Are you thinking about selling your property?

Rural View has become a highly regarded agency with a reputation for successfully selling property including country houses across South Wiltshire, North Dorset, South Somerset and West Hampshire.

Our approach to selling property

Our approach is simple: to provide an excellent service involving the most extensive, good quality marketing and to handle all our country property sales with integrity and a friendly, personal touch. We look after our clients as we ourselves would want to be looked after, which after all should be the basis of any good service.

It is a source of considerable pride that much of our business comes from personal recommendation. Former clients and customers have been generous in their praise and testimonials which has culminated in our being shortlisted for the ESTAS 2014, the property World’s equivalent of the BAFTAs.

We are members of the National Association of Estate Agents and the Property Ombudsman Scheme both of which promote strict procedures, high standards of practice and regulation.

Viewings of rural properties

We carry out viewings ourselves, keeping our clients constantly updated on activity and feedback. Offers are negotiated intuitively and with integrity and we go the extra mile to ensure that each individual property sale runs as smoothly as possible using our considerable experience and professionalism to achieve a more than satisfactory conclusion.

If you are considering selling property in the foreseeable future please contact us for a free and discreet market appraisal. We would be delighted to hear from you.

So the festivities are over, the cat has had the turkey and those of us who have relinquished the sofa will be fighting back to normality, having resolved to change our lives for the better.

The Christmas break is when families to come together and discussions at this time often concern what the forthcoming year might bring, including house moves. More elderly parents may be thinking of downsizing, or being gently pressed by their children to do so. Aspirational moves may be toyed with, and timescales will be mooted.

For motivated sellers, the most obvious time to put their property on the market would be the Spring, when bulbs are erupting, and the first hint of green is appearing on the trees. From now on the countryside will only get better until late May/early June when it is considered to be in its prime. But with everyone thinking similar thoughts the competition among properties for sale is often fierce.

The first few months of the year are, let’s face it, pretty depressing and all most of us want to do is hunker down, Moley and Ratty style until the first shoots start to appear. However there is a strong case, especially this year, for launching your property early.

Firstly, because of the late start to the market last year, many sales chains were not completed until the Autumn/early Winter, meaning that numbers of proceedable buyers emerged late in the day. Many of them are still around now, having negotiated delayed completions or decided to rent for six months. These are very motivated buyers, though, and they will be frustrated to have to wait several months before viewing fresh property again.

Secondly, more demand than supply will mean that an agreed sale on your house is more likely and you will be in a strong position to search confidently when the market truly kicks off.

Thirdly, improving conditions and market sentiment means that we can use the lack of competition as a more effective lever in achieving the best possible price for you.

The early bird is always there to catch the worm, but important consideration also has to be given to effective marketing. Presentation is key and waiting for external shots on a crisp winter’s morning is just as crucial as capturing those blue sky moments in the summer. Light filled interiors and blazing fires can be just as appealing as full trees and colourful beds.

So if conversations over Christmas touched on a house move this year, don’t dismiss jumping earlier than convention has always suggested, because this year especially you may just steal that valuable yard on those who wait.

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.

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!