Tips to make your home sell faster

Preparing your home for viewers is important. It will not only ensure your property sells faster but for a higher sale price; potentially adding thousands of pounds to its value.

Declutter – but keep it looking like a home

Get rid of items that have accumulated. Put it in storage, sell it, give it away or bin it. Consider removing any bulky furniture that makes the room feel small and replacing it with smaller furniture. People need to be able to envisage what the property would look like if they were living there. People often find this difficult, so make it easy for them to see all the fantastic living space you’re offering them. But, don’t make it look like a generic hotel; leave some personality. Apart from anything else, it gives unimaginative buyers suggestions as to what they might do. People are often buying into a lifestyle as much as a property.

Give it a lick of paint

Giving your walls a fresh lick of neutral paint will make your home seem lighter and bigger, create a blank canvass, but not a clinic! It will enable the viewers to more easily imagine how they would adapt the rooms to their needs. It will be easier for the buyers to move in and use the rooms immediately than if the walls were still bright purple or lime green.

Maximise kerb appeal

Kerb appeal creates a lasting first impression – most buyers make up their minds in the first few minutes of arriving at a property.

A survey of more than 2,000 UK adults conducted by YouGov, revealed the most important features for kerb appeal were well-maintained windows and a roof that appeared in good condition. A well-maintained front garden, pathways and fences and a well-painted frontage were also important. See how much it costs to do some simple updates to the exterior of your home to enhance its kerb appeal and value. Don’t forget to clean any stains from the drive and have any block paving professionally cleaned and water sealed, to give it a beautiful sheen.

Fix & Clean

Make any minor repairs – holes in walls, broken door knobs, cracked tiles, torn or threadbare carpets. Many buyers want to move in without making changes, so allow for this. Clean everything until it sparkles. Get rid of limescale, clean and repair tile grout, wax wooden floors, get rid of odours, hang up fresh towels. This will make the place more appealing and allow viewers to imagine living there. Tidy the garden: cut bushes back, clean the patio and furniture of lichen and dirt, and cut the grass. While this doesn’t add much value to your home, it makes it more likely to sell as people visualise themselves using the garden.

Update the kitchen

The kitchen is the most valuable room in a house. It is worth the most per square foot and can make the difference when buyers are unsure. Consider refacing your kitchen cabinetry. This is much cheaper than installing new cabinetry and often as effective. Upgrading kitchen counter tops is expensive, but can add serious value. Declutter the surfaces and just leave a bowl of fruit out. Take out any bulky appliances that you aren’t using. Consider upgrading the plumbing fixtures and white goods, but keep in mind that while that could make your property sell faster, you will be unlikely to recoup their full value. Consider giving it a detail clean, don’t miss anything including the grout between the tiles!

Use Mirrors to make space

Wall mirrors make a room look much bigger and lighter. Consider putting some up, especially in smaller rooms or hallways. Clean windows inside and out, and replace any broken light bulbs. Making the place feel light and airy makes rooms feel bigger and the property more attractive. Ensure that you have lamps on in any dark corners. Take your time and plan this carefully, if it is done properly, your home should feel bigger, but the mirrors will not be obvious.

Light a fire

If it’s a cold evening, or even chilly day, light your fire. This will make your home feel warm and inviting. If you don’t have a fire then ensure the fireplace is clean.

Dress your home

Make sure the windows are properly dressed with blinds or curtains as naked windows make a place feel impersonal and run down. Buy some cheap ones if necessary. Plants and flowers bring colour, life and light to a room and also smell wonderful. So does that fruit bowl on your kitchen counter.

Smells Sells

Win their hearts with beautiful smells. Bad smells are the single biggest turn off for prospective buyers. Don’t just cover them up, fix the source of the smell. Clear drains, wash bins, open windows, air the kitchen from old cooking smells, get rid of furniture that is embedded with cigarette smoke, and wash any grimy bed sheets. If you are a smoker, place bowls of vinegar around the house and leave out for three days. Though the vinegar will smell when you open the windows it will disappear quickly taking most of the stale cigarette smell out with it.

Conversely, good smells can make a property feel like an alluring home. While it might be impractical to bake fresh bread, cakes or brownies for every viewer that visits your home, you could perhaps brew some fresh coffee.

Display & presentation

Good presentation is everything. Your home must be a meticulously prepared show house, for every viewing, this is hard, especially after five or ten viewings, but one emotional bid from a buyer who falls in love with your home could mean thousands more in your final selling price.

Summary

More often than not, people looking for property, are working to a set criteria, price, location, garden, schools, ect. More often than not, they know what type of property they will be viewing, before they see it, so aim to exceed their expectations. Most buyers make a decision to buy in the first twenty minutes, so make every one of those minutes count.

