Selling your home through an estate agent is by far the most popular method in the UK. Whether that is using a traditional or online (a future post) estate agent, we, as the public, gravitate to the tried and tested, but how ‘tested’ is this?
It is a known fact within the industry that the average estate agent will sell half of its stock – in a good market. Over half of properties do not sell and come off the market for months before trying again. So whilst there is a 50% chance of selling, what happens to the other 50%?
There are factors to consider, which will defend the estate agent, and let’s be clear, we like and work with estate agents, but there are some downsides:-
- The time required to find a buyer varies from location to location and ranges between 60-100 days. So the initial stage is already considerable
- The legal process is dated, excessive and offers poor communication, which impacts the transactional timeline..
- Statistics are hard to quantify 100%, but many surveys have been conducted and at the top end of 2018 over 30% of sales fell through, meaning the whole process has to start over again.
- The average time from sale agreed to completion day has also steadily increased and it is reported to be over 100 days and growing.
Not all of the issues above are the fault of the estate agent and while they can influence a sale timeline by pushing and keeping sellers and buyers fully up-to-date, they do not control the process. However, this is part of the procedure when selling through an agent.
So its all doom and gloom right?
Well actually, there are options out there and we at SellinDays are here to help. As our same suggests we specialise in fast sales and have built products to achieve this:-
- Our buying service can ensure your home is under offer within a few days and exchange of contracts within 7-14 days. No open market delays or headaches.
- If you reject an instant cash offer, we can offer your property to our exclusive property investor network, with the aim of achieving a higher sale price
- Once a sale is agreed we use a new conveyancing service called LegalsReady, which has all draft contracts, title documents and fixtures and fittings completed at listing stage. This is proven to speed up transaction times by over 3 weeks and we take the purchasers search fees upfront so we have total committment.