i d like to sell my house next year ie 2008. a friend said to wait until springtime as thats when theres more buyers, and its not good to have house on market for too long. is there any harm in putting it on the market in january tho???
As a buyer I would definitely be making a lower offer if the house had been on the market for a long time. After all, if the current seller can't shift it at that price, I'm sure I couldn't. However, I once heard that on average Esate Agents leave their own properties on the market longer than their clients: theory was they just wanted shot of their clients property asap to grab the commission, but they wanted the best price for their own houses.
My experience (of both selling and buying a house recently) is that early January is pretty quiet, so possibly not the best time to market it. You might be better taking some time to consider some of the points I list below.
Some have commented on the market conditions etc. which are all very pertinent comments.
Bottom line I think there are three areas you need to focus on.
Finding a professional agent(harder than you might imagine!)
Pricing the property correctly (and I don't mean the lower the better - but be aware that agents will often give optimistic valuations in an attempt to win your business, only to suggest reducing the price shortly thereafter)
Presenting your property - this means doing all those irritating jobs that you have been putting of.
You will find as part of your house buying process (I assume you are buying again locally) you will rapidly get a feel for the market prices and know what is realistic both from a sellers perspective and purchaser.
Sites like nethouseprices.com are useful for gaining an insight as to sale prices but do bear in mind that next door may have been a palace/dump inside when they sold for that high/low price.
Oh and don't forget to bargain the agent down on commission - if the market is slow they will no doubt want a higher commission (2%?)which is a lot.
Realise that selling a house is a pain in the ar** and be prepared for a procession of viewers (if you are lucky) upsetting your Sunday afternoon snoozes and forcing to keep everything tidy.
That's another good reason to structure the commission as (eg) :- "1% of sale price if sold at 'target' price, plus 5% for every over target price, less 5% for every under target price"
Ask the agent what 'target' price they are willing to market the property at, on the above basis -- if they over-value then reduce later, they'll end up with much less commission!
[Example: target = 200K; sell at 200K, commission = 2K; sell at 180K, commission = 1K (not 1.8K as a flat 1% would be).]
On the contrary, the OP may well have been perfectly aware of the difference, and therefore have taken the trouble to clarify what he meant by "next year", thus pre-empting some pedant asking.
It was the second poster (you) who got it wrong by apparently dismissing the possibility that he *even could* have meant next tax year instead of next calendar year. Those are not the only two possibilities, by the way.
thanks for your good advice. i think I ll aim to start on the market about feb /mar, after taking a balanced view of the comments. on the radio they were saying that as alot of potential sellers are going to sit on their properties next year, thered be less on the market but still the buyers, so didnt expect a radical price drop. in london house prices r still on rise. mines in vale of glamorgan, south wales, so not quite the same market unfortunately
But the whole question presupposes that there are plenty of estate agents who are amenable to agreeing to such a scheme, and among which potential vendors could shop around.
Are there, or are we just speaking hypothetically?
When I was selling a house in 2003 in Watford I asked for this kind of deal form the estate agents. I suggested commssion of 10% of the difference between sale price and a modest valuation. Nobody would do it.
Was the 'modest valuation' at least 10% below the likely sale price? [That would give the same commission as 1% of likely sale price.]
Using your scenario, the 'likely sale price' only has to fall
10% for the commission to become zero. Using my '1% / 5%' scenario, the estate agent would still get half the commission if the price fell by 10%, and the commission wouldn't fall to zero until the sale price had fallen by 20%.
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