I don’t know about you, but still I get excited about the post arriving. The satisfying thud it makes when it hits the doormat is a very welcome sound, and I often stop whatever it is that I’m doing and go to investigate. As I shuffle through the envelopes, I sort by recipient, then by importance, and if I’m lucky enough to have received a hand-written envelope, I seize upon it and eager open it first without delay. Handwritten in this digital mail-merged age, is a rare treat, and it often means good things: a letter from a friend, a cheque perhaps, or a quote from a old-fashioned tradesman. How much nicer it is too to get something through the post, rather than by email. It feels more personal somehow, more substantive, less able to be dismissed with a click of the mouse.

Its exactly the same with property details. On the screen, the houses can appear unloved, surreal, unattainable, cold: in short – unhomely. Yet, a lovingly created brochure in my hand, with its hand-crafted copy and warm, inspiring photography, can really bring a house to life. There is something very satisfying about actually holding a physical brochure, instead of just gazing at the information on a screen. Whilst to my knowledge, no research exists to back up my theory, I am nevertheless certain that a printed brochure as oppose to a virtual one, results in more and better quality viewings.

Last week, I had cause to call an estate agent in Essex to ask him to send me a client’s property brochure. “Sorry madam we don’t send out hard copies,” he responded. “This is the 21^st Century after all,” he pointed out.

“But I don’t have a printer,” I pleaded (a little white lie, I admit).

“Okay,” he relinquished “just this once”. True to his word as a massive favour to what he thought was a prospective buyer, he printed a copy of the internet and actually posted it to me.

Since when was it considered to be a “favour” to send a brochure to a interested buyer? When did the property details become a open “hard copy” and as such, an outdated form of marketing?

If you are trying to sell your house, and viewers are not exactly beating a path to your door try this little exercise: call your agent, posing as a buyer, and ask for your own property brochure to be sent to you. See what happens, but I warn you, you may find the response disappointing.

I’d be interested to hear our Essex agent explain to Mercedes, Argos or Next, that physical paper marketing does not work.

Maybe I’m just a little bit old-fashioned. But, then, there are a lot of us around, and some of us buy houses.

Henry Pryor, writing for Estate Agents Today, says in 2010 only 41% of homes actually sold; this year he predicts it will be closer to only 33%.

Therefore, if you put your house on the market in January 2011, you have a 66% chance of your house still being for sale by Christmas this year. That’s enough to make seller choke on their turkey.

Here’s my top 5 tips to make sure you sell your house in 2011, and be one of the elusive 33%:

1. Choose the right estate agent: do whatever you need to do to ensure you’ve picked the right agent to sell your house: mystery shop them, call them every week, be meticulous about documenting feedback from every viewing  – the good and the bad, drop in unannounced to their office, ask them for your Rightmove Property Performance Report at least fortnightly.
2. Decide on your asking price and stick to it: make sure it’s a rounded figure (see Pricing Strategy), get it printed on your brochure (shows confidence in your asking price), find some evidence to support it (recent sold prices in your area, price per square foot), then stick to it (see Don’t Drop Your Asking Price).
3. Make sure your marketing stands out above the competition’s: be critical – does your photography make your house look amazing? Is your borhcure least 8 pages long, and printed on good quality card?  Does your Rightmove advert stand our above the rest?  Does your house have its own headline?  Does the description include owner’s comments? Is your floorplan detailed, legible, large enough to print out and does it list the total floor area?
4. Does your home have the WOW factor? :  Look carefully for any 21^st Century no-no’s: swags and tails on your curtains, carpeting in your bathroom, kitchen worktops more than 10 years old or any taps more than 20 years old.  Hire a Home Stager and take a professional approach to your property’s presentation.
5. If all else fails, give HomeTruths a call! We offer a free, no-strings consultation, and if we think we can help, our fee is only £1500 (regardless of asking price) plus £500 if your home sells within 6 months.  Given than 77% of our clients sold their homes last year within 6 months (as opposed to less than 20% of those who didn’t use HomeTruths) we’re a pretty safe bet.

In short, take control of the sale of your house and don’t allow yourself to be relegated to the 66% of sellers who will still be for sale in a year’s time.

To borrow a well-known High Street optician’s strapline….

“Should have gone to HomeTruths.”

Thanks to our lovely Campaign Manager, Inesse Dunn, for this super blog post.

