Move 2 You

This article is the first of a number that will be published over the coming weeks looking at what you can do to both decrease the time it takes to sell your house and to get the best possible price.

Preparing your house for sale is always important. When the market is buoyant you are competing for buyers with everyone else and when the market is down, like it is now, you are trying to encourage buyers to make an offer and to maximise the price you get.

The golden rule, as anyone who sells for a living knows, is to put yourself into the mind of the buyer.

So in the case of selling a property, ask yourself what does someone who is looking around your home want to see? What will make them want to put an offer in and give you the price you are looking for?

Well below is a long list of really useful tips that you can put into practice if you are about to put your home on the market.

• Firstly go and view some other houses already on the market and see how the ‘competition’ are doing it, good or bad. Learn from what you see! How did you feel when you pulled up to the property, as you walked through the garden and then as you walked through the door? First impressions count.
• Be clean & tidy – I’m talking about the house of course … but also you as the seller!
• De-clutter – leave the house as a blank canvas for the potential buyer to picture all the wonderful creative things they can do with it once they move in.
• The outside of the house matters as much as the inside – first impressions count so remove that broken down washing machine from the front lawn and take it down the
• In fact go one step further and keep not only the house and garden but also the surrounding street absolutely spotless. Make sure you trim hedges an mow lawns, pick up litter etc.
• Use good, generous lighting inside that displays your home in the best possible.
• Remove highly personal artefacts (ornaments / posters etc) that may clash with other people’s views and tastes.
• Get an honest opinion from a friend. Sometimes we can become blind to the weaknesses of our own house.
• A lick of paint on dirty interior walls will always make a massive difference.
• Deep clean dirty carpets so they look like new and remove those nasty odours.
• Think about getting rid of pets temporarily, not everyone likes animals and their smells. Then again some people love animals – your call on this one.
• Have the house viewed at its brightest time of day … if you can.
• Have the house viewed at the quietest time of day …if necessary and if you can.
• Make sure any building / DIY projects are complete (shelves, tiles etc) and tidied away.
• Leave fresh flowers out, it makes the house feel like a home.
• If it’s you doing the viewings then show the house when there are as few of you there as possible and certianly not over dinner. The house will feel bigger if it is not full of people, dirty dishes and noise.
• Present rooms as bedrooms rather than a toy room / study etc – and market as such (ie a 3 bed house rather than a 2 bed with possible 3^rd).
• Let the agent manage the viewing rather than do it yourself – most buyers feel more comfortable this way. Having said this make sure your agent actually sells your property and doesn’t just open the door and let the prospective buyer in. You are paying them a hefty fee after all.

There are lots of tips here, most of them are on a similar theme – one of making a fantastic first impression for your buyer and putting them in the right frame of mind to make you the offer you want.

Hope this helps. Going forward there will be many more posts packed full of tips on how to sell quickly and at the right price.

Until then… take care.

Have you seen or heard the news about the housing market recently? Did you hear that famous phrase “green shoots” used to describe a slight upturn in house prices?

Well, don’t be fooled into thinking that everything’s suddenly going to turn round and be hunky-dory! As much as we’d all like there to be a swing to upward prices, that’s still some way off.

But there are signs of change … some estate agents are saying that there they’re getting more instructions now. Some are saying that sales volumes are rising.

All well and good.

But we all know that there are real, deep-rooted and fundamental reasons why it’s still going to be a while before it becomes easier to buy and sell your house – so moving house now is still going to be more difficult than it was a couple of years ago.

And one of the main things that’s holding back the market?

The massive reduction in the availability of mortgages.

Oh, and not only are there fewer mortgage options around than a couple of years ago, the banks are now so worried about the risk of lending that they’re making it about as hard as they can to qualify for a mortgage.

And if people can’t get mortgages then they can’t move house.

And the whole market slows up.

