The idea of selling your current property can be a daunting one whether it’s the first time you have done so, it’s been many years since you last moved or even if it is something you have some experience at. HM Government has produced a sensible ‘How to Sell’ guide with some useful information on how to go about putting your home on the market and the sales process.

It sets out the steps involved in anticipation of putting a property on the market including –

  • Understanding your finances
  • Preparing the necessary paperwork
  • Anti-money laundering checks
  • Getting your home ‘sale ready’
  • Selling a leasehold property
  • Valuations & price
  • Specialist situations such as selling a rented property, probate sales, retirement properties and power of attorney sales

The guide then goes on to advise how to choose an estate agent and what factors you should consider. Similarly, there is also a paragraph about instructing a legal professional who will carry out the conveyancing work for you.

There’s a section on the marketing of your property and how to show it, choosing a buyer, accepting an offer and what to do if offers are not forthcoming. Once a sale is agreed, the guide offers advice on dealing with enquiries, further negotiations, dealing with problems such as chain issues and then getting to an exchange of contracts.

The final part of the sale process includes choosing a removal company, preparing for the move between exchange and completion, what happens on the moving day itself and things to organise post move.

The guide also explains how to deal with any complaints, lists organisations that provide additional help and a useful glossary of property and conveyancing related terms.

Click on the link How to sell a home to download a copy of the guide


If you thought that selling property by auction was the last resort for a desperate vendor to get rid of shabby, vermin invested dive, a bank offloading its stock of repossessions or a family wanting to move from a severely compromised house on the North Circular, think again! Many sellers are turning to auction as an alternative way of selling their homes and many properties sold by this method are actually high-end houses in good condition and in favourable locations.
As progressive agents keen to increase the range of services we provide to our clients, Rural View have teamed up with a well established and experienced Auction House to launch our own branded auction department.
Traditionally auctions have been held in a venue such as a hotel conference room at a predetermined day and time with bidders either physically present, at the end of a telephone or represented by the members of the auction team by proxy via written bidding instructions. At the fall of the hammer, contracts are deemed to have exchanged and there is a legally binding commitment to complete the transaction, usually in 28 days.
In modern times, online auctions have become increasingly popular as they offer the seller flexibility and control of the process and with Rural View Auctions there is the option that it’s commission free.
So why is the popularity of property auctions on the rise? The answer is multiple; speed, security, price, cost and transparency.
SPEED – Timing is a key factor for many auction sellers. As long as the reserve price is achieved, their property will be sold on the auction day or earlier and completion will be set 28 days or if they prefer, 56 days later.
SECURITY – Rather than the period of anxiety in a standard private treaty sale between accepting an offer and exchanging contracts, there is the certainty that when the digital hammer goes down, the sale is secure. Having already carried out their pre-sale checks and surveys, the buyer is financially committed to their purchase and pays a non-refundable deposit and/or reservation fee.
PRICE – The property is only sold if it meets or indeed exceeds the reserve price set by the seller unless they agree to accept a lesser amount. The starting bid price is advertised at a more competitive level so as to encourage interest from buyers and generate competing bids to ensure that the best price is achieved.
TRANSPARENCY- The process is transparent with both the vendor and prospective buyers aware of the bids being made. Our proactive auction team is there to guide and advise both the seller and purchaser every step of the way.
COST – Vendors have the option of selling at auction without incurring estate agency or auction commission fees which will effectively be paid by the buyer through an additional reservation fee.
The only costs the vendor will occur prior to a sale will be for a legal sale pack that contains all the documentation required to process a sale including the searches. Sellers can use their own solicitor to do this but we have access to partner solicitors who specialise in this type of work and can produce complete packs within days for a highly competitive price. There will be subsequent solicitor’s conveyancing costs to be paid.
If selling your property by auction sounds like a tempting proposition and you want to find out more about it, give us a call on 01722 716895.

Rural View 29.3.19

Rural View are delighted that the Housing Secretary Sajid Javid has announced plans to introduce new measures to speed up the house selling/buying process and professionalise the estate agent sector, driving up standards and bringing an end to ‘rogue managing agents’. This is something that is more than overdue and we, together with the rest of the property industry, have been calling for for many years.

With over one million homes bought and sold in England each year, delays and complications during the process cause unnecessary financial and emotional stress to customers. This uncertainty can lead to delayed decisions and contributes to over one quarter of house sales falling through annually.

According to government research, more than 6 out of 10 buyers and sellers have experienced stress, and around a quarter of sellers said they would use a different estate agent if they were to go through the process again.

Estate agents will now be required to hold a professional qualification and to be transparent about the fees they receive for referring clients to solicitors, surveyors and mortgage brokers. Other measures to make the system easier, faster and more transparent include:

– encouraging the use of voluntary reservation agreements to help prevent sales falling through and crack down on gazumping
– setting a timeline for local authority searches so buyers get the information they need within 10 days
– requiring managing agents and freeholders to provide up-to-date lease information for a set fee and to an agreed timetable which will end the current situation where leaseholders are at the mercy of freeholders and their agents
– strengthening the National Trading Standards Estate Agency Team so they can carry out more enforcement activity which includes banning agents

Housing Secretary Sajid Javid said:

– “Buying a home is one of the biggest and most important purchases someone will make in their life. But for far too long buyers and sellers have been trapped in a stressful system full of delays and uncertainty.”
-“So we’re going to put the consumers back in the driving seat. We will require estate agents to hold a qualification so that people are no longer at risk from a minority of ‘rogue agents’ and can trust the process when buying or selling their home.”

