HELP Please (selling house!)

garyandsandra

Hi all, thanks for reading this post

My parents are currently downsizing and moving into a bungalow. They are elderly and not that good with all the legal side, etc, etc of selling a house as they have never done it before.

They have asked me and my wife if we would sort out getting it on the market etc etc but the only problem is we have never sold a house before either!.

Any advice on procedure etc would be appreciated. How many valuations should i get? which estate agents do I use? Is there good ones and bad ones? will it go online? and the main one, how much approximately should there fees be?

Any other legal things i need to be aware of etc? Do i need to approach a solicitor and if so when?

Sorry for asking probably some basic questions but this really is an area which i have never entered into

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give

AlexMac

The consumer organisation 'Which' have an excellent series of pages on their website with basic, step-by step advice for this; I can't post the URL but it will come up 1st after the adverts if you type in 'how to sell a house Which' on a search engine.
Agents
We always invite at least three agents to inspect. I'd suggest you do this, having previously looked at a number of local agents' window-displays, websites and property-search websites (such as Zoopla, Rightmove, Findaproperty, etc) to get a feel for who sells properties similar to your parents' ones locally.

Agents may possibly suggest optimistic sale values to get your business, but you will get an impression of how they are likely to perform by the way they treat you, the speed with which they confirm their offer in writing with their Terms & Fees (our son is selling; the best agent dropped the letter round by hand the same afternoon they visited ), and their answers to questions like 'when did you last sell a property like ours?' or 'will you personally handle the sale?' Your prior research on Zoopla, etc will show you actual sale prices in your street since 1995 based on land registry data, and whethyer the area is increasing or, as is sadly the case in many streets, still dropping in value, so you'll have an idea of whether their valuation is achievable.

Selling Fees?
Don't do anything without seeing the agents valuation and contract in writing, which gives you time to compare. And you can negotiate them down on their seller's fee, which will only be taken when you sell, and can be anything from 1%-3% in my experience. 1% is only likely if your house is likely to sell over £500k (ie the agent will get £5k), whereas they will want to charge more- say 1.5% minimum on a sale under say £200k (which will earn them £3k). Anything over 2% is in my view too expensive, but don't choose an agent purely on price, especially if they are not local- or only offer a web-based service. We prefer a local shop window! And don't pay for adverts or website entries up front. All decent agents will put your property in the local paper and on all the websites at their own cost, hoping to recoup this when they sell. And beware them trying to sell extras such as mortgages, insurance, etc; unlikely but suspect.

Sole or multiple agents?
You'll get a cheaper % commission fee rate for 'sole agency' - selling through just one agent - which I'd recommend rather than 'multiple agency' which means several agents trying to sell your house. This can cause problems, and IMHO, implies you're not committed to the agent- and any prospective buyers will visit all the local agents and websites anyway, so why duplicate.

Solicitor
As regards a solicitor, you will need to tell the selling agent who you have chosen to act for you only at the stage when you accept an offer, as they must inform the buyer at that stage. But it will let them know you are serious if you don't leave your choice of solicitor to the last moment- as this will waste time when the buyer is itching to get on with the purchase. Again, it costs nothing but time to take a few quotes (which will probably be for many hundreds of pounds- we paid over £1k to an efficient local solicitor last year). Beware of the cheap offers of a few hundred pounds from online adverts from conveyancers at the other end of the country. We prefer to use a local solicitor we can pop in to, and who is happy to communicate by email and phone; you'll get an impression of this when you ring them to ask for a quote- and if they won't speak to you or follow up with an email then you probably don't want to do business with them. No legal expenses will be due until you accept an offer on the house. You will then instruct them to act on a form which they will provide, when they'll probably want £250-500 up front. , with the balance of their fee and that of the agent coming out of the final sale proceeds a couple of months later. The estate agent may have a favourite solicitor, who will probably give them a fee for every introduction, although you are under no obligation to accept them (we have done so on one occasion, were quite happy with the slightly higher fee, as the agent would not have nominated a time-waster as they too only get paid on completion.

And as regards all the other stuff about selling- (kerb-appeal, de-cluttering, keeping the agnt on-side....)- well- you've seen all the TV programmes by Phil Spencer and Kirsty Allsop et al, so I won't teach you to suck eggs! Good luck- it's going to be a bit stressfull, as even the best agents and solicitors screw up a little, or fail to communicate well, but everyone gets through it

garyandsandra

Many thanks AlexMac for the great advice. I already feel a bit more in control with this advice.:T:T