Well … over the last few months we’ve been on a fact-finding mission … we’ve been researching not only what’s really going on with house prices and with volumes, but also we’ve been uncovering ways that we can all beat the system … secrets that we’ve discovered that will raise your chances of getting the (right) mortgage you need (or anyone else in your housing chain needs – so it’ll be in your interest to spread this news around.)

Here’s the background:

(a) from 1997 – 2001 house prices were climbing steadily, and credit availability was carefully controlled, with interest rates at a consistent level;

(b) from 2002 – 2006 house prices started shooting upwards, and credit availability became much more freely available (fewer constraints) and interest rates were on a downwards path, and looking consistent;

(c) from 2007 the game changed – prices started declining and credit availability all but dried up … despite interest rates falling yet further.

So we have 3 factors – house prices, credit availability and interest rates. In the crazy years up until 2007 all 3 were working together to create – what is now clear to anyone who looks – a market that looked fantastic (if you were on the property ladder already), but that was built on sand … and heading for a fall.

The response to that fall is curious – properties are now cheaper than they’ve been for years, and interest rates are similarly cheap … normally these would be conditions that drive the market relentlessly upwards.

But here’s the rub – the availability of credit (i.e. mortgages) is sparse, and people’s confidence is low, so we have a bit of stagnation.

So with that background explanation we can now reveal what’s going to be coming up on this site – it’ll be packed with tools, tips, techniques and secrets that – at the very least – will arm you with what you need to know so you can buy the house you want … and make sure you’re selling to the right kind of buyer.

Because … despite what we all read in the press … people do still want to move house … they just lack some tools and ammunition to be able to do it.

Here’s a taste of what’s coming up:

• 7 different ways to raise the deposit you need (even if you think you can’t)
• How to give yourself the best chance of getting a mortgage (how to beat them at their own game)
• 11 mistakes to avoid that will stop you getting the right mortgage for you
• A secret way of moving into the house you want with no deposit
• The latest rates and deals – and conditions you need to be VERY wary of
• What the “clever people” (who are designing up & coming mortgage products) think will happen to mortgage rates – and it’s not what you think!

So, that’s a small sample of what’s coming up in the days and weeks ahead.

And there’s a whole lot more than just mortgages too. (More on that to follow!)

We’ve been researching what works … and now we’re ready to share it with you … so you can move house successfully.

We look forward to sharing this with you! See you back here tomorrow! (Don’t forget you can use the RSS facility so “we come to you”, it just makes it a bit easier for you to keep updated.)

And if you have any comments to add, please feel free in the forms attached here!

See you soon.

Chris

Sorry, did I say “house price UP”? That can’t be right can it?

Well take a look at this:

No, not the shocking news that Fern’s wore a Star Wars frock. It’s the other bit of shocking news that they’re shouting out.

Pretty authoritative don’t you think? What, you don’t believe the Daily Express?

Well, that’s the Express’s take on data released by Halifax yesterday, who report that house prices rose by 1.9% in January, compared with December’s figures.

So that’s it then … we’re all saved and everything’s going to be OK.

Well, err … it depends you believe, really. You see last week Nationwide reported that house prices for January fell a further 1.3%. They also said that fears about job losses were putting people off buying homes.

So there we have it – prices down by 1.3% or up by 1.9%. You choose!

Well, don’t be fooled by what you read in the papers. You see, they will report on “the market”, and they’ll be reporting on “the average” house, or on properties that sold “in January”.

But those aren’t your property. You’re not selling “the market”. You might be thinking of buying or selling A house in A street in A town / city. And what happens to the price of your property is only dependent on one thing.

The price that Your Buyer is willing to pay for it.

So what affects that price? Not surprisingly, it’s the amount of supply and demand for similar properties.

Now … how much demand is there for your property? How can you find out?

Two ways …

(a) pay £300-ish for a HIP and start to market your property (using an agent, or DIY), and wait and see if anyone takes the bait.

