Sales

Did you know we have been making New Year’s resolutions for more than 4,000 years? The custom is thought to stem from the ancient Babylonians, who used their New Year in mid-March to reaffirm loyalty to the monarch, make promises to be good moving forward, pay debts to gods and return borrowed objects.

Getting your home on the market is easier and quicker than you may think – and there is every reason to order a ‘for sale’ sign this December. In fact, there are four indicators that now is a good time to instruct a sales agent:

The most recently published Land Registry data revealed 24% of residential property sales in 2022 were leasehold – that equates to around 207,000 transactions in total. If you own a flat or apartment, it’s highly likely you will have a leasehold agreement.

The nights are drawing in, summer flowers have faded and the temperature is dropping but instead of putting your garden to bed, now is a great time to reconsider how you use your outdoor area.

Bridging loans have long been viewed as specialist products used by niche borrowers and those in distress but the finance sector has noted a new trend. The image of bridging loans has undergone somewhat of a rebrand and their appeal has become more mainstream.

For many home movers, a garden is a must have and new research has revealed just how important this feature is. A survey by Home Sale Pack found 90% of prospective purchasers considered outside space important when looking for a new home. 

What kind of outdoor person are you? Lush lawns and well-tended flower beds? Do you prefer to focus on fun, with a trampoline and hot tub? Or are you all about the atmosphere, with festoon lights and firepits?

Based on three different data sets, the average age for a first-time buyer in the UK is 34 – a figure that has been rising over the last decade, whichever analysis you look at.

Bedrooms that never get used? Too much time spent cleaning and fixing? Yearning to be mortgage free? It may be time to weigh up the pros and cons of downsizing to a smaller property.

You may have joined Instagram to document your life. Some of you may have opened an account on behalf of your pet but have you thought about an Instagram account purely for your property?

There’s only a very small minority of buyers who will purchase a property without visiting in person. For the masses, a viewing is the ‘make or break’ stage in the search process. If they don’t like what they see, they’ll be discouraged from making an offer and will swiftly move on to the next possibility.

As estate agents, we stay up-to-speed with finance news, as mortgage rates have a huge impact on buying and selling activity. As a rudimentary reminder, the lower the mortgage rate, the cheaper monthly repayments become. We know many home movers have delayed buying a property until mortgage rates eased and that has definitely happened as we start 2024.