Now that the holidays are over and our children are being dragged back to school, it is the natural time for people to think again of moving house, with Christmas as the end goal. For this reason we’ve seen increased demand for rural family houses.

Late Summer/early Autumn is a traditional time of year for property transactions to pick up and due to a busy few months of sales, supply is now fairly thin on the ground. We have maintained a steady register of keen buyers, however, and there will be more getting in touch over the coming weeks.

So what are these buyers looking for? The most keenly sought after type of property is the 4 or 5 bedroom family house, situated in a rural or village environment. If, for instance a property of this ilk became available in the general area between Salisbury and Shaftesbury, we know that it would generate huge interest and possibly competitive bidding. We know because we are speaking daily to frustrated buyers and this is indicative of the strength of the middle market in South Wilts/North Dorset.

Both London and the Home Counties are producing the majority of incomers, escaping small gardens in the Capital and increasing traffic elsewhere. Good schools, beautiful countryside and a fantastic quality of life is the draw, not to mention the significant differential in property values.

There are also those who need to upsize locally; whose children have outgrown smaller cottages and now need the space, both inside and out, to spread. Improved communications and hence income have meant that these buyers are not necessarily priced out of the market, but budgets may be under more pressure and they are generally more reliant on borrowing.

The one thing that is certain is that there will not be a meaningful increase in the number of larger new build homes around here and in any case, most buyers are after individual properties at this level, putting a further emphasis on supply.

So if you are considering selling a family sized house you will need to have good advice from an Agent who really deals in this market, and if you are hoping to buy one, you will need to be prepared for battle.

While there is no particular pattern in the Wiltshire housing market at the moment we are happily seeing signs of more confidence from buyers and activity is on the up. One is always hesitant to herald the recovery, and it is likely that this is the end of the beginning, rather than the beginning of the end, but at last we may be witnessing some green shoots.

The first four months of 2013 were pretty dire in terms of rural housing stock and activity, but as soon as the weather warmed, so did the market. Anyone who keeps an eye on the property portals will see the increase in sales agreed and this is an exciting indication that lenders are lending, buyers are buying and prices are holding their own.

How should buyers view the market now and where should they be pitching offers?

The first thing to say is that prices are not rocketing away and are not likely to for the foreseeable future. But the market is firming, which means that vendors need not take as much of a hit on their sales as they have had to. To give an indication, the average offer that we have agreed on all sales since the beginning of June is only 1.8 % below guide price, while this time last year it was more like 5%.
As long as a property is pitched in line with its comparables, it is likely to sell reasonably well and buyers need to understand that we are now entering a more equitable market where deals are being struck at sensible levels.

You could almost say that the end of the buyers’ market is nigh. It certainly is for family houses in good locations, where the excellent schools in this area are attracting more and more families from London and the Home Counties, all vying for elusive property.

If you are a buyer, therefore, perhaps you should remember these points:

Do your property homework – you should know what sort of property you can buy for your money and be able to put a broad value on what you see.
Be decisive – if a house ticks 7 boxes out of 10, you should be thinking seriously about it.
Be realistic – don’t expect to buy too far below the guide price.
Be confident – that you are buying at the bottom of the market.

One of the most frustrating and emotive things about moving house is that both buyer and seller can pull out of the deal at any time. There are normally perfectly reasonable explanations, but the retraction can cause a huge amount of distress to the other party, not to mention the incurred costs.

The legal process of selling and buying property

The legal process of transferring property from one owner to another in England is, let’s face it, protracted and fragile, and agreements are not binding until contracts are exchanged. Of course there are many and varied reasons why property transactions fail to complete, but the point is that it can take weeks, if not months, of anguish and stress before there is total commitment to the transaction. So why can’t there be certainty from, or soon after acceptance of the offer? It would make the whole house moving process so much more straightforward and would certainly help to ease our stress levels.

In Scotland the whole process is very different, where pre-offer investigations into a property are the norm, so that when the offer is accepted it is binding. This, however, means that buyers spend out a fair amount before certainty and because the bidding is normally blind they have no idea whether they will be successful or not.

Pre-contract deposits when selling property

What about a pre-contract deposit? Sadly, any Solicitor will tell you that they are not worth the salt and have to be refundable since they cannot be unconditional.

The Government did attempt to speed up the conveyancing process with the Home Information Pack, which in itself was not a bad idea, but its implementation was flawed as it emerged that buyers did not trust the vendor-commissioned surveys and their solicitors did not trust the local searches. It also reined back a free flow of stock to the market due to the up-front costs.

