★ ★ ★ ★
★House selling stress and why mock biscuit-baking “sucks”
Posted on: 28th March 2017 | Filled under: How to Sell a House
Written by: Mark King
Come the day when you need to downsize, upgrade or move locations, then you are faced with one of life’s most stressful adventures – selling your property.
Research has shown that almost two-thirds of people in the UK (who have moved recently) put it at the top of their stress league table, meaning it beats relationship breakdowns and starting new jobs in raising people’s blood pressure. So why is moving house such a nail-biting endeavor?
One of the main causes of stress is, of course, lack of choice. It could be that selling up and moving on was not a decision you made willingly. Or even if it is for all the right reasons, selling your home is still a wrench and you are reluctant to take the plunge.
If you can sell your house quickly, and at a decent price, it can certainly soften the blow. However, unless you find a quick cash sale, the day you decide to sell up is when the fun really starts, and your mental health starts taking a battering.
There are abundant blogs, articles and videos around to tell you how to get your home picture perfect and make the right first impression. But let’s be honest here, how many of us have got time for all that? It’s not just once, for the photographs, that you have to do a deep clean, tidy away practically everything you own, and make your house look like a property even you don’t recognise. No, your duster, hoover and mop bucket have to come out every time you get a viewer, and preferably every day just in case. Heaven help those kids if their rooms are messed up or your dog if he treads in dirt. Your house becomes a temple of loveliness at all costs.
You may think life is too short to spend hours tidying stuff away, plumping pillows, brewing coffee, baking biscuits and arranging fresh flowers to make your family home look (and smell) like something from a glossy magazine. We agree. This is your home, to be lived in, and over the months it takes to sell it, living like someone out of the Stepford Wives is going to take its toll.
The internet is a wonderful thing but it has filled people’s brains with “white noise” and they are being “sold” things everywhere they look. Getting your photographs, promotional text and publicity right is not a guarantee that an orderly queue of viewers will form at your front door.
So, your house is picture perfect… then no one actually comes to see it! That’s when the doubts creep in about your asking price. Hands up anyone who has spent sleepless nights worrying about still being able to meet financial obligations if you cut the price of your house down.
Phew, you have got that buyer roped in, agreed a price and all is well with the world. Or is it?
Now you have got those nail-biting days of waiting for your buyer to complete their survey. In an ideal world, the property survey would say “Wow. Nice house! You’re getting a bargain here. Go for it or I will!”
Yes, it never happens. In fact, there is inevitably some form of issue in the property survey. After all, these guys are paid to be thorough and critical to protect the buyer and their lender. Often the next thing to happen is the buyer requests that you drop the price, or complete home improvements prior to contracts being exchanged. That’s your signal to start those sleepless nights again, balancing your financial commitments to what cash you are likely to receive in this uncertain exchange.
Sadly, in some cases, the survey findings lead to the buyers dropping out. In fact, that can happen at any point, right up to the exchange of contracts. What a total punch in the guts it is when your buyer changes their minds for some reason. The temptation is to track them down and scream “Why?” but such behaviour (and your visit from the police) just adds to the stress.
So, you just have to start again with the dusting, polishing and cleaning.
There are times your devotion to the housework (and those wafting smells of fresh baked biscuits) reap dividends and you find a buyer quickly, then effortlessly waltz passed the whole survey scenario.
Now you can relax? This is the point when control passes to the people handling the conveyancing, also known as the “Dead Zone”. Days without progress or even information can turn into weeks. You might not be baking biscuits anymore but you might well be comfort eating to get through the long drawn out legal part of selling your house. It can drag on for a very long time.
There is a way of bypassing all of this, and getting straight from the decision to sell, to having cash in your hand, is just seven days. The ideal solution for stress-free house selling is to find a cash buyer prepared to complete quickly. No dusters or home-baked goods required.
