Selling a home, step by step

Preparation is repair, not decoration

The preparation that pays is the removal of doubt: fixing what obviously does not work, clearing what obstructs the plan, and making the building legible. Buyers discount heavily for uncertainty, and a visible unresolved problem invites them to imagine a larger hidden one.

Cosmetic work has a smaller effect than sellers hope, with one exception: anything that makes a room read as larger or lighter than a photograph would otherwise suggest.

Setting the asking price

An asking price is a filter, not a valuation. Its job is to bring the right buyers to the door. Set it too high and the property is shown to people who cannot afford it, while the buyers who could are never told it exists.

The cost of an ambitious asking price is time, and time is not neutral. A property that has been available for a long stretch invites the assumption that something is wrong with it, and that assumption is then priced in on top of any reduction.

The first three weeks

Most sales are decided by the response in the first few weeks, because that is when the property is shown to everyone already looking. After that, it is only shown to people who enter the market later, which is a much smaller flow.

This is why an early lack of viewings is the most useful signal a seller gets. Viewings without offers is a different signal: the price is bringing the right people, and something about the property or its presentation is losing them.

Reading an offer

An offer has at least four parts: the figure, how the buyer is funding it, what they have to sell first, and how quickly they can proceed. A slightly lower offer from a buyer with nothing to sell is often worth more than a higher one at the top of a long chain, because the probability of completion is part of the value.

Between acceptance and exchange

The period after acceptance is the most fragile part of a sale. The buyer's legal enquiries and survey may raise questions, their funding is confirmed, and every other transaction in the chain is doing the same. Delay in any one of them is delay in all.

Providing information promptly is the seller's main lever here. Most collapses are caused by drift rather than by disagreement.

Exchange and completion

At exchange the sale becomes binding and the completion date is fixed. From that point the work is logistical: moving out, meter readings, keys, and the coordination of everyone else's move on the same day. A chain completing together is the ordinary case, not the exceptional one.