How do you sell your home for a premium price?

Getting a premium price when selling your house is simple, but lots of sellers are potentially leaving money on the table by not having an effective strategy put in place by their agent. Here are four essential factors which can help you to reach a higher price for your home:

PRICE

In reality, the price a property is marketed at has no real bearing on what the property will sell for. The marketing price is only there to attract interest. As soon as a buyer is in competition, it’s the competing bid they are interested in and not the original marketing price.The property needs to be pitched competitively against competing properties in the local market to gain the interest of buyers. It’s then up to buyers to determine it’s real value.  However, on property search websites such as Rightmove, the correct pricing can help reach more buyers. It’s important to always price inline with the price brackets in the website’s search criteria.

For example, if you have a house worth ￡490,000, and the property is put on the market at ￡495,000 or ￡499,950, buyers searching for property from ￡500,000 (who are the ones that are best placed to pay more for your home as they have a larger budget) won’t see it. By pricing at ￡500,000 or ￡475,000, depending on which would put you in a more competitive position, your home will always show up to people looking ‘up to’ and ‘from’ those price points.

DISTRIBUTION

You’ve got some amazing photos, set the marketing price, and had content written for your adverts. However, it’s all pointless unless buyers are seeing it. Getting widespread and targeted distribution for your home alone probably has the biggest impact on the selling price. It’s simple: more buyers reached = more viewings booked = more offers received.

Most agents focus their attention on ‘active’ buyers. Active buyers are those who search on property portals and agent websites. But what happens if your ideal buyer hasn’t seen your property yet? It could fall ￡10,000 below the search criteria they are using, or it could be 0.1 mile outside of their search radius. Overcoming this is where most agents struggle - and relying on an agency’s buyers database is not enough. These types of buyers we classify as ‘passive buyers’ - they come across your property in a passive way, often through targeted digital advertising that Hortons uses.

CREATING A COMPETITIVE MARKET

We aim to make every home a ‘best seller’ which means creating a highly competitive environment and suspense in order to generate more offers which are higher. We use a range of techniques in order to do this, but one of the most effective is block-booking viewings. This is not an open house ‘free for all’; open houses can actually put buyers off. A block viewing enables each buyer to have their own time in the property and the agent also then has time to speak to them properly. Plus, with buyers crossing on the doorstep, demand is visible. The fact that a buyer has a specific time slot means a buyer will know they are one of many potential buyers.

A MULTI-OFFER NEGOTIATION STRATEGY

After pricing the property correctly, targeting active and passive buyers and creating a competitive environment for buyers, hopefully there will be multiple offers, and this will enable the price to be pushed up. A multi offer situation should only be managed by an experienced estate agent and requires careful handling. Accepting an offer too soon could mean buyers could have dug a bit deeper into their pockets; too late and you will lose momentum. The negotiations could result in buyers being asked for their ‘best and final’ offer before a deadline, meaning there is time to look at all the potential options. This is a great way to achieve a premium as each buyer is looking to offer just slightly more than the next.

Taking all these points into consideration, a well crafted marketing and negotiation strategy which includes things such as video marketing, Google advertising, lifestyle photography, social media marketing and WhatsApp marketing, regularly adds 3-6% more in sales value for our clients than the national average % of asking price. It’s our number one aim to provide the maximum return for our sales commission; the vast majority of our clients come to Hortons for our track record of achieving the best possible prices, as well as making the sales process as easy as possible.