Four Areas To Consider When Selling Your Home – Tortoise Property Blog

Hello everyone, I’m Sam. I’m new to Tortoise Property and Estate Agency. I have a BA Honours Degree in Marketing from Sheffield Hallam University and wanted to find somewhere that I can put that to use, which is why I’ve ended up here!

This blog will be a weekly series of me recounting my experiences, explaining why great marketing is so powerful when selling your home and the exciting plans I have for the future of marketing in Estate Agency. I believe this will be beneficial to me as I write down everything I do and hopefully will be to you also, as I do my best to explain Tortoise Property, convey our difference and answer any estate agency questions that anyone may have.

Welcome to Episode 9!

This week I’m taking a look at the four areas we cover when selling a property. Thankfully, we have an incredibly helpful model to aid me in talking about it! I’ll go through each section from the bottom and work my way up while explaining why they’re all equally important. Let’s get started.

Market Conditions:

Well this one’s a bit messy currently!

As I’m sure you’re all aware we’ve recently had two rather significant increases in interest rates in the past few months. These have of course had a knock on effect on mortgage costs. I believe we are currently in a buyer’s market, which if you’d like to read more about you can check out another blog I wrote here, but effectively it means that supply out ways demand. Buyers have too much choice! The difference in this market is that there is a limit to this.

Homes available between the £200,000 to £350,000 range still seem to be able to sell, but as soon as you go above £400,000 then you’ll start to struggle to find suitable buyers. The main reason for this is of course mortgage rates. Interestingly when you go above into the £600,000/£700,000 range the market again seems to behave in a more normal way, most likely to due buyers using cash instead of requiring a mortgage.

Below I’ve included an example of what a mortgage would cost for a £450,000 house.

The average household income in Hampton is £55,000. So if you wanted to buy this £450,000 with a 10% deposit, you would be paying over half of what your household income a month is. That of course, is before you factor in food, clothes and looking after any children you may have. I’m sure you can see the issue!

It’s important to understand this when considering selling your home. We aren’t saying don’t sell! But if you are in the £400,000+ range then you may have to ensure you score well on all of the other sections I’m about to talk about! Other than that, I think it depends on how much you NEED to move. If you really need or want to move, it may be worth considering adapting your price to suit the current market. But more about that later!

Location:

How appealing is your area? I mean, really. Without being biased. Do you know how many people are searching for homes in your post code? Let’s take Hampton for example. Hampton we know is an attractive area. Plenty of schools, green open spaces, shops, takeaways, restaurants all within a family friendly environment. People tend to gravitate toward the new build houses as they’re very modern and more appealing than the surrounding areas of Orton, Yaxley or Hempsted. Therefore, there are plenty of searches for the Hampton post codes.

It’s definitely something worth considering. Is the surrounding area nice? Are other homes selling around you? What can you do in your area?

Marketing:

Good ol’ marketing, hey!

For me, marketing a home is not just dropping the price when viewings are lacking. That is certainly one technique, but is far from the only option available to estate agents. Instead, why not make sure that the home being sold is the most seen property in the post code. Rocket it to the top of the charts and get plenty of eyeballs on it. Then think about the most likely buyers for the home and create some ads specifically tailored to them! If this all sounds familiar, then perhaps you’ve read my previous blog about our Race to Sold model. And if you haven’t, then give it a read here!

I’ll keep saying it until I’m blue in the face, but proper marketing is so important when trying to sell your home. If your agent isn’t doing it, ask them to! If you’d like to read a few more blogs about the marketing we do here at Tortoise, then feel free to check them out here:

Price:

This one is the big one!

Price links really well with the market conditions, because at the moment it’s so important to get the price correct. Overpricing achieves nothing. Buyers currently have so much choice between properties, if they come across yours and like it but can’t afford it, they will simply move on to a different one. All of the other sections I’ve mentioned could be perfect but without the correct price, there won’t be any interest. The price must be an attractive prospect to buyers, which is why it’s important to understand what the current market conditions are like.

With all of these areas taken into consideration, you’ll be in a strong position when it comes to selling your home.

To Conclude:

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog!

Looking for some next steps? These links could be useful:

If you have any questions or topics you would like to see me discuss in the future, then please do get in touch. I’m more than happy to connect with marketers, whether you work in my industry or not, as well as industry experts who I myself could learn from. You can connect with me on LinkedIn.

Thanks again, and I look forward to connecting.