Or …

(b) have a look on www.move2you.co.uk to see the level of demand for your property, street, area or town/city, even if you’re not on the market.

It’s like finding a date for your property – move2you matches your property with what people have said they want. And you can contact those people safely, securely and anonymously to see if they’re really serious.

All before paying for a HIP or going to any marketing effort.

If you’ve already claimed your free account, see the latest demand for your place.

If you haven’t already looked, then claim your free account and see the demand straight away.

Go on … it’s free. What’s your place really worth?

All the best

Chris

With the slowdown in the housing market it is becoming a real challenge for sellers to find a buyer at the moment. On the whole home buyers are playing the waiting game and are not taking the plunge into the market.

This is presenting a real problem for thousands of people up and down the country that want to or even worse need to sell their house and move.

It is an example of how market sentiment can build up a momentum of its own and influence the behaviour of many many individuals within the housing market.

And of course it works in both directions. When prices are rising everyone wants to cash in and buy buy buy and when they are falling no-one wants to do anything at all and it all grinds to a halt. No surprises there, but if you need to sell at the moment then you have a real issue to resolve; how to find that buyer.

If you are a seller then you can’t have failed to have noticed how you are very heavily reliant on a buyer finding your property amongst all the others out there, whether it’s in an estate agents window, in a paper or on a property website.

And as the pool of buyers diminishes the chances of a buyer coming across your property also diminishes.

In the market as it is today sellers must work harder to uncover the pool of hidden buyers that are out there. And by hidden buyers we mean those people that would be active in the market if it wasn’t for all the negative sentiment out there at the moment.

Finding hidden buyers isn’t an easy thing to do of course, but there are some things you can do.

·         You can set up multi estate agency deals to increase their exposure.

·         You can advertise you house yourself on numerous sites that offer services to people who want to do it themselves.

·         You could advertise it in local papers.

·         Generally you can be much more proactive in the marketing of your property

But all of these ideas still rely on you reaching someone that is actively looking and this is a problem we are working on to solve here at Move2You because it’s not the way the market works today.

Sellers today don’t have that level of control, and the reason for this is that they generally don’t have the tools to go out and find and then connect with hidden buyers.

The tool we are working at Move2You will be launched soon and we think it is exactly what is needed to help get the housing market moving again.

If a seller can find and connect with a buyer then a deal can be made, no matter what is happening in the broader market.

Speak soon,

Dan

With house prices continuing to show signs of weakening in many areas of the country are we right to be worried about this?

The media love this sort of thing of course, generating attention grabbing headlines telling us how we are all going to be worse off.

And of course it is worrying to think that the value of our homes is falling. We are a nation of home owners and the fact that our homes have increased in value so much over the last 10 years has created a feeling of prosperity and indeed for those people that have actually jumped out of the market or relocated to areas where prices are lower it has created prosperity for them.

But should we be as fixated on house prices as we are, or is this a ‘problem’ that has been blown out of proportion by the media and our natural inclination to follow the herd?

Doesn’t our fixation on prices work against us, particularly when prices are not shooting upwards, by paralysing us with fear?

Let’s take a look at this.

Traditionally we have viewed the housing market as a ladder, all striving to climb the ladder by moving to larger more expensive houses and by capitalising on price increases.

If prices rise we feel good about it and we are keen to make a move up to the next rung. Buyers are easy to come by and all is good.

But when prices fall or stagnate the story is different. Nobody wants to move, worried that they won’t make as much on their property as they feel they ought to or could have done a few months back. Better to just wait and see what happens to prices and stay put for now.

Of course when everyone does that the market grinds to a halt.

But viewing the market as a ladder with people climbing up or down it isn’t quite right.

Here at Move2You we like to think of the market as an escalator. Those of us that are home owners are on the Housing Escalator rather than the Housing Ladder and this escalator can move upwards or downwards in its own right as well as people individually moving up it or down it.

Let me explain.

