Step one to a successful private sale

Selling your home step by step is made easy with AP Private Sale Consultants. Step one to a successful sale is preparing your home for market. This is important for each individual home as you will have competition ie a startup home may only need a simple clean and tidy. A young couple or investor will want a home they can add value to. For you it may be as simple as just moving it on.

A property that is at the middle to high end of the market will require more diligence in preparation. Having the property well maintained and beautifully presented will easily help it pass a building inspection and may also not require a builders report as potential purchasers will appreciate its meticulous appearance.

You want the most money you can attain from the property so investing in maintenance and beautifying the home will usually bring dividends. We can help you calculate how much you should spend and what projects are worth spending money on. There is no point on spending $100,000 to bring a home up a certain standard only to make an extra $100,000 when you sell it. Each property will be unique and we will assist you in what you should and shouldn’t do to present the property for market.

Step two – Comparative market analysis of your home and gauging the competition

Step two for a successful sale is knowing how much your property is worth and its market value. We will talk you though the process. Once you have a comprehensive understanding of the exact value of your home, its time to research your competition. Competition can require a strategic marketing plan. It’s all well and good knowing what comparative homes have recently sold for – but what is YOUR competition.

This is why registered valuations don’t determine the sale price in a sellers market. When properties are selling fast at asking price or above, the properties a valuer uses for comparison are already out of date. No point comparing your home to properties sold in the last 6 months if the market has gone up 30% that year. In 4 months the property has already gone up 10%. On a two million dollar home that’s a $200,000 increase. You need to determine what is happening in the market and price accordingly.

If there are only 2 buyers in the market for your type of property, and there are 5 similar properties on the market, you will need an edge – something that elevates your property above the competition. Selling privately already gives you an advantage over your competitors as purchasers know they can save on not having to pay Real estate agent fees. With trust in real estate agents at an all time low, the other obvious benefit will be the purchaser’s willingness to deal with you directly.

Step three – photos and marketing preparing for maximum interest and

Showing your property clean, tidy and well maintained is the best way to encourage interest. Often ‘less is more’ when it comes to photography so select optimal images for your advert. There is no need to photograph your toilet. Buyers can do a lot of due diligence on your property themselves with Google Maps and various property web sites. It’s not your job to do their due diligence. Simply SHOWCASE your home and offer the relevant information. Maximise the the highlights of the home and give a brief description. When you oversell a property it can come across as desperate. There is no need for real estate marketing drivel; ‘Nest or Invest’, ‘ticks all the boxes’, ‘a must SEA’ etc. Buyers searching on the internet want instant information, not a poem.

Your unique property will need to be presented and captured at its very best. For example, a home with sea views should be photographed at the right tide and light and the sunniest side of the house photographed at the brightest time. This is also important when it comes to viewing times. Interior rooms should be photographed on grey days to avoid shadowing etc. Professional help on presenting your home is explained far more thoroughly when you engage with us.

Step four – dealing with purchaser interest and how to negotiate between multiple buyers

So you have a fantastic advert and your house is on the market. Active buyers have watch lists with notifications the instant you place your advert so the most interest will be generated across the first few days. This is your time to wow them with the relevant information, encourage a viewing and ultimately secure an early offer. Active buyers know the market and what’s worth what.

The more relevant information you provide at the initial contact, the better. This isn’t receipts from 10 years ago for landscaping work etc. These are important facts buyers need to know to help them calculate if the home is priced correctly, and yields well if it’s an investment property. Other important information is the current tenancy status and if the property is up to the relevant tenancy code.

We will show you how to prepare for your very first enquiry. It will surpass any Land agents response. Buyers will quickly recognise you know what you are doing and appreciate the honest and valid information.

Step five – navigating the legal side of a purchase sale agreement (PSA), under contract and unconditional

To be very clear. Never sign a PSA without first allowing your solicitor to view the PSA and offer advice. A fantastic solicitor is essential. With many successful private sales behind us we can confidently guide you on securing both diligent and proven solicitors.