What is the answer, therefore? Whatever it is it won’t be simple and certainly won’t be decisive. A middle ground is to ensure that the possibility of the parties pulling out are minimised through speed of transaction. Transparency about a property is key to this. Making pre-offer information available via the Agents should be strongly encouraged, as should perhaps a scheme for buyers’ contributions to vendor-commissioned surveys, not only acting as a form of deposit, but also freeing the surveyor to act in an unbiased fashion for all parties who contribute. Maybe RICS should be considering this? The Government could also invest in more Council staff and technology to cut the waiting time for searches from several weeks to several days, rather than concentrating on purchase- assistance schemes (controversial!).

Put simply, a pre-offer preparation of the survey and draft contract, combined with speedy local search results could and should cut the whole process to 10 working days. The likelihood of either party withdrawing would then be cut dramatically and a fast exchange of contracts would provide certainty. We can dream, but surely it can’t be that hard!

Ask any estate agent about the current state of the housing market and you are likely to be greeted with a scowl!  At the start of this year, agents (and their vendor clients), hoped for signs of the long awaited recovery and although there have been one or two encouraging economic indicators, the reality is that the market is only just starting to get fully get underway.

So why have things been so sluggish? The answer lies partly in the continuing financial recession and lack of available mortgage funding but there is also something else that has had an impact and that is the weather. Blaming the weather might sound like a weak excuse but I am convinced that it does have a bearing on both buyer and seller behaviour.

When the weather is cold, wet or even snowy, it is human nature to adopt a ‘hunker down and stay in’ mentality. The opposite however is also true. Sunshine is the perfect antidote, particularly with a touch of warmth, when we all feel that much more positive and walk with a spring in our step.

After the long and miserable winter, we started to see a pick-up in viewings and new properties being put on to the market at the end of February and beginning of March with many agents thinking; ‘Great, here we go’, only for the recent protracted cold snap leading to everything going back into hibernation again. The same thing happened during the wet spell last summer.

After the delayed start to spring, gardens are at long last coming to life making them more photo friendly and we expect the improved weather will lead to more houses being put on to the market. A wider choice will encourage more buyers to search for a new home and with many of those extra buyers being prospective sellers as well, it should end up being a self-perpetuating exercise.

Although sadly we cannot control the weather, there are things that sellers can do to make their homes more attractive at this time of year. The proverbial ‘spring clean’ is a great start as is a thorough de-clutter and whilst buyers do not necessary expect to see a show house, it should appear smart and tidy. Good lighting, flowers and a touch of room fragrance all help whilst in the garden, lawns need to be mowed and instant colour can be provided by tubs of spring bulbs.

For a house to stand out, particularly as it is almost certainly going to be first seen on the internet, good photography is absolutely essential. Pick an agent that uses professional photography as a matter of course and one that ensures that winter shots are replaced by more flattering spring/early summer pictures.

There is a market out there and with a touch of warm sunshine, we should see it blossom again!

At some stage in our lives we will all move house and the complexities of the process will either glide smoothly to a happy conclusion, or cause stress and anxiety. The single main cause of any stressful move comes when a chain is involved: a who is moving to b, who is moving to c and so on. Because of the number of simultaneous transactions involved, the finances to arrange, the surveys to satisfy, the glitches in title, covenant or contract and the completion dates that need to tie in, there is the much greater chance that the whole pile will collapse and all parties will have to start again.

In any market avoiding a chain is the ideal. The simplest transaction of willing buyer and willing seller is just what the doctor ordered, but the seller will always need a property to move to and the buyer will often rely on a property to sell.

Which brings us to the chicken and the egg. Which comes first? If you are considering a move, do you wait for your perfect house to become available to buy before selling yours, or do you put yours on the market first in the hope that the perfect house will become available. In both cases you will have to rely on a great deal of luck to tie in both the sale and the purchase in the same time period and, of course, the dreaded chain is always lurking to scupper the whole deal.

In any market conditions this is always a quandary. Now especially, however, it is more so. It is not an easy market to see sales through, moving house is expensive so people want to get it right and there is still a big unknown in the larger picture.

There has been a general lack of quality property available, so the chances of your tying in an immediate onward purchase is slim. The reasons for the lack of supply are plenty, but the main one is that folks are holding back from putting their properties on the market until they see one that they want to move to – and so the catch 22 is born. If properties aren’t coming to the market, they won’t be seen as available and their potential buyers won’t put their properties on the market either. This isn’t a new climate, it has been going on for a long time and it has always restricted movement.

So what is the answer? If you are a truly motivate seller, put your house on the market before finding your next home and be prepared to break the chain by renting for the short term. This will free you from the stress of a fragile chain and put you in a perfect position to jump as soon as your perfect house becomes available to buy. Yes, it means a double move, yes it means an unsettled period, yes it means paying out in rent what you could be saving, but put these against a successful outcome, far less trauma and the significant extra costs of collapsing chains and you can start to see the reasoning. Some attempts at moving house go on for months or even years and chains are frequently to blame, while those who decide to break have already moved on and put the stress well and truly behind them.