Welcome To Patrick Henry 
Multi-Award Winning Independent London Estate Agent 

If you’re looking to sell your property, give yourself the best chance of a quick and smooth sale with these top tips on selling your property fast!

1. How Much Is Your Property Really Worth?

Time after time, here at Patrick Henry we’ve had clients come to us after having their property up for sale with another estate agency, begging the question “why it isn’t selling?”
A fatal mistake that many home-sellers make is receiving only one valuation or approaching a few estate agents and going with the agency who gives them the highest valuation.
To save yourself the frustration of your house not selling due to being overpriced, do your own research! 
Take advantage of estate agents’ free valuations to give you a rough idea of the value, but also use Zoopla to see the prices of other similar properties on the market - more importantly, see the recent sold prices of similar properties and make an informed decision using all three figures to ensure your property is listed for a reasonable price. 
Estate agents will often sell you dreams regarding the value of your property in order for you to list with them, but how much you want to list it for is ultimately your decision. Don’t base your choice of estate agency on the valuation, instead on their reputation and who you feel is the right company for you.

2. What You Should and Shouldn’t Fix

A beautifully decorated home is always going to make a better first impression than a run-down property, however it is important to weigh up the costs and benefits of home improvements which would be worth it when selling your property.

-Painting & Redecorating
It is often worthwhile to give your property a lick of paint to freshen it up before selling. Consider using neutral paints to appeal to the masses and keep rooms bright and fresh. 
-Kitchen & Bathroom Remodelling
It may seem tempting to splash out on a new kitchen and bathroom to give your property the show home feel, however, very rarely is the investment worth doing. The cost of having a bathroom and kitchen installed will very often be more than the increase of the property’s value. But you may want to consider refixing loose doors and re-sealing worktops.

-Decluttering
It is important to present your property in a way that makes it easy for potential buyers to visualise themselves living there. This normally means finding a balance between an empty or sparsely furnished property and a cluttered, untidy property which resembles the average teenager’s bedroom. The perfect example of this is how professional property developers ‘dress’ their properties for sale. Usually you will see basic furnishings like beds, bedside tables, wardrobes, dining tables and chairs, sofas and coffee tables but not a whole lot more. Then the developers tend to add a little personality, it is common for this to include paintings on the walls, rugs, and towels in the kitchen and bathrooms. This allows you to apply a little flair without overwhelming a potential buyer with your own personal taste.

-Mould
It is very common to find small specs of mould in bathrooms, especially where silicone has been used, but also between tiles on the grouting. It may be rather innocuous to the owner as it is common and happens gradually over time. However, to a buyer, it can be a stand-out issue. I have heard people say that they are ‘worried that there is an issue with the bathroom’ or that they would have to ‘replace the bathroom suite’ because of what I would suggest is a day’s work for a general builder. Usually these are wildly inaccurate statements but rectifying these issues can certainly go a long way to helping you achieve the best possible price for your home and avoid anyone losing interest for no good reason.

-Smells
The most underrated aspect of presentation is actually attributed to our strongest sense. You may well have heard people joke about baking fresh bread in the morning before viewings are carried out. Well, it is certainly more than just a joke, it is actually a very good idea to make sure that your property smells good. On the other end of the scale, damp smells in particular have a tendency of turning off buyers. As you can probably imagine, damp is a common problem with older properties and most buyers don’t understand the many different ways that it can be caused. So as with mould issues, it is far better for you to solve the problem beforehand that for it to be a deal breaker during viewings.

3. Sell At The Right Time

A property usually takes around 2-3 weeks to sell (if priced correctly), so it’s worth planning ahead and starting your preparations and improvements 3-6 months before you are planning on putting your property on the market. It’s worth discussing with your estate agent when they think is the best time to sell, especially if you can be flexible in order to achieve the best price for your property. As an example, property enquiries and viewings tend to drop off in December so it would be advisable if possible to hold off until the new year or even Boxing Day which traditionally is one of the busiest days for property viewings online.

The news is now reporting the tragic effect that Covid-19 is having on our care homes. It really hit home for me during my weekly talk with my dad, when he told me that 13 people had passed away in a local care home due to the pandemic. This tragic news made me think of one of my clients who is currently in a care home in Essex. We agreed the sale of his home back in February and since then it feels as though the whole world has changed. To make things even more complicated, his solicitor had been furloughed by the company that she was working for and the case had been passed on to a partner in the firm. This means that our elderly, partially deaf, care home-resident client has to be re-identified by the new solicitors and additional paperwork must be filled out. Fortunately, where there is a will, there is a way and we were determined to get the sale over the line this week.
All parties were put on notice that we would be aiming to exchange and complete simultaneously, which meant alerting the lenders so that the funds would be available on the day and getting all of the signed contracts and associated paperwork to the solicitors and last but not least, finding a way to get a telephone to my client so that he could give his solicitors instructions on the day.

I am very happy to say that we were successful! Compromises were made on all sides and thanks to the unusual levels of patience and persistence (which would probably have been unheard of pre-pandemic) everybody got what they needed to brighten up their 4th week of lockdown.

It was on this day two weeks ago.  that Boris Johnson, our Prime Minister instructed our estate agency, along with every other estate agency across the county to shut its doors. It was a strange feeling to describe, but I would place it somewhere between being arrested and taking a call from the hospital and receiving the test results that you to some extent expected, yet at the same time, didn’t want to be true. We had clear indications that this would be on the horizon as our European friends in Italy and Spain were – as the media seems to enjoy putting it – roughly two weeks ahead of us in terms of diagnosed cases and fatalities. Both of those countries had forced the closure of all non-essential shops, and as much as I would like to believe that my “shop” is essential I think that would be described by anyone as a stretch, at best.

Fortunately for us, we had already put systems in place to manage the change and even had a test run the previous week. All that was left for me to do at 9pm that night was to send a group WhatsApp to the team and tell them to dress casually for what would be our last day working together…… for the foreseeable future at least.