Move 2 You

Ok, back again.

We were talking about HIPs in the last post. The fact that you need to spend £300 to test the demand for your house. It’s the law and there isn’t much we can do about it.

As much as we don’t like it and as much as we want it to change you do need a HIP if you want to market your property.

But what about reducing the risk of the gamble? What if you just want to test the market (like you used to) to see if there is any demand for your property before you actively market it as being ‘for sale’?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could instantly see the demand for your property, before you made the decision to pay the £300 for a HIP. If demand was poor wouldn’t it be good to know this before you write the cheque?

Well …… now you can!

Ok it’s a bit of a plug but we’d like to talk you through the move2you website, a website that lets you test the water first without any need to pay for a HIP.

Property websites are nothing new of course, we are all used to searching for properties when we think about moving. These websites don’t help the seller of course - they are just the online equivalent of putting your property in an estate agent’s window.

But this isn’t the reason for the post. As we talked about last time the problem right now is being able to test the market and see if your property is going to generate any interest at a price you are happy with before parting with a substantial amount of your hard earned cash.

This is where this site comes in. . It’s simple: it’s a bit like a dating site for your house. It matches people’s interests with people’s houses and then you take it from there.

A dating website puts people together – it takes information about what kind of person they are (age, job, hobbies, interests, looks etc.) and matches that with what other people are looking for (because they’ve told the website they’re interested in people who are … i.e. “this” age, with “this” personality, “these” interests etc.)

Move2you does the same thing, but for houses.

You let the website know that you’re interested in “this” kind of house, in “this” price range, in “this” road, village/town/city, with “these” characteristics.

And owners let the website know that they own “this” type of house, in “this” price-range with “these” characteristics.

And here’s where it’s different from other property websites – not only does it match owners with people looking, it also gives them the ability to “post a virtual note to them” – anonymously (unless you want to give your name).

So …. The site tells you who might want to “move2you”

And …. you can log an interest in someone else’s area or street to say “I might want to move2you” helping them see the demand for their property.

The really, really neat thing about this site is that you don’t need to be marketing your house to use the site - you could be “just interested” to see how many people want to live in your place. That’s why you don’t need to pay for a HIP - because the move2you website matches interests with properties even if they’re not on the market.

Of course if the demand is good and you do want to move, then you can take things forward.

So what does this mean for you? Well:

• You don’t need to gamble on a HIP.
• You can instantly see the demand in your place before you put it on the market.
• You can safely contact genuine potential buyers.
• You can sell your house by finding buyers directly.

And if you’re buying a house as well

• You can be the first to find out if a place you like is about to come on the market.
• You can safely contact genuine potential sellers.
• You can increase the chance of securing your dream house by getting in there first.

Sounds great doesn’t it? Well this is what you need to do to get started:

Well the first thing you need to do is register for free at www.move2you.co.uk

Then you add your interests – i.e. the locations you would be interested in moving to. This helps to create the demand.

Then you add your own property so you can see the demand.

This is when the matching process starts and you get the information that may help you find your buyer, and your next place. It could save you a packet too.

And what’s more, you can contact potential buyers safely and anonymously to see if they really are interested. If they are then it is up to you how you take it forward.

Seeing the level of demand for your property can be accessed for free. Don’t forget to do this the traditional way you need to register with an estate agent and then pay your £300 just for the privilege of seeing if anyone wants to buy your home.

Find out for free, or gamble £300. I hope you agree, that’s not too hard a decision!

If you want to move house or need to move house right now you face a few problems!

We all know that the housing market isn’t in the greatest shape at the moment. It’s hard to get hold of a mortgage now (have you read the last post?) unless you have at least a 25% deposit and prices have been falling for months.

The combination of all these factors means that there are lots of people who are sitting tight right now when they might otherwise have decided to move.

But if you do want to move deciding when to enter the market is a difficult decision to make.

What you really want to know, especially right now, is what the level of demand for your property is going to be like, what you might get for it and how long it might take to sell.

Let’s face it no-one wants to have that ‘for sale’ sign stuck outside for months and months on end.

There was a time when testing demand for your home would have been a very simple thing to do. You’d register your home with an estate agent, stick a board up outside and see what sort of interest you get.

If you weren’t desperate to move and the interest wasn’t that good or you couldn’t get the price you wanted then no great shakes. You could just take your house off the market and try again when things picked up again.

Not so now though.

As of 6th April 2009 it has been an offence for an estate agent (or for that matter a private seller not using an estate agent) to carry out any form of marketing of a property without having a Home Information Pack (HIP) already prepared and ready for inspection first.

This means that:

· no adverts can be placed

· no ‘For Sale’ boards put up up

· no flyers printed

· no proactive ‘marketing’ at all

until the HIP has been prepared and is available for inspection.

This really unhelpful piece of legislation means that as a seller you need to spend around £300 on a HIP and then wait for it to be prepared before you can put your house on the market.

In other words you need to spend around £300 just to see if anyone actually wants to buy your property!

What’s more it is well accepted that the vast majority of buyers don’t even bother to look through a HIP before making an offer! According to The Times writing earlier this year:

“The National Association of Estate Agents said that 89% of agents whom it questioned did not think that the new arrangements would benefit buyers. It added that government statistics showed that 77% of people paid no attention to the packs when deciding whether to buy a property”.

So not only do you need to spend £300 on a HIP just to see if anyone wants to buy your house, once you do manage to sell no one pays any attention to it anyway!

And even worse buyers’ solicitors can say they will not accept the answers to the new Property Information Questionnaire contained within the HIP and ignore the searches too. So their clients may yet pay for a new set themselves!

It’s a crazy situation especially when we need to do everything we can to encourage growth in the market.

But what can we do about it?

Well unfortunately we can’t do much about the legislation itself, at least not in the short term.

As much as we don’t like it and as much as we want it to change you do need a HIP if you want to market your property and there isn’t a whole lot we can do about that right now.

But there are ways of testing the market without spending money on a HIP. People will always find creative ways around challenges. The service you have available in the move2you website is exactly the sort of answer you need, and is one of the best.

In the next article we’ll tell you exactly what you need to do.

Until then, stay positive!

Chris