Many of our HomeTruths’ clients come to us for help, as they have lost trust in their estate agent.

In order to sell your house successfully, it’s really important that you and your estate agent are on the same page, which means you may need to go through several different estate agents until you find the right one for you.

Here are some tips on how to survive in the property dating game:

1. Get prepared for selling your house – if you really want to succeed in the property dating game, you need to commit; going into half- heartedly will not work. Do some research and prepare for the worst; promise yourself you won’t give up, no matter what happens.
2. Think about what you want to gain from selling your house and why you are selling. Consider the timeframes you expect and where you want to be in 1/3/6 months time. A good reason to sell will drive you to sell your house properly.
3. Dress your house so that it is looking at its most attractive. Make sure that the photographs are taken professionally so that the house looks appealing and gets the most amount of viewings. If your house is professionally and stylishly marketed, your confidence in selling your house will improve.
4. Target buyers who have a good chance of buying your house. When marketing your property you need to make sure it stands out to those who can afford your asking price, find the property attractive and are interested in what the property has to offer. Marketing includes price, photographs and the how stylish your property brochure looks.
5. Take breaks from being on the market occasionally if it’s not going as well as you thought. Recharging your batteries and keeping confidence and optimism levels high in the dating game is an absolute must. Everybody hits rough patches but don’t let your search for your dream buyer become a dreaded nightmare.
6. Never make yourself seem desperate. People like properties which other people also dream to have. The more somebody has to chase a property, the more likely the love will blossom. Keep confident about your price of your house; do not drop your asking price because if you do not feel confident about your price, nobody else will.

Make sure you follow these 6 tips in the property dating game and you will have people falling in love with your property in no time. If you want any other tips in the property dating game or you are ready to use us as cupid, do not hesitate to pick up the phone.

Thanks to our lovely Consultant, Angie Kraft for this great blog post.

Talk to your local builder long enough and the pressures of meeting the ever changing standards of building regulations will inevitably come up. And not in a nice way. Is there any rhyme or reason behind the seemingly endless changes in regulations for new builds? Well yes, there is.

The construction industry has been given a timeline punctuated with various levels of sustainable building practices, which should culminate in 2016 with carbon neutral buildings – otherwise known as Level 6 Building Code. Carbon neutral buildings should create as much energy as it takes to build them, or to create the materials that are used to build them. They should be airtight and superbly insulated to create the most thermally efficient building possible.

Good architects and builders are already achieving Level 5, but there is a large hill to climb in the next five years if we are to achieve the ultimate low energy model of the German Passivhaus system.

Many in the industry are more concerned with the leaky old houses that we all live in – well 26m of us anyway. The Great British Refurb Campaign is working hard with the government and industry leaders to create a plan that will help the rest of us to improve the energy performance of our properties. Adding insulation and solar panels or renewable energy to a property costs money that many of us don’t have. The governments plan is called ‘The Green Deal’ which should provide applicants with a loan of up to £6,500 to improve their property. The 25 year loan will be carried by the property and will be passed on to the new owners should the current owners move on. Those who decide to invest in new technology and create their own energy can potentially save vast amounts on their energy bills (up to 80%) and earn at the same time, by selling any excess back to the national grid under the new Feed In Tariff.

The energy performance of a property is already recorded in the EPC report carried out by estate agents for every property that is marketed. This report will be increasingly important over the next few years. We could soon be reaching the point where the thermal efficiency of a property might actually make it more desirable and add a premium to the final asking price. A strong argument for even the harshest climate change sceptics!

Ireland has certainly enjoyed a property boom in recent years, but now, sadly, it’s paying the price.  On our trip last week, my husband and I drove across from Dublin to Achill on the west coast, and the same sad story was evident in every town and village on our route.

Big faded placards announce bargains no one wants; no show home welcomes brave browsers, and the front doors of the identical cookie-cutter houses are already peeling from months (years?) of neglect.  The developers, or more probably, the banks who funded them, can only watch helplessly as the seasons roll by with buyers either unwilling or unable – or both – to make an offer, even an insulting one.

