How to sell your home over the winter months

Change is in the air, the leaves are turning brown and the mornings have got a definite chill to them.
Time to get the heating on, pull out the thick jumpers and sell your home.

Wait, sell you’re what!? I hear you shout through the muffles of the woolly scarf, but yes I definitely did say sell your home.

I know that winter is traditionally not seen as the best time to market your property, but, and trust me on this, it could just be the best time of the whole year.

A recent article in the Independent suggested that the housing market across the country is suffering from a lack of supply, which, during those cold dark days of winter, usually gets worse.

Now, here’s the plus side.

Simple economics suggests two things.
Number One:
A lack of supply firstly reduces competition, and less homes on the market equals more potential buyers for you.
And
Number Two:
A lack of supply usually increases prices. So you could find that marketing during the winter months could actually see your home sell for more money, and who doesn’t want that?

To put it into numbers, here at Hannells, between the 1st of October 2017 and the 1st of January 2018, we instructed sales on 390 properties for a combined value of over £68,000,000!
That’s literally hundreds of people taking the next the step towards there ideal home that could just have easily thought ‘it’s cold, it’s dark, it’s nearly Christmas, let’s leave it until the spring’
I’m here to say don’t leave it! We can get you on the market, get your home looking fantastic and get you sold!

Just follow the three simply steps below and you’ll be sipping a nice hot chocolate in your new toasty warm home before you can say Santa!

Let’s break it down shall we?

We have already mentioned some of the perceived downsides of selling your home in winter, but, and here’s the secret, we can help you turn those negatives into a positive and make your home the must buy!
At Hannells we have created fabulous winter marketing strategies for thousands of properties over decades of sales and I’ve put together a list of just three of the key things to think about when looking to get your home sold in the winter months.

1. Presentation

Presentation is always of the utmost importance when it comes to getting your home to stand out in front of potential buyers, but in the winter, when gardens don’t look their best, the days are dark and dreary and everything has that sleepy feel, it is more important than ever!

You can use this to your advantage with a few minor adjustments to make your home stand out as a haven from the cold.

Make it warm and inviting, make sure the lights are on for viewings and the heating’s turned up a notch so it feels cosy and inviting, make sure the gardens are raked of fallen leaves and the moss is scraped off the patio.

Give your home the feel of somewhere that potential buyers long to be after they have dragged themselves out into the cold. They may well have battled the slush and snow and finally, when they arrive, they want to be greeted with somewhere they will receive a warm welcome. The psychological benefit of stepping out of the cold and into the warm cannot be underestimated, after all It’s so much nicer to arrive to view a home with the lights on, some candles burning, a fire crackling and the heating on than it is to turn up to a cold, dead, empty house and stumble around with numb fingers looking for a light switch!

If you make these small changes I can guarantee your home will be the first in their minds when they come to think about making an offer.

2. Photography

I know we have already run though the importance of presentation, but it really is so important it needs mentioning twice.

Once you have made the decision to market your home and have created a vision of loveliness for your potential buyers to view, you need to pay as much attention to how the property is going to photograph.

The winter months can be a tricky period for photography, super bright day times and low sun can cause ugly shadows and tricky lens flares, gloomy dark days can make a home look un-appealing and un-inspiring and early dark evenings can make photography almost impossible.

The simplest way to turn this into an advantage is to make sure the agent you pick to market your home has some experienced, well trained and professional photographers on board. They will be able to turn any weather to their, and your advantage, and create images that say come inside! Rather than run and hide!

So de-clutter, light that fire, spread some comfy looking cushions on the sofa, clear the gardens, clear the surfaces and help them make the most of your beautiful home. It’s sure to stand out like a beacon against the cold, dull and boring photos of other properties.

A big tip when having photos done at this time of year is pay close attention to the time of day for the appointment, too early and you may get strong winter sun, too late and the light might have faded too much, so ask for advice from the photographer and try to arrange the optimum time of day to get the best images.

Another top tip is to choose an agent who has their photo’s enhanced, it’s virtually impossible to capture a perfect image in camera, so we at Hannells have all our images professionally edited, just to make sure we truly make the most of your home.

3. Maintenance

What are buyers looking for in their next home? The right location? The right size? The right price? Well yes of course, that’s why Estate Agents produce brilliantly informative property listings and target them to specific potential purchasers, but one thing that is usually in the mind of a potential buyer, even if it’s at a subconscious level, is what could go wrong and what is it going to cost me?

Property maintenance can be expensive, and all those minor niggles are easy to overlook when the sun is shining on a warm summers day, but come a damp cold winter and those stains on the wall shout expensive damp proof treatment, the over grown patio screams landscape gardening bills and the boiler that’s been on its last legs over summer literally yelps that the heating won’t come on when its needed most!

Make a list of the small jobs around the property and make sure they are taken care of, have the boiler serviced and keep the paper work handy to show potential purchasers, after all, we want to make potential buyers see only the positives in calling this their new home, so anything we can do to minimise the threat of costly bills is always going to help.

So to recap, winter can be a great time to sell and if you follow the steps above you’ll have the best looking, most attractive and most welcoming property on the market!

To find out more about how we can help you take the chill out of marketing your property and help you achieve your moving experience this winter, why not click on the easy instant valuation tool below or call and book an appointment with one of our valuations managers? We can guide your move every step of the way!

(But don’t forget to put the kettle on, it’s getting cold out there)