Hot tips on how to sell your house

[denisesykes]

Hi, so we have just dropped the price of our house by £20,000 (not desperate much!) and have 2 viewings booked in for tomorrow morning.I have polished , cleaned, decluttered and generally done the 'house doctor' thing.
I have a feeling that this is our big chance after 5 months , 17 viewings and no offers.
If anyone has any tips on anything else I should be doing or saying to actually get an offer I would greatly apreciate any help.I am nervous just sitting here typing .I hope I haven't attached too much importance to these 2 sets of people but I can't help it!

[nickbraddock]

I was always told that the smell of fresh coffee can help!
I'd try anything!
Cheers
Nick

[clarabell]

Ive heard fresh flowers in the main rooms and a bowl of water gently warming in the oven with a few drops of vanilla essesence in to give the house a homely smell of baking. Anythings worth a try eh?
Best of luck!

[gil]

Fresh coffee, home baking, fresh flowers..... and a relaxed homeowner. In my experience of many things in life, it's possible to give out a "desperate" vibe, which somehow transmits and gets a negative response. It's the same with getting a job: lots of people have found that if they give off a "take it or leave it " vibe, they often get the thing they want. Visualisation is a good technique. If you can get even five minutes, breathe deeply, close your eyes, relax....then start to see yourself receiving the call from the estate agent with an asking price offer.....make the whole thing as vivid as possible by seeing/hearing/feeling/smelling (?) in as much detail as possible...how excitied you feel, your heart thumping, you typing a new post telling us you've sold...then relax and come back into the room.
It may sound a bit whacky/off the wall, but it's no different to the likes of David Beckham/Johnny Wilkinson etc "seeing" themselves scoring every time from impossible angles and distances.
Hope your house sells very very soon,
All the best,
Gil

[RobDickinson]

We droped ours a total of £22k (200-178) in the end.

We decluttered past what we thought we should , repainted a few rooms and replaced some dark curtains etc with light ones to give more light/space.

Buyers Mum lives in exactly the same house on the same estate so they only took 5min looking the house over and probably would have bought whatever we had done lol.

Only other example of our house up for sale atm is still on at £205k!

[adamsat]

I am a great believer in the theory that any house can sell at any time, the real deciding factor is the price.

When we sold our house it was the cheapest 4 bed in the town, it sold within a week of dropping the price to that level, but we did get the full asking price.

It does all depend on individual circumstances though, we could take that approach as we still had 120% return on our investment in 6 years.
It's all a decision on how much (or little) you can afford to sell for vs how quickly you want to sell.

[kiwidebs]

Hi Denise

Just wanted to wish you lots of house sales vibes. We made sure we had fresh flowers around the house, splashed out on some new house plants (inside and out), made sure the kerb appeal was up to scratch and had done loads of research so we knew our price was good (easy to research as there were about 8 other townhouses identical to ours up for sale in the surrounding few streets).
And, at the end of the day, all it takes is one person to walk in and like the 'feel' of the place.

Good luck and let us know how you get on.

Debs

[K&CS]

Hi Denise

Hope one (or both) comes through for you tomorrow. It sounds like you've pretty much done everything. Make sure the house is immaculate. The other thing I've noticed in the past when looking round houses is the 'English' inability to take a compliment. eg you'll comment on how nice and bright the hallway is and they'll say 'yes, but it's quite dark in the winter', or how quiet the road is and they'll say 'but it gets busy during rush hour'. It's easy to say daft things when you're nervous - just don't say anything negative about the house or the area. Say how upset you are at leaving the house and wouldn't contemplate it if you weren't emigrating!

Good luck. Fingers crossed for you!

Kate

[denisesykes]

Just to let you know, that something worked today and we have sold the house for £5000 over the reduced asking price , how weird is that? It was obviously meant to be.The buyers have been trying to buy a house in our street for a year as their last house fell through.They have sold their house to first time buyers, how cool is that! :cool
Thanks to everyone for all their tips , I just can't believe that it has finally happened! I am so excited!

[kiwidebs]

Wow. Congratulations!!! Isn't it a fantastic feeling - I danced and sang around the house for days after sellling ours. Now comes the nail-biting wait till exchange (that's where we're at and I'm nearly out of nails!! :eek ).

Debs