Back to Selling Privately 1 & 2 - Valuing Property and Arranging HIP
3.Finding a Buyer
You can advertise it in the local paper, you can put up your own "For Sale" board, and you can advertise on certain websites that specialise in providing relatively cheap advertising for people selling their own properties. You could try Houseweb for instance.
Once you get some people interested and you receive offers, you will have to decide whether or not to accept them. The decision will usually come from balancing the price offered against the buyer's ability to proceed. It is the second bit that is the difficult part.
Can they get a mortgage...and is there a chain?
People can be over optimistic about their ability to obtain a mortgage or say that they have sold their house when they have somebody who has vaguely expressed an interest but hasn't seriously pursued it. They could be involved in a long chain of transactions. Your problem is checking out what you are told. You need to know what to ask and who to ask.
If there's chain, how long is it?
Information does not flow very easily, and unless you know what to ask and who to ask, you may find it very frustrating. Other people's solicitors are not allowed to talk to you. If there are estate agents involved with others in the chain, you may get information from them, and unless you have experience in buying and selling, you may not know whether what you are being told is likely or not. All you can do is try! Perhaps ask estate agents how they can be sure of something they tell you and then measure up whether what they are saying makes sense.
It is certainly worth actually getting down in writing the names and addresses of all the people in the chain, the properties involved, and the solicitors and estate agents acting in each case. You will probably have to ask other estate agents for this information. Some of them can be pretty vague in the information they hold, particularly further away from them in any chain, so asking for "chapter and verse" tends to make them ask the right questions of other agents.
If you are happy that the buyer looks as if he can proceed, then you should instruct your solicitors to get on with the conveyancing for you. You may want to contact Richard Webster & Co for an estimate of conveyancing costs. If you are looking to buy you may want to look at a page about the issues that can arise when choosing a property to buy.
Continue on the Next page about Making Sure the Sale goes through
Or go to the page about Choosing an Estate Agent
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