Is Your Home Ready to Compete for Buyers?

If you are considering selling this autumn, one of the most useful things you can do is look at the market from a buyer’s perspective. Search for properties around the price you expect your own home to achieve and look at what appears alongside it.

Those homes are your real competition.

Buyers currently have a relatively wide choice. Rightmove reported in July that the number of properties available for sale remained close to a 12-year high for the time of year, while Zoopla has also highlighted increased supply across much of the country. 

For sellers, this does not mean buyers have disappeared. It means they can afford to be more selective about which properties they view.

A home therefore needs to make sense from the moment somebody first sees it online. The price, photographs, presentation and description all contribute to whether a buyer clicks through, arranges a viewing or simply moves on to another property.

First impressions begin before the viewing

Most buyers will have formed an initial opinion before they ever walk through the front door. They may have looked through every photograph several times, examined the floorplan, checked the street online and compared the asking price with other properties nearby.

Presentation matters because it makes the best parts of a home easier to appreciate. That does not mean removing every family photograph or making the property look like a show home. It usually means removing the distractions that stop buyers seeing the space properly.

A spare bedroom that has slowly filled with boxes can look much smaller online than it really is. An overcrowded kitchen worktop can distract from a good amount of preparation space, while an untidy garden may make outdoor space feel less usable.

September can actually be a good time to tackle these smaller details. There is usually still enough daylight and colour outside for strong photography, while homes can start to feel naturally warmer and more inviting as autumn approaches.

Price for the market you are entering

Pricing is equally important when buyers have choice. Rightmove’s July index showed average new seller asking prices falling by 1% during the month, a larger drop than normally seen in July, as sellers competed for the attention of summer buyers. Nearly three quarters of homes that had sold during the year had done so without first needing an asking-price reduction.

The national figures do not tell you what an individual property is worth, and conditions can vary significantly between neighbouring areas and different types of home. What they do illustrate is the importance of entering the market at a figure buyers can understand.

Starting significantly above the likely market value simply to “see what happens” can work against a seller. A property's first few weeks on the market are when it is new to buyers who already have searches and alerts set up. If those buyers dismiss it on price, reducing several weeks later does not necessarily recreate that initial interest.

A sensible asking price is not about giving a property away. It is about putting it in the strongest possible position to attract viewings and, ultimately, competition between serious buyers.

Make your home an easy one to choose

Sellers sometimes concentrate so heavily on what their own home is worth that they forget buyers are making comparisons. A purchaser may like your property but also be looking at two or three others with a similar number of bedrooms, similar space and a similar price.

The question is what gives them a reason to choose yours.

It might be excellent presentation, a flexible additional room, a larger garden, better parking or simply the fact that the asking price feels appropriate for the condition and location. Good marketing should make those advantages obvious rather than expecting buyers to discover them for themselves.

As September brings more people back to their property plans, there will still be opportunities for sellers who approach the market well. The key is to think about the launch from a buyer’s perspective before the property ever goes live.

If you’re considering a move soon, complete the contact form and one of our team will arrange a no-obligation property valuation to help you understand how your home could be positioned in the current market.