This will likely be the hardest decision you will make when selling your home. There are lots of things to take in to consideration. Who is offering? What’s their position? How are they financing it? How confident are we about them?
But there is one thing that it will almost always come down to, MONEY!
Now I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. What someone offers you is important. But something I believe is more important, is whether that money ever makes it to your bank account.
There isn’t a steadfast way to ensure you get that price you’ve been offered. There are things you can do to ensure you have the best chance possible.
Good or bad buyer?
2 of the things I heavily consider when advising vendors are:
1. How likely are they to dick about come survey time? A 100 year old house is going to have a lot of things come up that could scare a buyer in to renegotiating the price they offered. With flats, this could be that they start getting funny about a term in the lease or something their solicitor has said. It may be credible, it may not.
2. How strong is their chain? A buyer is only ever as strong as the chain below them. This becomes more of a worry once you’ve paid out the £500 survey fee on your purchase and incurred solicitors costs. So if a buyer with a weak chain offers £2000 more than a no-chain buyer, it’s not just the £2k you have to take in to account.
The stronger the buyer, normally, the less they’re prepared to pay. ALWAYS take this in to consideration when looking at an offer. It’s just pretend money until you’ve exchanged contracts.
Speed of offer
You will almost always get your best offer within the first 4 weeks of going to market. Sole reason being is that the buyer can’t work out the true level of interest in your property. If they fall in love with it, they’ll pay their maximum.
If it’s been sat on the market for 6 months, every man and his dog knows it’s not worth the money you’re asking.
So don’t panic when an offer comes in quick, you probably won’t get another like it. Unless you’re very lucky!
There will always be exceptions to these rules, but for every lucky success story with property, I can give you 10 that didn’t work out.
Am I being greedy?
The greed monster gets us all, very few are immune to the lure. When you start spending the money you’re hoping to get for your home before you’ve even put it on the market, your judgement can become clouded.
Having a fixed figure in your head for what you will and won’t take for your home is great, but very unhelpful 6 weeks in to the process if things haven’t worked out as you’d hoped. Learn and understand how your property sale is developing and you will be able to make an informed choice when the offer comes in.
It’s tough to take advice from an estate agent as their livelihood is to get the deal done, which can cloud their judgement. Also, if they’re not of a strong enough character, they’ll just tell you what you want to hear, which could be bad advice. What I do personally is that I imagine it’s my own mum selling. What would I tell her to do in this situation?
Very few people regret taking an offer, but I meet many people that regret the offer they turned down.
