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How to sell residential property

The property magazines run articles on how to prepare your house for buyers – sending half your possessions into store and lashing out on fresh flowers and fresh coffee works wonders apparently. To get a trouble-free sale and the best value out of your conveyancing solicitor, it is worth making sure that the legal formalities are in order before the prospective buyers turn up at the door. The Government's Home Information Packs may have been delayed, and the Home Condition Report will not now be compulsory, but there is still much preparation to be done.

Much of this is plain common sense – it is obviously worth making the house look attractive whatever the state of the market and this becomes the more important if there are a dozen similar properties which the viewer might go for instead. It is just as important, however, to be ready to jump quickly when a viewer suddenly becomes a potential buyer.

This article is about the steps which a property seller should take before putting the house on the market to make the conveyancing process as quick and easy as possible. Money spent on the fresh paint, flowers and coffee is wasted if unforeseen hitches prevent you from delivering the goods when the buyer decides to proceed with you.

The Government has back-tracked on its original heavy-handed proposals for Home Information Packs (HIPs), and the Home Condition Report, originally intended to be compulsory, is now voluntary. A Home Information Pack will still become compulsory from 1 August 2007 for houses of four or more bedrooms, and will include "the Energy Performance Certificate, searches and other legal documents".

Nevertheless, it makes sense to prepare in advance for a quick sale, just in case either you or your buyer needs to move quickly when the time comes. There are enough potential hurdles in the way without introducing some of your own by lack of preparation.

What should be done in advance?

In a seller’s market, the selling agents favour one buyer over another not just on the size of the offer but on their readiness to proceed. So an applicant with a house to sell is less attractive than one who is renting; one who needs a mortgage goes down the queue compared with one with cash in the bank.

The corollary in a buyer’s market is that sellers able to choose between several properties will favour the one who can leap into action as soon as the offer is accepted.

The sellers’ solicitor is often the last one to know of an impending sale. However fast your solicitor moves, and even without the Home Information Pack requirements, there is information to be obtained from the Land Registry, from the Local Authority and from your lender which can take several days, if not weeks, to assemble. If instead, the solicitors are primed in advance (before marketing even starts), they can put together the relevant documents such as:

	Full Local Authority and Environmental Search
	Office Copy and Copy all Deeds, planning and consents
	Contract
	Answers to Enquiries and property information
	Answers to Standard Requisitions
	Draft Transfer
	List of Fixtures and Fittings being sold
	Any other documents required for Home Information Pack - see list

Even this is only a start in many cases – the basics relevant to any sale. Other factors which may arise include difficulties over:

It is better to iron any of these out before marketing starts. They may affect the price to be asked. More significantly, perhaps, the late discovery of a problem may result in an aborted sale. A house which is seen to go back on the market becomes tainted and this, in a buyers’ market, may be fatal to any sale.

There are also positive reasons for such advance preparation. This work has got to be done anyway at some point, and it is generally more cost-effective to do it in advance rather than in haste. Moreover, suppose there are several buyers – even in a buyers’ market attractive houses can attract much interest. The seller who has everything ready is in a position to go to sealed bids or an informal auction at the drop of a hat.

By all means call in the decorators and florists and lay in fresh coffee when you decide to sell your house. But first get in touch with your solicitor to make sure that you are in a position to proceed quickly if your selling stratagems do the trick.

For more details about any aspect of dealing with Commercial Property or Residential Property contact Felix Appelbe BSc. Estate Management. FRSA on 020 7242 7000 or use the Contact Request Form.

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