Can selling my house be as stress free as possible?

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I am needing to sell my house this year but I need to make it as stress free as I can for a number of reasons. There is a lot of ill-health in the family, physical and MH, which makes life very hard. Plus I have DCs with SN. Sleep is difficult and energy levels low so the house work has low priority. But we have to sell this year and I need to summon what little emotional and physical strength I have to prepare the house to sell and to cope with the selling process which is widely regarded as being a huge stressor. Any ideas on how I can minimise stress but maximise my chances of a successful sale?

What about auction?if you can put the price you want on it. Be prepared if it doesn't sell though. Can you move out quickly.

Never thought of auction but I’ll look into it. Just wonder if it affects the selling price. As I’m a SAHM due to having DCs with SN and MH, every penny counts.

Yes it is undoubtably stressful. I think the best way to minimise stress is to not be in a chain. It is trying to line up many people buying and selling simultaneously which is most painful.
A lot of other stuff is less painful if you pay for a good estate agent, cleaners, full packing service, shit hot solicitor etc but you will be weighing that up against the cost obvs.
Start decluttering now is my advice!

We used an estate agent that did all the viewings. That was v helpful.

We also separated buying and selling. We used a mortgage broker recommended by someone we trusted, who arranged a mortgage to cover buying our second house before we sold our first, which ended up being an overlap of 4 months. We had to find the money for extra stamp duty and mortgage payments but that was refunded when we sold the first property. This reduced the stress hugely as we could move more at our convenience but not everyone can do that.

It's really difficult because if your buyer is in a chain you lose some control of the process. You could ask the estate agent for no chain cash buyers only but it is luck if the draw.

In terms of preparing can you go through the house and either chuck out or charity who everything you don't want to move with. We did this and filled a skip and filled the car boot seven times for the charity shop. Certainly made moving easier when we got to it!

Use local estate agents who know the market and if possible a local solicitor. ring able to pop in to sign paperwork is far less stressful than doing it all by post

Also start getting paperwork sorted now. Do you have gas safe certificate, certificates for any double glazing, any relevant planning paperwork and building inspection sign off if there's a relatively recent extension for example.

And if things go wrong try not to stress. It's annoying but rrgrettably normal with the process

Good luck I hope it goes well for you

If you need double glazing certificates you should be able to get them from Fensa ( Google them)

If you have any hybrid estate agents near you these tend to be cheaper than ‘high street’ ones and can usually offer a lot more support etc during the selling process. Also choose your solicitors wisely, ask for recommendations from people, and make sure that their initial quote covers everything so you don’t end up with any surprises.

Could you move to a new build and px your house?

Will you be buying a new place? If so would you be able to stay with family (with belongings in storage) or short term rent? Its not ideal and could be expensive but means that you won’t lose a buyer if your purchase falls through.

Posters on SN boards might be able to offer advice on how to help your DC understand the changes.

Auction will impact the price yes.

Have an agent do the viewings, consider an open day so they are grouped together. Get the house up to scratch and then keep it that way, it's better than constant big efforts to clean.

Depending where you’re moving too, the easiest & least stressful move we ever did was to a new house where the Builder agreed to buy ours in part ex. The price they paid us was pretty fair, and then they had all the stress of getting buyers, co-ordinating completion dates etc.
And actually both our DS got chicken pox so we didn’t have any viewings for 2 weeks as they were contagious and needed to be at home, I imagine it was really frustrating for whoever had been tasked with selling our house.