When house prices move up they move up for everyone – ie the escalator moves upwards. And when prices fall they fall for everyone – ie the escalator moves downwards.

Of course it’s a little more complex than this in reality. The higher up the escalator you are the faster the escalator moves. This is because if house prices move by 10% the more your house is worth the bigger in the change in value in absolute £ terms.

So as prices rise those houses that are further up the escalator move a little further away from you with each percentage increase and likewise you move a little further away from the houses below you on the escalator. In a falling market those houses above you get close to you in affordability.

The principle however is that everyone is moving together on this great big housing escalator and this should give us all some comfort in these uncertain times.

It can be more worrying if the escalator has moved far enough in a downwards direction for your property to be worth less than you owe on it. But of course even then this situation only becomes a reality if you actually need to sell. If you don’t then it’s a case of holding your nerve and waiting for the escalator to move back up.

For the vast majority of us however this isn’t going to be a problem and we should try and be a little less fixated on house prices. Yes prices will go up and yes they will go down, but they are also doing the same for everyone else on the escalator.

So the key variable is if you want to make an individual move up or down the Housing Escalator and what you can so to ensure that such a move can be achieved successfully whatever the market conditions.

To do this the focus needs to be on the transaction(s) you will actually be involved in; i.e. you need to find a buyer for your property and find a suitable property to move to.

Right now finding a buyer is a really difficult thing to do as many of them play a wait and see game or are finding it hard to get a mortgage.

The buyers are out there however, they are just hidden or reluctant to make a move.

So this means you need to work hard to find these hidden buyers and then do everything you can to encourage them to make an offer.

With the way the housing market works right now finding a hidden buyer is not easy. It isn’t geared up to helping you do this. Right now you are dependent on potential buyers taking the necessary steps themselves to search for a property and then actually stumbling across yours.

And this is the problem we are working on solving at Move2You.

We are developing a tool that will enable you to access the hidden housing market and we think it is going to make a massive difference…..

Until next time,

Dan

So house prices in May remained unchanged in England and Wales according to the Land Registry and were up 1.8% over the year.

Is anyone else surprised by this? Could this be further evidence that the market is not in such a bad way and that there is just too much hot air and headlining grabbing reporting about house prices going on out there?

Clearly the overall dynamic of the market has changed and we are not going to see double digit growth in prices for some time to come. That’s not such a bad thing though, the market needs to cool down and house prices need to become more affordable.

But all the headlines and the negativity is definitely having an effect on what people think and how they behave. There are now about 62,000 house sales a month at the moment compared to over 100,000 this time last year.

Sure, the fact that it is now harder to get hold of a mortgage and the fact that they are more costly now than they were a few months back is continuing to hold the market back in terms of overall activity levels.

But doesn’t it feel like there is something of a herd mentality going on here?

Buyers and sellers are obviously uncertain about what to do and this uncertainty has been largely fuelled by the media speculation on house prices. The bulk of the so called expert opinion is that we will see drops of 7% to 10% this year, although the Land Registry shows significant chunks of the country turning in rises.

So it seems to be a difficult call to make in terms of what house prices will do in coming months (even for the experts) but does it matter too much? If you are staying in the market then price changes are not the be all and end all. It matters a little more if you want to get out of the market altogether but this is the minority of people.

Rather than worrying about prices we should be worrying about the drop in the numbers of people being active in the market. Times like this require a different approach, particularly if you are a seller.

What do I mean by this? Sellers need to work harder and be proactive. They need to get out there and find a buyer. If you are a seller you can’t just sit back and hope you get a buyer. You are competing with other sellers out there and there are lots more buyers than sellers at the moment. The way things are at the moment, if you snooze you’ll definitely lose.

But how do you go out and find a buyer?

Well we’re working on something that we think is really going to help.

Something that will give you the control you need to be successful in the housing market whatever house prices are doing.

