graceandrose

23 September 2019 Many Estate Agents see their role solely as finding the right buyer for a property and negotiate attractive terms for the seller. But estate agency has moved on. Indeed, finding a buyer is arguably one of the most straightforward aspects of selling a property. Wise sellers now seek other attributes in their Estate Agent. [...]

14 October 2018 In a competitive market, we know that as long as your property is priced attractively, it will sell. However, many people spend a fortune on improving their home expecting at least the cost of the improvements to be returned to them via an increased sale price. This can be a mistake, as almost all [...]

14 October 2018 The national housing market currently paints a rather dull picture.  Combining the prospect of “a few interest rate rises over the next few years” according to the Bank of England and the political and economic uncertainty of the ongoing Brexit negotiations and we’re left with a subdued and challenging housing market in need of some direction. What [...]

14 October 2018 Photographs form a crucially important part of the marketing mix, designed to promote your property at its best.  Every image counts, as people will decide whether to inquire further or dismiss a property based solely on the first impression given by the photographs. So why allow your Estate Agent, an amateur photographer, to take [...]

16 January 2018 For homeowners wishing to sell their property and buy another, it’s the classic dilemma – what do you do first? Sell first or Buy first?...the Chicken or the Egg? Typically, people will start investigating the market to find out what they can buy for their money and inevitably, it’s during this initial research that they will [...]

12 December 2017 For a few years now, following the Government’s overhaul of the mortgage market, known as the Mortgage Market Review (or MMR), much tighter mortgage application regulations have been in force.  In addition, this year’s further tightening from the Bank of England focused on enforcing stringent new stress tests for banks when assessing a person’s [...]

8 December 2017 The keys to selling any property are price, location and exposure.  You can’t change the location of your property and the market ultimately determines the price.  However, your Agent can make significant inroads into how powerfully your property is exposed to the market. One of the most effective methods is the “open house”.  This [...]

28 November 2017 Our last article considered some of the dangers associated with pricing your home in relation to other properties available for sale (i.e. those remaining unsold). This time we’ll consider pricing in relation to properties which have actually sold. When considering what asking price to quote, common sense dictates that the price of other homes [...]

17 October 2017 When considering the value of a property prior to putting it on the market, many vendors understandably look at the asking price of other properties currently on the market locally and draw pricing conclusions based on this research. Whilst this is not an unreasonable way of determining value, there are some traps to watch [...]

16 October 2017 As a buyer you are in a powerful position, both in terms of the effect your buying decision will have on your own life, and on that of the person from whom you buy. If a property were some form of commodity like petrol or milk, then you would simply buy the cheapest stock [...]