Selling a home, stage by stage

The seller's process is the same process viewed from the other end, but the decisions are different. A seller controls three things — price, presentation and readiness — and very little else.

The sequence

1. Decide the constraintWhether the sale is governed by a price floor or by a date. Almost every later decision follows from this and it is worth settling before anything is listed.
2. Prepare the propertyRepair what is obviously broken, clear what is obviously surplus, and leave the rest. Presentation moves speed more than price.
3. Prepare the paperworkTitle documents, guarantees, planning consents and any certificates for work carried out. Missing paperwork is the most common avoidable delay in the legal stage.
4. Set the asking priceA marketing position, not a valuation. Too high and the listing ages; an aged listing is read by buyers as a signal, and the eventual sale price is often lower than a realistic opening would have achieved.
5. Market and viewPhotographs, floor plan, description, and viewings arranged so the property is seen in the light it looks best in and at the times the street is representative.
6. Assess offersPrice is one variable. Position in a chain, funding, deposit and flexibility on date are the others, and they routinely outweigh a small difference in price.
7. Instruct and respondThe seller's conveyancer answers enquiries, supplies documents and negotiates any renegotiation after the buyer's survey.
8. Exchange and completeCommit, agree the date, move out, hand over. The seller's last practical obligation is to leave the property as it was represented, including whatever was listed as included.

Pricing as a marketing decision

An asking price does two jobs at once. It states a position, and it determines which buyers ever see the listing at all, because most searching is done in price brackets. A property priced just above a common bracket boundary is invisible to a whole population of buyers who would otherwise have viewed it. This is a mechanical effect and it is worth more attention than it usually gets.

The other mechanical effect is listing age. Time on market is visible or inferable to buyers, and a long-standing listing invites a lower offer regardless of the property. The cost of an optimistic opening price is therefore not zero and not recoverable simply by reducing later.

What presentation is for

Presentation does not persuade a buyer that a house is larger or better located than it is. What it does is remove friction: it lets a viewer picture living there instead of picturing work. Its main effect is on the number of viewings that turn into offers and on the time the sale takes. A seller governed by a date should spend on presentation; a seller governed by a price floor should spend on removing genuine defects instead.

Assessing an offer properly

Write down, for each offer, the price, the buyer's position in a chain, how the purchase is funded, whether a mortgage agreement exists, and the earliest date the buyer could complete. The best offer is frequently not the highest one, and the difference is usually the probability that it completes at all.

The enquiries stage

Most of the seller's remaining work happens here and most of it is documentary. Buyers' solicitors ask about boundaries, disputes, alterations, guarantees, services, rights of way and what is included. Answering fully and early compresses the timetable; answering slowly or partially is how a straightforward sale takes an extra two months.

Two things sellers routinely underestimate

First, the cost side of the sale, which includes legal fees, agency fees where used, the removal itself and any overlap in housing costs. Second, the fact that the buyer's survey will find something. It nearly always does. Treating that as an expected step rather than an accusation makes the resulting conversation far shorter.