Selling

[Gonzo33]

Hi all,

In February I am putting my house on the market. I must admit I am extremely nervous.

I currently have tenants in the house, and as far as I know they are happy to remain until I sell the house. They will obviously get the correct notice as I would hate to be in a position where I only have a month to leave my home myself.

The tenants have agreed to let me repaint the lounge, kitchen and bathroom (must admit they are pretty amenable tenants) and to get the gardens done.

The boiler gets a yearly service, and I have a current Gas Safety Certificate for the boiler and cooker.

Can you think of anything else that I will need to do before I put the house on the market (the agent is a done deal because I have to sell through the agent who is letting the property).

I have been checking out sold property prices in the area because I want to be realistic with regards to price, so have an idea of how much I would market the property at myself - here's hoping it matches the EA's idea!

Regards,

G xx

[Akandra]

Selling with your tenants in place will be harder, as they won't keep the house in that tidy, show home style unless you are lucky. But as long as they aren't terribly messy it shouldn't hurt too much. When the EA told me we were viewing a place with tenants, we expected that.

Your tenants also might leave when it goes on the Market. We did, as we didn't want to live with the uncertainty and didn't want to buy the place ourselves.

[Lizcat]

Again selling with tenants in place is really, really hard. The last rental property we sold we had many many viewings before the tenant left and to be frank they didn't make an offer as they were concerned about the tenant not going even though she had accepted the notice we had given. In the 48 hours after the tenant left we had 2 viewings little bidding war ensued and we sold very standard property for 10% over asking price as a result.
We would now always take a hit on the empty period to sell vacant.

[ragged]

That's funny, because some people actually want to BTL, so seeing tenants in place suggests that it's not hard to let that house out. It'd be a selling point in my mind, tbh.

pay a lot of attention to making sure Estate Agent gets good pix, that's far more important than a bit of clutter upon a viewing.

[Lizcat]

The vast majority of people looking at houses will be looking for their own home so you need to appeal to them first. People who are serious about BTL know what lets and most (including me) do not want existing tenants who may come with bad habits. The last BTL we bought we insisted on vacant possession at purchase for exactly this reason.

[chinateacup]

You'll need an energy performance certificate. The agents will probably know someone who does them; should cost iro £80

[PiggyMad]

I agree about the hard to sell with tenants in. We're looking for a FTB property and saw one we really love and were told that tenants had received notice, but after enquiring further, it turns out that the tenants had just signed a new 6-month AST! We decided not to go any further with that - too complicated with worrying about tenants not leaving or doing damage before the leave etc.
Obviously it might be a bonus if it is an investor-type property, but I don't think there are many of those around anymore and those looking are looking for long-term family homes.