Selling Your House: Everything You Need To Know

Before you commit to selling and moving, you need to assess your money and your affordability. If you’re currently in a mortgage term, you will need to contact your mortgage lender to see if you may face any charges for early repayments or for porting, where you take it with you to a new property. If you plan on buying a more expensive property, you’ll have to find out how much your lender will let you borrow.

Make sure you take additional costs into consideration, such as solicitor and estate agent fees (which is usually a percentage of the sale price), stamp duty and any other expenses that come with selling your home. You may find it helpful to discuss your options with an independent mortgage broker to find the best loans and mortgage deal for your circumstances, tailored exactly to your own personal situation.

Once you have organised your finances and decided that selling and moving is the right option for you, compared to your other options such as renting a property with the help of our letting agents instead, you’ll want to get a valuation to see how much your property is worth and how much your budget for a new property should be going forward. When valuing your property,  estate agents will consider numerous factors such as the local property market, average costs of similar properties in the area and historic house prices. Besides the current prices of properties and historic property prices, they will also consider factors like the location – such as the address and the street – the size and space in the property and finer details and features of houses, such as the garden, amount of bedrooms and any fittings you’ve had installed.

Prior to getting a valuation, you may wish to make some home improvements to maximise your property’s potential value and profitability. These might be minor changes to ensure your home is free from clutter, clean and tidy, such as mowing the lawn and repairing any damaged fences. You may want to consider renovations, but these can be expensive projects, and sometimes making small changes to the likes of your decor and door handles is a better option than any major projects. Your estate agent can advise you on these options if needed. If there are any damages that you think may risk discouraging prospective buyers from putting an offer in, you may wish to contact surveyors to get a property survey done. This will help you to assess these issues and whether you need to arrange any repairs.

Once you’ve had your valuation and you’re keen to sell, it’s time to set an asking price for your property. Estate agents can offer advice regarding your asking price, but the final decision is down to you. You can advertise your asking price in whichever way you prefer, for example by asking for ‘offers over’, ‘offers in excess of (OIEO)’ or just the asking price. You’ll then sign a contract with your estate agent. This is often referred to as ‘instructing’, and sets out the terms under which they will sell your home.

Once your property is up for sale, you’ll work with your agent over the coming weeks to market it. Here at Jon Simon, we use professional photos, videos and floorplans for marketing purposes and use engaging property descriptions to list the details and benefits of your property to attract potential buyers and aid a quick sale. We’ll use advertising websites such as Rightmove and Zoopla as marketing tools and we’ll add your property to the listings on our very own site. Using these resources give us the opportunity to create excitement for those that are conducting property searches, giving you the best chance of selling your house quickly, efficiently and to a genuine buyer.

We understand that the legal process that comes with selling your home can be overwhelming, so we’ll provide support along the way to ensure you complete all of the necessary paperwork. This includes helping to organise Energy Performance Certificates to show your level of energy efficiency, which is a legal requirement that you need to complete before you can market your property. We’ll help you to understand what the paperwork means and how you need to complete it, ensuring you fulfil all legal requirements and duties as a seller to avoid any problems later on in the process.

We’ll also help you to arrange viewings for potential buyers to show them what life could be like living in their new home. Before these visits, we’ll offer advice on how to maximise your property’s potential and appeal. We’ll advise on how to make your house feel exactly like a home for those that come to view it, helping them to see that buying your home is the right choice. We can show visitors around the property and use our knowledge to answer any questions they may have, proving you are a credible and reliable seller.

When you start to receive offers, we’ll discuss these with you and carry out any necessary checks to gather evidence on buyers that you are interested in, making sure that they are in a suitable position to buy your property. We’ll help you when it comes to offer negotiations and also when you’re ready to accept the offer that you are interested in. Accepting an offer then means that you’re close to completing the sale. Some find this process daunting, but we’re here to help and keep things moving between each party, with solicitors and conveyancers. Having a solicitor or conveyancer on hand before the sale can help to minimise delays. If you need advice on where to find conveyancing services or solicitors, we can use our trusted contacts to point you in the right direction.

This legal process of transferring the ownership of homes from one person to another is called conveyancing. At every stage of the conveyancing process, we can help you to fill out the important papers that are needed to complete all property sales. This includes the necessary legal contracts and documents such as the property information form (TA6), TA10 and TA 13, issuing a Memorandum of Sale, creating a draft contract of sale and assisting with the exchange of contracts. As one of our expert estate agents guides you through the process, you can have peace of mind that you’re in safe hands and that the legal process will be as smooth and as straightforward as possible.

You may wish to look for a property to buy throughout this process. As well as assisting sellers, offering services to buyers – including first-time buyers – to help them find their dream properties is something that our real estate agents love to do. If you’re interested in properties in Radcliffe, Ramsbottom, Burnley or surrounding areas, the team at our estate agency can help you to secure the home you’ve always wanted and assist with transactions in the property chain.