Selling Your Property - Deciding to Move

There are several different reasons to make the decision to sell your home and move. Perhaps your family has grown and you need more space than your current property offers. You may wish to run a business such as a bed and breakfast from your home. Maybe your children have moved out and it is time to downsize or to release some of the capital tied up in your home. Perhaps you just fancy a change. Whatever the reason, it is a life changing one and heralds the beginning of the buying and selling process.

Before you decide to sell, research how much capital you will raise from the purchase. Instead of moving, could you extend your home to give you the extra space that you need? Speak to local estate agents to find out what your local housing market is doing at the moment. Find out whether it is a buyers or sellers market. In a buyers market, sellers will have a harder time selling their property as there are not many buyers, so they can pick and choose from the available properties. In a sellers market, properties sell very quickly and you may be able to maximise your profit with several buyers vying to give you the best offer. You may be able to visit other properties of the same type as yours to research how your property would be placed in the market.

Once you have made the decision to move, you need to consider whether your property needs preparing first. Most properties will need some work done to make them as attractive as possible to buyers. At this early stage you should also check the terms of your mortgage to make sure that you are not going to be hit by expensive redemption penalties. You will have to decide whether you are going to continue with the same mortgage lender or whether you can find a better deal elsewhere.

If your purchase is reliant on releasing capital from your current home, you need to decide whether you want to find a new property before you put your home on the market, or if you want to have a firm buyer in place before you start looking. There is no set way of going about this. You may find your dream home and then not find a buyer for your house, so lose your perfect property. Or you could end up with a buyer wanting to complete a purchase and you have not found a property. You, your buyer and your new home’s current owners could all be held up by a purchase further down the chain. The whole process can get complicated and stressful, so it pays to have planned which way you are going to do things, to have researched the market in your area and to be flexible.

At this stage it is a good idea to ring around to get quotes for the conveyancing work involved with selling property. As soon as you accept an offer on your home you will need to pass these details on. You can then budget for the conveyancing fee.

More Selling Your Property topics below:

• Estate Agents - what can you expect from an estate agent?
• Private Sales - avoiding expensive estate agents fees
• Viewings - what you should say, what you should answer and what you should ask.
• Offers - how can you tell when an offer is the highest you will get?
• Surveys - as a seller, what can you expect from the survey?
• Legal - what is involved with conveyancing for sellers?
• Financial - what can you expect to be paying for when you sell your property?
• Selling Pack's - how the government proposes to speed up the property buying process
• Moving - what you should organise in order to have as easy a move as possible.

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