The Scrooges at Threadneedle Street are preparing to deliver an unwelcome Christmas present for millions of borrowers and wannabe home buyers: the first Bank of England interest rate rise for more than three years and only the third since July 2007.

The nudge on the interest rate tiller is likely to be tiny, probably only 0.15 per cent, lifting Bank Rate from an all-time low of 0.1 per cent to a still remarkably skinny 0.25 per cent.

But what will it mean for mortgage holders and those looking to take out new home loans?

For the majority that already have mortgages on fixed deals — probably around two thirds of the total and 90 per cent of new borrowers — very little in the short term at least. Their products are locked in to the rates they took them out at until the fixed term expires.

For the minority on variable and tracker rates their borrowings costs will rise in line with the Bank of England rate.

So a borrower with a tracker rate of say, 1.5 per cent, is likely to see that go up to 1.65 per cent.

For a borrower with a £250,000 repayment mortgage that will mean an increase in monthly bills from £999.86 to £1,017.56. Not crippling, but not welcome either on top of all the other rising costs of living such as gas bills.

Will mortgage interest rates rise soon?

The fixed rates available in the market to first time buyers, movers or remortgagers are unlikely to go up on the day of the announcement from the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee next month or possibly in December.

They are linked to the swap rates at which banks and building societies can borrow in the City’s wholesale markets and  have already been creeping up, albeit from remarkable lows, over recent days in anticipation of the Old Lady’s move.

What’s the cheapest mortgage deal I can get now?

Although sub-one per cent fixed rate deals are still available to borrowers with deposits of 40 per cent or more, they are steadily drying up.

Over the past fortnight they have fallen from 131 to 116 — mainly two-year fixes — according to data from Moneyfacts with more being withdrawn virtually every day.

The increases are still small. One of the biggest high street players Barclays, for example, raised its two years fixed rate this week from 0.86 per cent to 0.91 per cent.

Its five-year fix for borrowers with a 25 per cent deposit went up from 1.21 per cent to 1.31 per cent. At the very bottom of the market five year fixed rates were available below one per cent earlier in the year.

Mark Harris, chief executive of mortgage broker SPF Private Clients, said: “If you are one of the lucky ones who got a five year fix at below one per cent that is probably as low as it’s going to get — but they are still historically low rates.”

The market remain incredibly competitive with lenders sitting on vast lakes of cheap money that they struggle to know what to do with.

Mr Harris said lenders were caught in a game of bluff, reluctant to be the first to raise rates and lose market share, or be the last and get squeezed on their profit margin.

What are the best mortgage deals for first-time buyers?

Ray Boulger, senior technical manager at broker John Charcol, pointed out that at the other end of the loan to value spectrum some rates are even falling, good news for London first time buyers struggling to clamber onto the ladder at a time when prices are rising again.

For example Newcastle Building Society announced this week that it is reducing its rate on two year fixes for borrowers with only a five per cent deposit by 0.3 per cent to 2.79 per cent, while its five year fixed rate has gone down by 0.29 per cent to 3.19 per cent.

Should I lock in a cheap mortgage now?

When the puff of white smoke finally emerges from the metaphorical chimneys of the Bank of England next month or December, it will come as no shock to the City, the mortgage markets or borrowers.

A rise has been on the cards ever since it was clear that inflation will remain stubbornly above its two per cent target well into next year.

The more interesting questions are how far and how quickly will rates rise.

Next month’s increase may only add a few tens of pounds to typical mortgage bills, but further steps will see that accumulate to significant and painful sums.

If ever there was a time to lock into rates that remain lower than almost any point in the history of lending it is now.

Council tax should be scrapped and replaced with annual payment equivalent to 0.5% of homeowner’s property, says think-tank

• Labour-leaning think-tank suggests council tax should be replaced by annual levy
  The Institute for Public Policy Research called for a ‘proportional property tax’
  Under their system, someone living in a house worth £1million would pay £5,000

As well as replacing council tax, the new levy would also replace the stamp duty which people pay when they move house.

The think-tank said the move would lead to a fall in house prices of 3 per cent in London and other well-off places in the South.
Shreya Nanda, IPPR economist, said: ‘Those who did not own property during the long house price boom have been locked out, and too many face steep rents, cramped flats and eye-watering mortgages.
‘A proportional property tax would instead ensure that these gains were shared more fairly across society.’

A property tax of 0.5 per cent could mean three quarters of households in England paying less than what they do now.

Last night, a Treasury source said there were no plan to introduce such a property tax.

This is a statement by Andrew Dixon, founder of ‘Fairer Share’

The Government has a problem when it comes to its “levelling up” the UK agenda. It has promised to make a meaningful difference in the lives of their voters, particularly in the ‘red wall’. But doing so requires the combination of long-term investments in transport, broadband, education, and dispersion of private enterprise across the country. In other words, not a lot that voters will notice any time soon.

