Top Tips for Selling Your Home in London

Hi everyone, in today’s video I’m going to be sharing my top tips on how to sell your house and we are getting started right now.

Hi everyone, Ugo Arinzeh with Onyx Property Consultants, powered by Keller Williams, thanks for watching my YouTube channel make sure to subscribe because every week I put out new content about buying, selling, renting and managing property in London.

In today’s video I am sharing with you my top 5 favourite tips on how to sell your house and if you stay to the end, I will actually share my sixth bonus tip!

Tip number 1 is to do your research.

What do I mean by that? It’s to understand what is happening in the property market currently. Is it a buyer’s market? Is it a seller’s market? Are homes staying longer on the market right now compared to others? And also, how does your home compare to others that are currently in the market?

It actually leads to…

Tip number 2 – which is to price your property correctly.

Pricing is really a function of guidance, it’s an asking price, it’s a starting bid and it’s inviting potential buyers to come in, look, and hopefully make an offer. But on the part of the buyers, they are going to be comparing your home to other properties on the market, and what are they going to be looking at? They are going to be looking at features and benefits.

So, a three bedroom flat, for example, what is the size of your property? How is it positioned, does it get good light? Which street is it on? Is it close to a tube station? Is it not close to a tube station? Maybe your property has really good-sized bedrooms, versus others? Does yours have an additional bathroom? Does the layout make more sense?

Those are some of the features and benefits, or amenities that potential buyers are going to be looking to compare how your property is priced given the features and benefits it offers, compared to other properties on the market.

Number 3 is – to declutter your home and make sure it has great curb appeal.

I know sometimes, with London flats, we can’t always control what the outside looks like because it is a communal building and the freeholder and the schedule of works is really going to dictate that but if you are in a separate home, even if it is a mid-terraced property, make sure that the curb appeal is appealing, has your home been painted? Does the front door look great? The mailbox, and the house numbers, too. All of those things, will give it really great curb appeal and invite potential buyers, and get them excited to view the property.

Once they’re inside the home, we want to make sure that we carry on that theme and what is really important is to make sure that you de-personalise the home and declutter. I say, you can’t really see through a home, if it’s full of junk, and full of too much furniture, and also, if it’s got too much of your own personality in there. Say you’re a sports fan, and you’ve got sports memorabilia, all over the place, you really want to minimise that, neutralise that, such that potential buyers see themselves in the home, as they come and view it, a lot of potential buyers really have a lack of imagination and will have a hard time envisioning themselves if they come in and viscerally see someone else’s personality inside of that.

So that leads to…

Tip number 4 – which is to take great photographs

I can’t tell you how many properties I have seen on the market, on the portals that are just have awful photographs or have  perhaps not even professionally done photographs, they might have taken it on their smartphone, and believe you me the difference between a high resolution photograph by a professional camera versus one that’s not, does make a huge difference. The reason why this is so important is that, we believe the first viewing actually takes place online. Statistics tell us that up to 97% of buyers start their journey online, and so if that’s where they are having their “first viewing” we want to make sure that we have done everything to make your home as appealing as possible to encourage potential buyers, to entice them to take the next step which is to click on that property and enquire about it, so taking great photographs is really important.

Which leads us straight to…

Tip number 5 which is to write a great description

It’s not enough to just take great photographs, and it’s not enough just to say it’s 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, a port or what have you, tell a bit of a story, why does this home appeal? Who does it appeal to? Say you’re in an area that’s really appealing to families, make sure you talk about that, make sure you talk about the great schools, make sure you talk about the great parks so people can, again, get a sense of what it would be like to live in that home, to live in that community, and to put themselves in that situation. It’s not an exclusion of other things, but if that area does have particular feel, or that property has a particular feel, we want to make sure we are describing that and putting that front and centre. In London, private parking or off-street parking is really important, so we want to make sure we are describing that in the description of the home.

So those are my Top Five Favourite Tips on How to Sell Your Property.

And what is my sixth bonus tip? Make sure you proactively market your home if you’ve done all those things on the top five, and your not actively, proactively marketing it, then you might not be getting as many people interested, or exposed to as many people as you potentially could. Social media is a great platform to engage people, to expose the home to tell that story, to get people interested in your home, to share it with other potential buyers.

One of the other things is to make sure you tell all your neighbours because odds are, if they like living in that community, they have friends who might also be looking in that community, but who might not be proactively looking online. So, make sure you are exposing your home to all your neighbours and that they know about it.

So those are my top five, actually six tips, on how to sell your property in London.

If you have any other questions, please do reach out, that’s Ugo Arinzeh, with Onyx Property Consultants, powered by Keller Wiliams, bye for now.