But it’s the sometimes solitary occupants who I feel most sorry for; the bright young families, eagerly moving into what may have been for some, their first home; excitedly planning room schemes, and running their fingers lovingly over the new appliances and that shiny new shower cubicle.  Now, however, the house looks tarnished, not least because whilst they thought they were buying an investment: a house to add value to; a stepping stone of a home: like the early occupants of these three bed semis below, they have already made a loss of 118,550 Euros – that’s a cool £100,000 at today’s exchange rate, or a whopping 41%. All they can do really, is wait it out.  Now is not the time to sell for a loss – even if their lender would allow them to – which is unlikely.  Not only have they lost their original hard-saved deposit, they are now also paying mortgage payments at a level their home is not worth, and for which they could have bought a property considerably bigger.  No wonder Ireland is depressed, and not just economically.

It’s all too easy to decry the wild greed that gripped the Irish property market and whipped it into a frenzy of speculative property developing, but it’s the first time buyers and the young families that have really lost out.  The developers just go bust, and start again, or else dust their hands off and move onto a more lucrative industry.  (Debt recovery, for example….)

So, before we start complaining about our measly 1.6% – that’s the amount that the Land Registry announced yesterday our semis have lost in the past year – spare a thought for our Irish neighbours, and cross your fingers that their property market recovers in time for the most vulnerable home owners to move on.

This weekend, my very romantic hubby took us to the absolutely gorgeous Scarlet Hotel in Mawgan Porth, Cornwall. Wow.  It really is an amazing hotel, where nothing is too much trouble (“glass of champagne in the hot tub Madam?”) and the staff really do treat you like a cherished friend rather than a hotel guest. My husband, who travels for business a lot, was blown away by the fact that there was no reception desk; just a little clue that you are not entering an ordinary hotel.

So, why am I blogging about The Scarlet Hotel?  Because I want you to check out how their website really keys into our emotions. Each image just edudes relaxation, indulgence and pure luxury.  The colours are sumptuous, the textures exciting and the attention to detail means that each and every image is full of atmosphere. Looking through the pictures, you feel you just have to go there.

Now look at the photographs of your home. What do they say to a viewer?  Do they draw him in?  Do they say “book a viewing!”? Do your images tempt and seduce or leave a viewer feeling cold and unmoved?

So, browse the gorgeous images of this wonderful hotel, and see if you feel inspired to take a leaf out of their book; can you create a special space and photography to match?  If your home leaves you flat, how do you think it will make a viewer feel?  Do what you need to do: splash out on some fabulous accessories and lighting, commission a home stager, book a specialist property photographer. Then send me the link and I’ll tell you if you’ve created something as special as The Scarlet.

Thanks to The Scarlet Hotel for these fabulous images.

My team and I were very excited when we learned the Secret Shopper programme on Channel 4 would be featuring estate agents.  What was she going to do?  Would she identify the areas we feel are so lacking in quality?  We awaited the programme with baited breath.

And we weren’t disappointed!  It didn’t take her long to realise that the time to sell a house is at the viewing.  Secret filming revealed negotiators using typical pressure sale tactics – “I’m pretty sure it will sell today”, and “we have seventeen viewings booked in on this property today”, not to mention the ubiquitous “you’re the first people to see it”.  (During the entire viewing one negotiator was answering his mobile phone continually.) Then there was the complete lack of knowledge – “the nearest school is a mile and a half away” (the nearest was actually just round the corner), when asked which way the garden faced, the negotiator admitted he didn’t know, and “would have to check on Google”. Lastly, the spin.  And oh how they spun.  How about the property described as being in “a prestige turning”, or “West facing is the new South facing”?!

Martyn Gerrard took a brave step when he invited Mary Portas to help him improve the service he and his staff were offering, though he began by admitting he thought they were already giving excellent customer service, (“People before property”) before we discovered that he offered no training on viewings whatsoever, and the remainder of the training given to his staff centred mainly on sales progression management.   “We don’t actually sell anything” he boasted, while Mary pulled a face to camera.

And so the transformation began.  Viewings training began with a tour guide showing the team a stately home, demonstrating his in-depth knowledge and spin-free enthusiasm, before Mary encouraged the sales staff to actually talk to their vendors and make notes on the highlights of their properties.  Brilliant.  The next ‘buyers’ were then treated to a non-pressure, honest and clued-up negotiator showing them round the property, and actually listening to their needs and wishes.

Mary’s next challenge was to tackle the “agent-speak” that is so prevalent in this industry, and which I wage a war against practically every day:   “internal viewing advised”, “convenient for the motorway”, “easy to maintain garden”, “twin-aspect lounge” – she banned all these phrases and more, (including the “in a prestigious turning”) and replaced instead with some plain-speaking descriptions that a buyer could actually believe in.