So the housing market is in crisis – prices are crashing through the floor and there’s no end in sight. Estate agents are closing down like there’s no tomorrow. Sellers can’t shift their property. Buyers are afraid to buy. House builders are slashing their activity (and they’re blaming the government for not helping them!)

Why’s all this happening? Just why are there such problems in the housing market?

You think it’s to do with oil prices going through the roof? Food prices rocketing? “The Credit Crunch”?

Or what about interest rates? Aren’t loads of people coming out of cheap-fixed-rate mortgages and now suffering?

Well … yes, of course all these things will have a big impact on a difficult housing market. But you’d be surprised at what’s really causing the problem.

People talking about it!

I know that sounds stupid on its own, and over simplistic, but here’s the thing ….

The housing market has been shooting up (easy times for estate agents, eh?!) for years now. That means that people have been willing to pay more in mortgages. Was that a problem? Apparently not … in fact it was positively socially acceptable! You weren’t really “normal” if you hadn’t increased your mortgage … or so it seemed when people talked about it.

What’s more, it wasn’t only mortgages – it was loans to get your hands on no end of new stuff … from Playstations and Wiis to iPods and phones, phones, phones …. Happy days!

Now, of course the jump in the cost of living is biting … it came out of the blue didn’t it! (In other words, people weren’t talking about it). And who can blame you if you’re struggling to pay the bills – after all, it’s not your fault that oil prices are shooting up is it! And you’re hardly to blame for the greed of the banks lending money to “ninjas” (no income, no job, no assets) - especially the American banks!

Nope, it’s not our fault.

But that’s not very helpful is it? MUCH more important than working out who to blame, is … working out what to do about it.

OK, so you can’t control the housing market on your own. The trick, my friends, is to work out how to sell … or buy … despite what’s happening in the housing market!

Now, in a couple of months there’s a something coming along that will let everyone do just that. But that’s not a subject for now.

The most important thing that we can all do for the housing market right now is to keep a sense of perspective.

You see, earlier this week I was a conference where a panel of industry experts were answering questions about the Credit Crunch. Some were talking about its impact on the housing market.

And you know what? Most of the questions were of the “doom and gloom” type. You know the sort of thing: “the economy is clearly going down the tubes – what is the bank’s view of this?” type of questioning. This type of thing went on and on, and the mood in the room became more sombre and more downbeat.

But then what happened? Someone asked a question about the opportunities that this might create – and almost immediately the atmosphere changed. People started to say things like “oh, I know there are ways we can benefit” and it became much more positive. Some even said – and get this – “actually, I know there’s lots of talk about the economic problems, but in reality, I’m not seeing that at all!”

Is that person unique? Or are you “not really feeling” the effect … I mean really feeling the effects that the doom-mongers would have us believe?

I know it’s a bit of a cliché to blame the media, but they do have a massive influence, don’t you think? Last week, there was the strike by the Shell oil tanker drivers. What were the headlines in the papers and on the news?

“Don’t Panic Buy!”

Hmmm … what do you think that encourages people to do?

Yeah, me too. And what’s worse, I heard BBC Radio 5 Live, this peach …

“… despite the petrol strike [no it wasn’t!] the message is “don’t panic buy”. And that’s the end of the news. Now to our phone-in programme – please phone us to tell us about the queues and closed pumps at your local petrol station”.

Did you get that? Don’t panic … now phone us to tell everyone listening how people are panicking so we can fuel that panic further!

So, my friends … a sense of perspective it’s what’s needed. Is there a crisis in the housing market?

Well, there can be, if we’d like it to happen. All we need to do is to keep talking about it. Don’t let reality get in the way. Just talk ourselves downwards.

There is an answer to this – a way to find out what’s really doing on in the housing market, and to put some control back where it belongs … with us, individuals just trying to buy or sell our house. It’s coming in the next couple of months.

We’ll keep you informed … and in the meantime we’ll keep a clear view of what’s going on and letting you know how it really is.

Despite what you hear people talking about.

Speak soon.