Mark Hayward, Chief Executive, NAEA Propertymark said:

-“We particularly welcome the commitment to further regulation – we have long argued that estate agents should be recognised as professionals, this is an important step towards achieving this and we look forward to working with the government.”

There are approximately 20,000 estate agent businesses across the country, and currently, anyone can practice as an estate agent. The changes set out will professionalise the sector, creating a more trustworthy and reliable industry who will be better held to account.

Guides on ‘How to Buy’ and ‘How to Sell’ will be developed and published to ensure customers are better informed of the process and know what questions they should be asking. The government will work with consumer groups and industry to develop a consistent set of performance metrics for conveyancers, so consumers can make a more informed choice.

To bring the profession into the technology era, a working group will be set up to bring industry and partners, such as HM Land Registry, together to look at developing innovative digital solutions to speed up the home buying and selling process.

Government will consult on how the industry can be brought up to professional standards, like those in the same trade such as conveyancers, solicitors and surveyors.

Why you should considering selling your house now

It’s pretty cold out there and we just seem to be assaulted by one storm after the next. Isn’t that just one reason not to even think about moving house?
Of course we can come up with all sorts of excuses to batten down the hatches and stay put, but the reality is that if you have to move house, for whatever reason, then you should seriously consider selling now.

Here are some very good reasons why now is a good time to sell your house:

Lack of competition in the local housing market

There is currently the lowest number of available properties for many, many years. This means that there is far less competition to attract buyers than there would be in the spring, when we are likely to see more houses hitting the market. It also means that buyers may more readily pay what you are looking to achieve.

Buyers want to move to this area

We have plenty of frustrated buyers who would dearly love to hear about fresh properties in Wiltshire and Dorset. Not only is this a popular part of the world to move to, but there are also those who want to stay in the area and get on with the next stage in their lives. Whether they are upsizing or downsizing, moving from town into country or vice versa, we are in touch with them.

Speed – save time

You can beat the rush and save valuable time. In the summer months solicitors, surveyors and local authorities are often overloaded with work. The quieter months allow them to concentrate on less workload, however, and transactions can smooth through just that bit more quickly. For instance the last couple of summers saw Wiltshire local authority searches take up to a couple of months to be returned which often proved critical. At the moment this is more likely to be one or two weeks.

Timing

Putting your property on the market now should enable a move within the next three or four months which means that you will have the majority of the summer to enjoy getting to know your new home. It is a much more pleasant time to physically move, you will have the longer days and better weather (we hope!) to concentrate on any home improvements, and plenty of time to arrange schools for September.

Presentation

Your house can look as good now as it might in the summer months. Photographers are very clever beings and if you use a professional, as we do, then the best aspects of your property can be relayed with skill. True, they can’t conjure up green leafed trees and bounteous borders, but they can really help to sell an attractive lifestyle, which actually is what it is all about.

Appointing a solicitor for conveyancing

You’ve found your perfect home or your agent has hooked you a buyer, now what? For many, it’s only at this stage that they start to think about appointing a solicitor to act on their behalf in the conveyancing process. i.e. the legal business of buying and selling property. However, we would urge buyers and sellers to do this before arriving at this stage.

The reasons why one should be well prepared in advance of agreeing a sale/purchase are many and varied but could save you time, avoid complications, stress and even help to avoid disappointment.

In this article, I discuss how to go about choosing a solicitor. In a future one, I will write about the steps involved in appointing a solicitor and what happens before they can actually get the ball rolling and get a sale underway.

Conveyancing: do you homework!

First of all, be prepared to take a day or two to do your homework and find a solicitor you feel is the right one to do a good job for you. It is worth doing a bit of research and asking friends, relations and agents for recommendations.

How experienced are they? Have they dealt with your type of property before? How well do they know the area you are buying/selling in as some local knowledge can be helpful?

How transparent is your solicitor? Make sure there are no hidden fees and that you have an idea as to what you are going to be charged for and how much.

How proactive will your solicitor be in issuing or chasing paperwork, raising or dealing with enquiries, liaising with their opposite number and progressing matters as speedily but as effectively as possible?

How available are they? Solicitors are busy people but you don’t want your case to be at the bottom of the pile. You want them to be good at communicating not only with you but also with the agents involved as agents have a role to play in keep things moving and everyone in the chain informed.

Solicitors: choose wisely

Do not necessarily go with the cheapest quote. Bearing in mind the sums of money involved and the potential complexity of a transaction, good property conveyancing is too important a service to skimp on a few quid on. The same can be said about choosing the right estate agent but that’s another story!

There several large conveyancing companies that process sales almost on a production line basis. They are usually cheaper than the more traditional local solicitor whose office you can pop into and some are perfectly efficient, particularly if it’s a straight forward sale but others can be like dealing with a call centre manned by inexperienced staff.

Lastly, don’t forget that where there is a mortgage involved, the loan provider will also be a client of the solicitor.

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