If you’re thinking of planning a big move in 2025, where and how to begin your journey is the first big hurdle to overcome. Often the biggest questions I hear and also many vendors most difficult and often scariest predicament, do you list your home first or find your next home first?
From a professional perspective, listing first certainly comes with its advantages you just need to make wise and educated strategic moves with absolute faith in selecting the right agent to manage your move. First things first, if you have an existing mortgage, looking to upsize, downsize or simply port a current balance, exploring your financial options is a wise and key first step to establishing what is reality against what we can hope to achieve and don’t be afraid to shop around, you may be surprised at what savings can be found by seeking competitive deals across the financial market. Next up, it’s valuation time of your home, take a deep breath and prepare for the fun and games to begin.
Three valuations is often a good round number, it will give you the opportunity to meet enough differing agents so you can begin to establish WHO will be the right agent for you, but also gain a good feel for what your home is REALISTICLY worth and yes we have capitalised this because reality is the key to success within a world of pie in the sky, instruction driven agents from the wrong side of town.
Remember, people do not move every day, you’re not supposed to know how this works, ask questions and do not be afraid to take things at your own pace, despite how pressurising some agents can make you feel, this again will help you clarify who is going to best guiding hand for you. Now, a somewhat contentious debate, when should you start physical viewings…?
Viewing potential new homes is of course incredibly exciting, exploring different ages of building, modern new concepts and generally trying to find what is going to tick those important boxes for you, but let’s take a moment to remember, these houses are someone else’s treasured home, their sacred personal space, should you be intruding into this space if you’re NOT actually in a position to make an offer?? Now let’s be ‘FRANK’ about this situation, this is a topic of discussion that is highly debated and contentious and I can always see both sides of the coin, however if you had your home on the market and had gone to the lengths that most people to do present their home, would you want people viewing it who are not in a position to buy it? I always compare it to when I was a young twenty something, window shopping a week before pay day. The harsh reality is, there is a high chance it will be gone by the time you can buy it.
For the majority of 2024, the houses which Frank had the pleasure to list and then sell, were for vendors who had not yet found their next home. This means that firstly, there was no impending panic to rush the marketing, we were given the chance to take our time and perfect every element of the marketing strategy from carefully staged professional photography to a stylish editorial and then our nail biting social media secret leaks, eventuating in a perfect launch for each and every property. Then there is the marketing price, given that again there is no immediate panic to sell within 24 hours, we had the opportunity to test the market at the highest possible price. Now let’s not get this confused with ‘over-priced’ because that’s a whole another discussion, but ‘the highest possible price’ is where I feel we can test the market without having a detrimental effect on the marketing as a whole. Then we can use our time wisely to achieve you the best possible price and as importantly from a buyer WHO CAN WORK TO YOUR TIMESCALES, a crucial factor when agreeing your sale.
Equally, if you are reading this and you have already found your next dream home, Frank has been known to pull out all the stops and make it happen, no matter what it took!
www.frankestateagency.co.uk
This is the part that then entails complete and utter trust in your agent and their best interests for you and your home moving plan. Yes, I said it… TRUST. This is when we need to rewind in the process slightly, yes we believe you should market before you find but with an agent that you trust to relay the importance of time management to any potential buyers and to stress the time constraints that will involve you being able to find your next property without worry or stress that you have to do this immediately. However, all being well you picked the right agent, so now having had the time to test the market and therefore achieve the best possible price, you are now free to explore the market as a ‘proceedable’ buyer, with a clear budget having sold with the added benefit of being taken seriously by selling agents. Yes, that all sounds perfect and I realise we are far from a perfect world, but in my experience if it is expertly managed by an experienced and honest agent, it doesn’t often go wrong. The worst that can happen, your buyer gets fed up waiting and they withdraw, in which case it just wasn’t meant to be, so we start again. No, it’s not always that simple and there are lots of caveats I would always put in place to protect your best interests, no it doesn’t always work but within this market, it is the only way in my opinion to move and my success rate so far proves that I believe this is the best advice.