Friday 12 February 2010

CONFIDENCE, FREE HIPS & THE BEST BUYERS

Choosing the right estate agent is always difficult. Different agents will have varying views as to the price achievable for a property. They will also offer different marketing packages, which have different costs attached to them. There can also be incidents where an agent, to gain an instruction, might inflate a valuation. This can be extremely damaging to the marketing of a property, leading to long delays in selling and potentially considerable expense. The shrewd vendor should always consider not only the valuations obtained, but also how these figures are derived. Beyond this, they need to decide whether the marketing on offer will achieve a sale at the best price available, to a qualified buyer who can actually complete their purchase.


As a professional agent with a long track record of selling success, Coast & Country draw on a wide range of sources to obtain different information relevant to the value of a property. These include the Land Registry, property portals, their own records and statistical information from major financial institutions. This information is considered in detail and made available to potential vendors in order to assist them in making the right decisions.

We advise all vendors to ensure they have seen evidence of similar properties actually selling at or near a suggested marketing price, prior to following an agent’s recommendations. If this is not forthcoming, we advise extreme caution. Common sense can also be extremely useful when assessing the accuracy of valuations. If, for instance, there are a number of detached properties for sale within an area that remain unsold, it is unlikely that a semi-detached property with similar attributes could be marketed successful unless the asking price was lower. No matter how tempting it is to think of banking that extra cash!

Coast & Country believe that we currently have one of the most attractive registers of property available locally. In part, we put this down to the fact that we offer completely free Home Information Packs. Our understanding of the current market tells us that this has benefits beyond the obvious. Vendors of course have nothing to pay upfront and know that their agent is confident that they can sell their property.

Agents who require clients to pay for Home information Packs or offer refunds upon sale are not demonstrating the same deal of commitment to getting the job done.

When an agent has demonstrated their commitment, by making a considerable investment, they would be foolish not to back this investment with the best possible marketing to ensure they get a return.

There is at least one other considerable advantage that is not immediately apparent. We believe that buyer confidence is increasing greatly. Buyers are aware that our vendors have been provided with free HIPs. They therefore assume correctly that homes offered for sale by us must be priced competitively. This attracts a large number of extremely good buyers.

Buyers who can buy with confidence make the best purchasers: this combined with accurate pricing leads to fewer complications with, for instance, mortgage valuations, and the high quality of buyers make for a greater percentage of faster sales. Vendors share this high degree of confidence and this leads to numerous completions on terms advantageous to both buyer and seller alike.