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Properties may be receiving offers in record quick time at the moment, but that doesn’t mean home sellers are having a smooth ride. Often, accepting an offer is the easiest and most straightforward part of selling a property. These are some of the most common challenges house movers face and our top tips for how to avoid them.
Getting Stuck in a Property Chain
Property chains can make a house move really challenging. The more property sales there are in your ‘chain’, the longer the move is likely to take and the more risk there is of complications.
The best way to avoid getting stuck in a property chain is to make yourself chain-free by selling your property before buying your next one, selling to a chain-free buyer, or buying from a chain-free seller.
House Sale Falling Through
Unfortunately around one in four property sales will fall through before completion.
Property sales fall through for a range of different reasons. Some of the most common include chain collapse, the buyer pulling out due to something found in the property survey, and difficulty securing a mortgage.
The best way to avoid experiencing a failed property sale is to consider options such as property auctions and cash home buying companies. Lots of people know about property auctions and are fairly clear on how they work. Fewer people have perhaps considered using a home buying company, but they are growing in popularity. As a business, a home buying company will pay less than market value for your property, but they offer a speed and certainty that is unmatchable on the open market. Any sale to a genuine cash home buying company will be guaranteed, so you don’t have to worry about the sale falling through, and the sale can often be completed in as little as a week.
Unpredictable Timescales
Property management and sales are notoriously unpredictable. It currently takes an average of between six and seven months to sell a home. The means some property sales will be quicker, but others will take significantly longer.
If you’re looking for more certainty around property sale timescales, but can’t afford to take the level of an offer made by a home buying company, a property auction could be a good fit. Traditional property auctions usually stipulate that any sales must complete within 30 days, so you’ll know exactly when your sale will go through.
High Costs of Moving Companies and Other Expenditure Add-Ons-
One of the major things that house owners fail to account for is the moving costs. Depending upon the size of your house (number of rooms) as well as other factors like a staircase, moving companies can charge you a lot of money. You need to look for the best moving companies like man and van Ealing to help you make the transition easier.
Make sure to get a detailed and definite quote from them before you start the moving process. Take into account additional packing costs as well. You do not want to be left blindsided when you see a huge bill just after moving into your new house.
Gazumping/Gazundering
Gazumping is the term used when a homeowner accepts an offer on their property but then pulls out of the sale to accept a higher offer from another buyer.
Gazundering is when a buyer reduces their offer at the last minute, just before the exchange of contracts. The seller will often feel pressured to accept the new lower offer to avoid the sale falling through and then having to start the entire sale process again with a new buyer.
Unfortunately, there is not a huge amount you can do to avoid either of these situations. When you enter an agreement to buy or sell a property, you are trusting the other party to act in good faith. Unfortunately, this trust is not always justified, and you may experience disappointment. Your best hope at mitigating the risk of experiencing gazumping or gazundering is to build a strong relationship with the estate agent. The hope is that they might give some warning if there’s any sign of your seller considering another offer or your buyer indicating that may be considering reducing their offer.