This is where tax comes in. Changing the tax code can be done in a matter of years rather than decades. Effective change can put cash in the hands of voters between election cycles, making a difference to household finances that voters can feel when their MP next shows up on their doorstep.

The most egregious part of the current system is our property taxes. Council tax is regressive, forcing millions into debt, while stamp duty puts a brake on mobility, and hinders economic growth.

At Fairer Share, we advocate council tax and stamp duty abolition replaced by a proportional property tax where owners would pay 0.48 per cent of their property value every year. Across England, 76 per cent of households would gain under the system, seeing a reduction in the amount of tax they pay on their primary residence. The biggest winners are, helpfully for the Government, located in the North and Midlands – areas that the Government so desperately wants to level up.

Council tax in particular is antithetical to levelling up. Council tax values are 30 years old, a year older than the first text message and four years older than DVDs. They result in distortionary costs that hit the North and Midlands hardest. A resident of Hartlepool, for example, in a £150,000 home would pay over £2,000 in council tax whereas a £10million mansion in Westminster would pay just £1600. On average every resident in Hartlepool pays 2.5 times the rate of council tax to property value than the national average.

Revaluation is desperately needed and valuations need to be done continuously so that we never reach this absurd system again.

Work done by the International Property Tax Institute shows that there is no technical problem with revaluation. A wide variety of different jurisdictions (including New York City, Ontario, British Columbia) and countries (including Netherlands, New Zealand) use some sort of automated valuation model to aid their property tax systems.  Zoopla, Rightmove, and Hometrack provide a pretty decent example of private companies in the UK who do this work and if we wanted to maintain the system wholly with the state, the Valuation Office Agency already has the required data in order to implement the system itself.

We would not have to go far to find a model of similar type. Property tax in the Netherlands is based on much the same principles as a proportional property tax and undertakes re-evaluations on an annual basis.

But the Government knows this because it does a similar but harder job already. Business rates revaluations are undertaken on a regular basis. There is a broad consensus that this is much more technically challenging than valuations of residential property with higher levels of resulting challenges to valuations.

Resultingly the Government should not worry about overwhelming the VOA with challenges. Residential property valuation challenges internationally are less than two per centt of the stock, and less than half the rate of challenges for business rates. With bills coming down for the vast majority of properties, most people will take their cash and run before they worry about their valuation. For those whose bills rise, the cap at £100 per month will limit the need for revaluations at the top end of the market as well.

The only reason revaluation has not happened already is that it has been deemed too politically difficult to do while maintaining the old, unfair system of council tax. And therein lies the real problem.

But by sticking with the status quo, both the Conservatives and Labour are missing a trick. Both parties know that voters in and around the red wall will be crucial to their prospects in the next general election. They should also know that current proposals around infrastructure are unlikely to shift the dial with these voters by the time the next general election comes around.

Economic analysis by Fairer Share makes clear that a proportional property tax would lead to lower bills for most households in England. A number of Labour and Conservative MPs want their leaderships to get behind the policy, along with think tanks from both sides of the political spectrum. More than 120,000 people have also signed the Fairer Share petition calling on the Government to replace council tax, stamp duty and the bedroom tax with a Proportional Property Tax.

Our analysis also makes clear that concerns about valuations are a red herring. A fairer system would clear the hurdle for valuations. It should not stop either Labour or the Conservatives from doing what is needed in the UK and reforming our outdated unfair residential property tax system.

The average house price dipped for the first time since January, falling by 0.5% in June, according to the latest Halifax house price index.

As a result, annual house price inflation eased to 8.8%, compared to 9.6% in May.

Despite this, average prices are still more than £21,000 higher than this time last year, following a “broadly unprecedented period of gains”, according to the research.

Additionally, whilst the two Midlands regions and Greater London saw slightly slower annual price gains compared to May, all the other regions and nations continued to see a strengthening of inflation.

Wales (12.0%) continues to lead the way on annual house price growth, registering its strongest performance since April 2005, whilst Northern Ireland (11.5%), the North West (11.5%), Yorkshire and Humberside (10.9%) and Scotland (10.4%) all registered double-digit gains.

For Northern Ireland and Scotland, the annual price rises were the highest recorded since late 2007, while for the North West and Yorkshire, inflation was the strongest since early 2005.

At the other end of the scale, the South of England continues to lag somewhat behind the rest of the country, with Eastern England and the South East recording inflation rates of around 7%.

Greater London saw house price inflation of just 2.9% year-on-year, though Halifax says “there are several unique factors likely to be weighing on the capital’s property market”.

Halifax’s managing director, Russell Galley, said: “With the stamp duty holiday now being phased out, it was predicted the market might start to lose some steam entering the latter half of the year, and it’s unlikely that those with mortgages approved in the early months of summer expected to benefit from the maximum tax break, given the time needed to complete transactions.

