In January of this year my hubby and I decided that it was time to move on to the next stage of our lives and move house. I deliberated long and hard about whether it was a good move to take part in the A-Z Challenge this year (pun intended) given that we could be very busy, but decided on balance that having something to focus on might not be a bad idea. Of course the decision on a theme was much easier to make – Moving House!
Then Covid-19 put a stop to any ideas of moving so I’ve had
to regroup and rethink my posts. Which
means I’m not as prepared as I’d liked to have been but here goes:
M is for Marketing
Marketing is important when selling your home. You want to make sure people are made aware your house is for sale.
In theory it's probably possible to do the marketing yourself but you have no idea who you're inviting in to your home. Like most people we chose to use an Estate Agent. We could have opted for one of the online companies but that would have meant doing some of the viewings ourselves so, despite the extra expense, we opted for a local Estate Agent who have handled everything for us.
It's worked well.
Of course there is so much competition out there. One of the agents we'd contacted originally for a quote was really pushy. His agency was also the most expensive of the 3 quotes we got and yet they valued our property the lowest.
Needless to say we didn't go with them but despite that they were still trying to get us to allow a viewing before we had even put the house on the market.
Another example of pushiness was another agent who rang me, when our property had only been on the market for just over a week, wanting to know how things were going. When I said fine she then launched into a spiel about how her company used social media for marketing and how brilliant they were etc etc etc etc!
Actually she didn't get that far because I interrupted her and made it quite clear we were more than happy with our agents. We were only just over a week into a 12 week contract and I would not be looking to change agents any time soon!
Hopefully we're done with that for now but of course if our buyer pulls out we'll be back to square one. With no end to this lock down in sight we'll probably still be here at Christmas!
The real estate business is cutthroat, at least in the US. Seems it's the same way everywhere else.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely is here and after this mess it will probably be worse.
DeleteWe were so blessed to have a buyer for our old house before we listed with an agent. A friend told another friend and we got a phone call, had them come over and they accepted our offer on the spot. They had an agent who handled the legal stuff. Our current home is in a 55+ community and the manager sold the house for the out-of-state owner so that was easy too... AND we weren't on lock-down for a pandemic three years ago. I sure hope your buyer hangs in there with you.
ReplyDeleteYou were definitely fortunate in finding a buyer without having to pay an agent.
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