The result?  Happy vendors, and buyers who felt they could actually trust the sales staff to tell them what they needed to know about the property.  It’s not rocket science, that’s agreed, but whether a buyer is looking at a property on the market at £200,000 or £2 million, they still need and deserve attention, honest information and to be listened to.  Estate agency is not a profession looked upon with trust and liking, but there are some really great agents out there that are already giving these very high levels of customer service.  Problem is, they’re hidden amongst the 95% that give the profession a bad name.

Want to know which type of agent you are with and how they treat their buyers? Call me and I’ll tell you exactly what I think, no strings attached.  I’m no Mary Portas, but I think you’ll find my advice just as illuminating.

Estate agents have it bad these days, (you ask them) . Not enough houses coming to the market; not enough buyers registering; over-optimistic sellers; over-cautious buyers. They’re competing for the best properties, and slashing fees to secure the instruction.  Where 2% was once achieveable in most areas, even the better agents are reluctantly shaking vendor’s hands at 1.25% to list a £500,000 property. But then what happens?  They can’t afford to produce one of their lovely, ‘Country Life’ style brochures – the client gets four fuzzy sheets from the office printer. That fabulous professional photographer is ditched in favour of ‘Sean our junior negotiator who got a nice little camera for Christmas’.  And print advertising?  Forgot it – way too expensive.

Before you start feeling sorry for our hard-up estate agent in his two-year-old BMW 7 Series,   He’s doing ok – it’s the admin lady, and the viewing reps that’ll really feel the knife.  And not to mention the vendor, unable to attract even investors with his sorry excuse for a marketing campaign, if you can even call it that.

Stop!  It doesn’t have to be like that!  Our first rule at HomeTruths, is pay the agent what he’s worth.  If we’ve selected the agency, I can tell you that he’ll be worth every penny of the 1.75% or more, he’ll be charging you.  And for that, you’ll get stunning professional photography, a gorgeous glossy brochure with detailed (and accurate) floorplan, his best attention including, where possible, accompanied viewings by one of the partners or senior managers. After all, you’ll be paying for it in commission, and we’re going to make sure that you get the best service possible.

So, before you jump in to hard-nosed negotations with your potential agent, stop and think. Then call Sam.  Because our agents don’t cut corners, at least, not on my watch.

Kitchen image courtesy of www.homesandgardens.com

I know, landings and hallways are not the easiest areas in a house to photograph.  But if you don’t think you can do it justice – don’t photograph it!

Here’s this week’s offering for how not to photograph a corridor, maybe I should have called it the Hall of Shame:

Ugly shadows, unflattering angles, and pointless images.

Professional photographers rarely photograph corridors, and for good reason.  There’s little point in including images like these in your marketing.  If your agent presents you with a choice of photographs and they include one of your compact-but-bijou hallway, make sure he doesn’t include it in your marketing.

It’s a good question. Do you start worrying after a few weeks of marketing without an offer on your house?  Or should you be patient and stick with your agent and price for six months or more?

At HomeTruths, we see so many sellers who have been on the market for over a year; our record so far is a couple who had been trying to sell consistently for six years!  It’s true that the longer your property is on the market, the less desirable it is to a buyer, and the less confidence your agent will have that he can achieve any figure close to your asking price.  It’s therefore really important that your strategy in the first 6-8 weeks is as well thought out, planned and confident.

Here’s my 5 golden rules for making sure you don’t get to worrying stage:

1. Choose the right agent based on marketing skills, enthusiasm and a high fee – he’ll earn it;
2. Once you’ve decided on your asking price, stick to it.  Make sure it’s a nice round figure, and don’t drop it – be confident;
3. Have the best photography and brochure you possibly can.  Be pedantic, beg and bully until you get the best.  Your house MUST stand out in a pile of also-rans;
4. Commission a home stager to give your house a once-over. Even if you and your friends think it’s immaculate, you need independent, professional advice at this crucial time.
5. Communication, communication, communication! Call your agent every week.  Obtain written feedback from viewings, ask for your Rightmove Property Performance report each week and monitor the activity generated.

Follow my 5 golden rules, and you should sell within 8 weeks.  If you don’t – call me and I’ll tell you why you haven’t! I’m always available to share my thoughts and ideas with sellers, without fee or obligation – what have you got to lose?

The gorgeous bathroom at Moorland View in Devon.