in the time, you might think about putting in some custom shelving to show off the storage space.

Declutter your home

It might seem obvious, but far too often when people come to sell their house, they’re happy to accept viewings with far too much ‘stuff’ in their house. Clutter is bad for the value of a property – not only does it make the home appear messy and erratic, it also eats up space and makes the house seem smaller than it really is.

Take the time to declutter your house before you bring it to market. That doesn’t mean you have to throw everything away – depending on how much you’ll need to store away, you could box things up and put them in the loft or garage, at a friend’s place or, if you have a lot to store, you could rent a storage unit.

Shout about the Mod Cons

Many people are looking for a property they can move straight into with very little work required to shape it into the home they want. Increasingly, this means access to high-tech mod cons.

If your area has access to high-speed broadband via fibre optic cables, make sure potential buyers know about it. Have you invested in “smart” technology such as a Hive system that allows the heating system to be operated remotely from a mobile phone app? Shout about it! Mod cons could be the deciding factor that makes a buyer place an offer on your home instead of another property. These seemingly minor details can also help to bump up the sale price — buyers may be more inclined to add on a few thousand to the house price than go to the hassle and expense of installing such systems themselves.

Save Annual Leave for Moving and Book Child/Pet Care

If you move on a Friday, the most popular day to complete on a house sale, booking just one day of leave will give you a three day weekend to move in. Doing this will make the process much less stressful than trying to do everything in one day. To reduce your stress levels even further, book child and pet care so that you can focus fully on the move and get as much done as possible in the time you have available.

Speeding up your house sale

Any of the tips above can help you add value to your house during the sale process. Whether you are simplifying the property by toning down bold colours and decluttering, or taking big steps like adding a brand-new kitchen, these changes can make your home more attractive to buyers.

If you’re still struggling to sell your home, or you just want a quick sale with no fuss, speak to one of the friendly team here at House Buyer Bureau. We specialise in fast house sales and there’s no need to repaint or declutter, we buy your house as is! Get your quote today.

Chris

Chris has worked in property all his career, first as a successful estate agent before spotting a gap in the market for buying property directly from people looking for a simple, quick sale.

He has a passion for property and as an experienced valuer, has looked at well over 50,000 properties so far at HBB. He has extensive experience in property buying and regularly comments in the press on property matters, trends and promotes ways to simplify and speed up the selling process.

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Selling Your House: Tips for a Stress-Free Move