“That said, with the tapered approach, those purchasing at the current average price of £260,358 would still only pay about £500 in stamp duty at today’s rates, increasing to around £3,000 when things return to normal from the start of October.

“Government support measures over the last year have helped to boost demand, particularly amongst buyers searching for larger family homes at the upper end of the market. Indeed, the average price of a detached home has risen faster than any other property type over the past 12 months, up by more than 10% or almost £47,000 in cash terms. At a cost of over half a million pounds, they are now £200,000 more expensive than the typical semi-detached house.

“That power of homemovers to drive the market, as people look to find properties with more space, spurred on by increased time spent at home during the pandemic, won’t fade entirely as the economy recovers. Coupled with buyers chasing the relatively small number of available properties, and continued low borrowing rates, it’s a trend which can sustain high average prices for some time to come.

“However, we would still expect annual growth to have slowed somewhat more by the end of the year, with unemployment expected to edge higher as job support measures unwind, and the peak of buyer demand now likely to have passed.”

Tom Bill, head of UK residential research at Knight Frank, commented: “The figures indicate how the second half of the year is unlikely to bear much resemblance to the first half for the UK housing market. We expect house price growth to narrow to mid-single digits as tax breaks wind down and supply picks up. Comparisons with the global financial crisis are misleading given how low interest rates remain and the fact the mortgage market acts as more of a brake and less of a lubricant for housing market activity than it did in 2007.

“House prices were driven higher by a supply squeeze as the UK came out of the pandemic, an effect seen in other sectors of the economy. If you add in a stamp duty holiday and the fact pent-up demand had been building for five years against the uncertain backdrop of Brexit, the result was a burst of house price inflation. In what may be a sign of things to come in the UK, housing market activity is now beginning to moderate in North American markets as the distortive effects of the pandemic recede.”

Sundeep Patel, director of sales at specialist lender Together, added: “Today’s figures reflect the first signs of stamp duty winding up, with house prices falling by -0.5% in June, the first monthly dip since January. Annual growth also softened at +8.8% compared to May’s +9.6%.

“While the average house in the UK costs £260,358 – and prices are still over £21,000 more than they were this time last year – this dip has largely been anticipated given activity is expected to slow further after the summer. Indeed, it’s likely we’ll see figures dropping from the top end down to lower single digits by the end of the year. With the hotly anticipated Freedom Day back in our sights, a slight return to normality could see more sellers list their homes, offering broader supply in what’s been an overpopulated market.”

“Specialist lenders will be paying close attention to the shape of the market over the next few months. There are likely to be opportunities created from the backlog in demand from keen buyers needing better flexibility from the highstreet in order to quickly snap up properties.”

Grand Design fans may recognise the water tower home which cost its former owners nearly £2 million to transform.

The Grand Designs water tower in Kennington, that once supplied the workhouse that Charlie Chaplin lived in as a child, has finally been sold after the price was slashed from £3.6 million to £2.75 million — Homes and Property can exclusively reveal.

The unique 10-storey property, which was rescued from dereliction just over a decade ago and underwent a £2 million transformation into 4,500sq ft home, has sold this time around in less than two months and has just made the stamp duty holiday deadline.

The Chancellor’s Covid tax break saves buyers £15,000 and ends on 30 June.

Dating back 150 years, the abandoned structure was bought in 2010 by a savvy real estate developer and his partner and converted on a nail-biting episode on Grand Designs.

The new owner is considering adding a hot tub to the unusual property’s glamorous roof terrace / Foxtons
Leigh Osborne and his partner Graham Voce spotted the tower from their rented apartment on the 36th floor of the Strata building, just a few hundred yards away.

They bought it for just £380,000 and spent close to £2 million in transforming the abandoned Grade II-listed building into a five-bedroom, four-bathroom home. They risked everything to complete the project, which cost far more than they had budgeted for, and even put some costs on Osborne’s grandmother’s credit card.

The home was first put on the market by Osborne and Voce in 2018 where it sat for six months before the price was lowered once and withdrawn. It was then launched again in April at the lower price as lockdown restrictions began to ease. Contracts were exchanged this week.

The tower was built in 1867 to provide a 30,000-gallon water supply for the nearby Lambeth Workhouse where more than 800 destitute families were once housed and where seven-year-old Charlie Chaplin lived with his impoverished mother.

The renovated tower’s top room is used as a reception area and covers 24 sq ft with panoramic views / Foxtons
The refurbishment included the restoration of the tower and the addition of a two-level glass cube on top giving views across central and south London with the largest sliding doors in Europe installed. The breath-taking top room is used as a reception area and covers 24 sq ft with panoramic views.

“I have always been fascinated by castles and this is the closest I’ll get to owning one in central London. I plan to put a dining table in the top observation room and may look into a hot tub if the roof terrace allows,” says Hamer.