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5 tips for selling your home without an estate agent

17th August 2015 Print

If you want a job doing well, then do it yourself. Or so the saying goes. There are a great many of us who would much rather take charge of our own affairs than leave it to others.

That’s especially true when it comes to looking to save time, money and effort in cutting out people who seem to cost us in all three of those aspects.

So how does cutting the perennially unpopular high street estate agent out of your house sale sound? Good? Right, well, here are five tips on how to get by without one…

The price is right

It is perfectly possible to bypass a traditional estate agent, but that does mean doing your homework. Head online and look at all the homes for sale in your street, neighbourhood and town that are similar in size to yours. Make an honest comparison to your property and, as a result, come up with a fair assessment for the price you will charge. You must monitor this regularly too and don’t be afraid to drop the price slightly if you’ve made a wrong move. 

Good pictures

You’ll need to step in and take photographs of your property yourself. That might be no bad thing. After all, there are plenty of horrific examples of pictures used by estate agents. When you’re researching the market for price, look through the photos used to promote properties too. See what sort of images work well and which angles provide the best view of a room. Take plenty of images and choose the best ones. Make sure you have images of each room – people get suspicious if there are no pictures of the kitchen, for example – and don’t forget to picture the outside too. Taking these will force you to tidy up to get your home ready to be shown off to would-be buyers.

A View To A Sale

Which brings us to the viewings. These will have traditionally been organised through the estate agent so prepare to field calls and try to be as flexible as possible to allow people to come around when they want. The benefit you’ll have is that you can cut out the middleman and interact with prospective buyers yourself. That’s particularly important when it comes the actual viewing. Let the buyer have the freedom to look around, answer all of their questions and don’t be too pushy. They might actually relish the chance to shake off the shackles of a salesman.

Online option

If you fancy a sensible compromise option – where you still get advice and support with all of the above but without the hassle of the high street shop visits – why not try an online seller? Sites such as Housesimple.com offer to cut the cost and time of a house sale – and strip away the unnecessary hassle and cost of the high street operators. The important thing to remember is that you should not be constrained by the traditional path.

Clear strategy

Before you enter into a house sale make sure you are clear about what you are doing. So, for example, set a ‘lowest price’ in your head and don’t allow yourself to go below this in the heat of the moment. Be patient, be positive and make sure that whether you go it totally alone or go for a new online path you follow a clear, positive plan. Treat it with the rigour of a business task – identifying and completing all of the paperwork required.