Are You 90 Days Away From Selling?
A move often starts long before a property officially reaches the market. If selling within the next few months is becoming a realistic possibility, now is a good time to understand your position, prepare your home and work out what needs to happen next.
Most homeowners do not wake up one morning and suddenly decide to put their property on the market. The idea usually develops gradually.
Perhaps you have started looking at what your next home might cost. You may be wondering how much equity you have, checking what similar homes nearby are selling for, or finding that conversations at home have shifted from moving “one day” to whether you could realistically make it happen this year.
If that sounds familiar, you may already be further into the moving process than you think.
Being around 90 days away from selling does not mean you need a For Sale board outside tomorrow. In fact, having a little time before you launch can be incredibly useful.
It gives you the opportunity to understand your finances, make considered decisions about your home and prepare everything properly, rather than trying to do it all at once when you find somewhere you want to buy.
Start with the number that unlocks everything else
For most potential sellers, the first useful piece of information is understanding what their current home could realistically achieve.
It is not simply about finding out what your property is worth. Your likely selling price influences almost every other part of your move: how much equity you could have available, the price range you can comfortably search within and ultimately whether the move you have in mind works financially.
This is also where local knowledge matters.
Property values can differ significantly between neighbouring areas, streets and styles of home. Automated valuations and national house-price figures can provide a useful starting point, but they cannot see the extension you added, the size of your garden, the condition of your home or how it compares with the properties buyers are viewing locally.
A valuation does not commit you to selling.
It simply gives you a realistic figure to start planning around. Once you know that number, searching for your next home becomes much more meaningful too.
Preparation doesn't have to mean renovation
This is often the stage when homeowners suddenly start noticing every unfinished job.
The hallway needs repainting. The spare room needs sorting. The garden needs attention. And the kitchen that has been perfectly functional for years suddenly feels as though it needs replacing before anybody is allowed through the door.
Usually, it doesn't.
There is an important difference between preparing a home for sale and renovating a home for sale.
Small maintenance jobs can certainly be worthwhile. Touching up marked paintwork, repairing a broken handle, improving the entrance or finally fixing that dripping tap can all contribute to the overall impression.
But spending thousands on a new kitchen or bathroom shortly before selling deserves much more consideration. Your buyer may have completely different tastes and you may not recover what you spend.
This is where speaking to us before you start preparing can be particularly useful.
Think about presentation before photography
At Newton & Co, we can look at your home through a buyer's eyes and advise you on what we would change, what we would leave alone and where a little styling could make a difference.
Sometimes it is as simple as rearranging furniture to make a room feel larger, simplifying an overcrowded space, changing how a room is being used or introducing a few carefully considered finishing touches.
Our styling advice is designed to work with your existing home rather than turn it into something it isn't.
And importantly, we think about how your home will photograph as well as how it will feel during a viewing.
Giving yourself a few weeks to make those changes means that when the time comes for professional photography, your home is ready to be shown at its best rather than hurriedly prepared the night before.
Use the 90 days to get organised
If you are likely to sell within the next few months, this is also a good opportunity to start gathering the information that has a habit of disappearing into drawers and old email folders.
Paperwork relating to extensions or alterations, guarantees, certificates and other information about the property can all become important during a sale.
If you have a mortgage, it can also be useful to understand your current position, including whether an early repayment charge applies and whether your mortgage may be portable to another property. Your mortgage adviser and conveyancer can guide you on the specifics, but starting from an organised position can make life considerably easier later.
Give yourself the luxury of time
Perhaps the biggest advantage of starting 90 days before you intend to sell is that you can make decisions rather than react to them.
You can understand your home's value before setting your onward budget. You can prepare and style the property without rushing. You can choose when photographs are taken. And you can plan how and when your home enters the market.
You may have a valuation and decide you are ready to move sooner than expected.
Or you may decide that waiting another few months makes more sense.
Either outcome is useful, because you are making the decision with better information.
If you have already started checking property prices, looking at your next move and wondering what your current home could achieve, you may no longer simply be curious about selling.
You might just be at the beginning of your 90 days.
Thinking about selling in the next few months?
Speak to Newton & Co before you start preparing.
We can arrange a no-obligation property valuation, talk through what your home could realistically achieve and advise on any presentation or styling changes we would recommend before bringing it to market.
Because the best property launches often start long before the For Sale board goes up.
