With the housing market moving slowly, every vendor is thinking the same thing, ‘how can I make my property stand out from the crowd?’ There are lots of things you can do, such as modifying the internal design of your house, de-personalising the property and using neutral colours for the decoration. In addition, making sure internet sites your house is advertised on have lots of detail and flattering pictures. Your estate agents or the internet are great places to find tips on how best to present your property, to make sure it stands the best chance of being sold.
Other than making your property look visually appealing, there are other ways to make it stand out. If say, you are looking to sell your house for around £130,000 and it has been blending into the background for months and months with all the other properties that are up for sale at that price, you could maybe try dropping the price dramatically to offers over £100,000, even though you wouldn’t dream of selling it for that. You would hope that your house would stick out from all the others priced around that area, and would attract a lot of interest, in the hope you would get bids from several buyers. Once this starts happening, the potential buyers would get into a bidding war and turn the situation into something similar to an auction. This would by no means ensure that the bids would go all the way up to the £130,000 that you wanted, but it is maybe worth a go if you have exhausted all the other avenues and are tired of waiting around for something to happen.
Many bidders will most likely drop out of the race quite quickly once the price reaches a certain level at which they cannot afford, but hopefully if you are lucky enough, you will have at least two who have their hearts set on it, can afford to pay more and are willing to battle it out to give you the highest offer.
This type of thing hasn’t been very popular around this area for at least the last ten years, and perhaps there is a reason for this, however if you are starting to feel as if you are never going to sell your house, and you are about to take it off the market, then maybe it is worth this last ditch attempt to attract some interest.
If you are thinking of doing something like this, you should remember that you should only accept an offer once you are not willing to take anymore ‘bids’, so that others don’t lose money on things such as valuation fees and legal fees which they will have to pay for.
If you are lucky enough to find a buyer for your property, then we recommend you seek independent mortgage advice so they can search for the best deal for you from the open market. Kieron Bassett Financial Services has two Independent Financial Advisers. Contact us on (01524) 832057, via e-mail, info@kieronbassett.com, or visit www.kieronbassett.com.
Jason Hinde DipPFS
8th August 2011
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