Eight top tips for selling your house when it has been for sale for a while

Eight top tips for selling your house when it has been for sale for a while

Our house has been on the market for four months and it has not yet sold. We have had plenty of viewings but no offers and very little feedback as to what the viewers are not liking about the house. The feedback all seems to be that the house is lovely, in great repair, but no offers.

I thought I would ask fellow bloggers in my ‘Blogging Your Way to Riches’ community if they had experience of selling a house and any top tips they had to push a sale along. So here are their top tips.

The Price

My thoughts firstly are that the price is too high. We priced the house based on three estate agent valuations and houses for sale nearby. But now we think that its priced too high. The first thing to change should be the price. The house is currently on the market for £475k so maybe we will reduce it by £10 to £15k. This was the advice given to us by our online estate agent eMoov as well.

De-clutter

Sarah from Champagne and Petals suggested a big declutter session. Box up anything that isn’t needed and store in loft, garage or even at a friend’s house. Make the house look like it has got plenty of storage because everything has a home.

Tidy up the outside area including neighbours!

Melissa from At Home and Online did this when selling her flat. She ended up cleaning up the surrounding area after her flat was on sale for a few months. They swept dirt and leaves from parking spaces, cleared the weeds along the pavements, cut the grass that the council was meant to cut, and basically cleaned up anything scruffy that belonged to any of the neighbours. They thought perhaps people were driving past before arranging a viewing, and didn’t want to deter anyone before they’d even been inside.

Remove any physical blocks

Hollie from Thrifty Mum saw a psychic and she advised to get rid of physical blocks in the house. They ate through a block of food in the freezer that had merged together, cleared out anything that blocked light getting in the house and made clear paths through rooms so even coffee tables were removed to create a continuous flow throughout. Plus, they found somewhere they wanted to move to and lived and breathed that house, pretending they owned it to make it happen.

Social Media

Eileen from Your Money Sorted advised to use the power of social media. Share your best description and pictures/videos of it on local sales pages. Ask all your friends and family to share it too and to post it on their local sales pages. Think of all the big employers in the area and try to find a way of connecting with them via social media too.

Invest in getting the little jobs done

Faith from Much more with Less suggests investing in getting any little jobs done, so buyers didn’t worry about the expense and hassle of fixing them: replaced the back fence, fixed a leaky tap, repainted the main bedroom, got the windows cleaned and so on.

Update the Photos

Venessa from Jibber Jabber UK says to ensure your photos look current. If they show summer flowers now it shows the property isn’t shifting for some reason. I remember looking at property details and there was snow on the ground in the photos which was five months previously. Also consider an open day. Yes, you’ll get the usual nosey parkers but many people fall in love with a house once they get the chance to get inside.

Ensure every room has a purpose

Kate from Refined Prose makes a very valid point, particularly about the windows! Bake, declutter, and clean the windows! Her biggest tip would be to ensure every room has a clear purpose; is it an office, or a bedroom? Lots of people seem unable to visualise beyond what’s in front of them, so it’s important to make sure that you’re demonstrating an appealing space.

So many great tips and advice in here that we will absolutely be following. The plan of action is to have a bit of break and take the house off the market until after Christmas. The great thing about eMoov is that our for-sale contract is valid for a whole twelve months so we are free to take it off the market and put it back on again as we see fit.

We will relist in the new year for the busiest house sale time of the year. Then we will follow all the advice in these tips from a huge declutter session to removing of blockers and cleaning the windows. Thank you everyone for your top advice.

This is a collaborative post with eMoov. The CEO of EMoov is an amazing man called Russell Quirk who tonight on 30th October sleeps rough outside all in the name of charity.  Raising money for the homeless. If you would like to donate his Just Giving link is here.