Access to the latest edition Sale and Purchase agreement and how to go about drafting a PSA is imperative. No buyer wants to enter a contract with you if you don’t know what to do – thats why we are here to guide you through the process. You should also avoid using your solicitor to negotiate with their solicitors from start to finish – just imagine the expense negotiating with four buyers through solicitors.

We can offer advice on clauses that your solicitor can check. Let’s be honest, the key to an easy sale is a lack of clauses. Past experiences when using a real estate agent have proven quite the opposite where the real estate agency actually added clauses into the PSA without our permission. We had issues with them removing them for an unconditional offer. Yes you read right, we wanted to submit an unconditional offer and the agent made this extremely difficult. Now perhaps you can begin to understand the benefits of selling your home privately.

Step six – negotiating with buyers

The ability to negotiate with multi buyers is one the most beneficial aspects of selling property privately. You don’t have to get all offers submitted in a hurry and only chose one buyer to negotiate with. This is the standard practice of a real estate agency. If a buyer wants to make an offer on your property, a call will go out to all other agents in the office to quickly reach out to their clients to see if they too want to make an offer. Then hastily they present these offers to the vendor. Due to Office politics multi offers from multiple agents will be offered to you via the Principle agent. This deters bias amongst the agents, but does nothing to benefit you the vendor.

If your private sale achieves multiple written offers this is great news. (To be clear an offer not in writing isn’t an offer). You can then approach each buyer personally by email or phone and suggest they may be interested in reviewing their offers. This can go backwards and forwards with all buyers – ultimately a ‘controlled auction’ which the real estate agents will not do.

Reviewing offers isn’t necessarily a financial review. Many times a cleaner deal is more favourable over price. A SIMPLE CLEAN UNCONDITIONAL OFFER IS MONEY IN THE BANK and you can move forward. Conditional offers can fall over. You may choose an offer of an extra 5k or 10k over a cleaner deal but this extra cash can easily be lost ie if conditional on a builders report or a valuation. The purchaser can opt out due to an issue on either report, or request a lower sale price. This report would likely have taken 10 working days. Your other buyers have gone cold or found another property in that time. If they haven’t they are curious why the last deal fell over. You can always negotiate afterwards with the purchaser or fix the said issue, but this will cost you time and money. Alternatively you take a hit on price to get the deal over the line. The unconditional offer of less money would have had the house sold weeks earlier with none of the stress. We can help you at this stage of the negotiations to give an unbiased professional opinion upon your situation.

Step seven – Closing the deal

Now you have a written offer you would like to accept but DO NOT SIGN OR DATE THE PSA. At this stage you send the PSA to your solicitor. Once reviewed by your solicitor who has inspected all aspects of the draft such as property description, lot numbers and clauses are correct, it can then be signed and dated. You now have a conditional agreement. Congratulations. Now it’s the purchasers time to fulfil their obligations under the contract ,unless the offer is an unconditional offer. If thats the case, well done, you are SOLD.

Selling privately eliminates yet another three way often confusing dialogue. You can talk directly to the purchasers when they arrange building reports or registered valuations. Once the property is unconditional your solicitor will receive a deposit. THIS DEPOSIT IS NOW YOURS. Not to be used for an agents commission. So if there is a $50,000 deposit and the purchaser reneges on the contract, you receive the $50,000. If you were to go through an agent, a large portion of the deposit (if not all of it) would likely be absorbed by agent commission. It gets even worse if the deposit doesn’t cover the full commission. You will be liable to pay the agents commission even if the purchaser fails to finalise their side of the contract on settlement.

As far as an agency is concerned, once the property is unconditional, it is technically sold and the agency is DUE FULL COMMISSION.

I hope you are able to see the benefits of a successful private sale and how we can assist you.

For more information on how we can help you with selling privately, email us here. info@alpineproductions.co.nz