Asking Estate Agent what we need to do to get ready to go on market - pointless exercise?

[HangerLaneGyratorySystem]

We had an agent round and talked a lot about getting his opinion on how much work we needed to do before we even get the photos taken. I was trying to bring home to STBExH that we are going to lose money on the sale if we don't do some painting and clearing up. EA said everything was fine and didn't even notice water damage on some ceilings, a light fitting hanging out of ceiling, let alone stained paintwork and little things like that. Didn't even recommend weeding the gardens. Only thing he seemed interested in was moving some furniture out of the rooms, so that was his only suggestion. H doesn't want to do anything at all and the agent's attitude simply told him what he wanted to hear.

I think its just common sense to do this stuff but I am sure I've read here before that all agents do this, that they just want you on the market and a few thousand lost here or there makes no real difference to their commission. Have others had a similar experience? Is this reason enough to avoid this agent or is it just par for the course?

Interested to see other's opinion. I agree with you.

Your agent sounds sloppy to me and I have met many like this. We are very lucky with ours who are extremely invested and give very thoughtful feedback

Sounds like he just wants to get you on the books.

IME agents really vary. Some are hopeless, some are extremely helpful and well informed. Maybe get a few more round.

Realistically you won't lose much money. People move in and redecorate and do the garden to how they want. People buy the house not the home so unless you have luminous paint everywhere no point in doing much. The valuation will have been done on the property in the condition as is.

Source : ex agent.

Most estate agents photoshop the pictures, so stains and bad lighting aren't visible.

However when it comes to viewing, decluttering and paint work will help make it more attractive.

I think all agents are the same. They don’t want you doing work on your property they just want to secure the instruction to sell it.
We sold my Dads Flat recently in central London. All 3 estate agents denied it was worth doing any work to it but the agent we went with then told us we weren’t getting many offers because of the condition of it (very tired). However I do agree it’s not worth spending much money on doing up a property to sell because everyone has different tastes.
The water damage will put off potential buyers I imagine so I would put that right before selling if you can.

Be prepared to drop price to sell. It's not a buyers' market anymore.

I think in general not much work is worth doing, but water damage and hanging light fittings, plus dirt and clutterwould make me think the property was badly looked after and would have lots of other issues too.

Many don't want to offend and lose the instruction.

If they tell you it needs decluttering, repainting, new carpets and the next agent says it's fine as it is, no problem, they've already got people interested, then you might decide to take the easier/cheaper route with the agent that didn't insult your home.

They may be more helpful once instructed. At present, you could be time wasting. They could spend an hour going through it with you, and you could decide to go with someone else or not to list at all.

Or they may feel that it needs so much work - in terms of time and money - it would be easier just to price realistically and get it on.

And it sounds as if you already know what needs doing anyway.

Agree with everything @donttellmehesalive said. The thing is you don’t need to do anything and investing £xxk so close to selling doesn’t in any way guarantee you’ll make that amount extra on the sale. An extra coat of paint and weeding the garden truly isn’t going to affect the value of your house, as independently verified by a mortgage provider/survey.

My mate who is a EA would tell you the opposite. Do the most you can in budget. Fix the water ingress, fix the light fitting, slap a coat of emulsion on the walls. The better it looks the less they can knock you down.

I used to work in property. Buyers like big empty spaces and no evidence of damp / structural work. Everything else isn’t that important. Decluttering helps less imaginative buyers visualise themselves in a house. Paintwork / woodwork and gardening isn’t important at all.

Definitely fix the water damage and light fitting, de clutter (including removing some furniture if needed), make sure there’s nothing on your kitchen worktops apart from kettle, toaster and absolute essentials, and then clean, clean and clean again.

The garden doesn’t need to be immaculate, just not a jungle, and people can see past tired decor and will invariably redecorate when they move in anyway.

The most important thing is that the house looks like it has been looked after. If people start trying to knock money off for total redecoration etc then it’s easier to turn them down as the property has been “priced accordingly”.

Our estate agent was shit and just gave us patter about getting oodles of money over valuation and made a vague comment about decluttering.

We had already viewed a few houses before we went on the market so sorted some things that had caught our eye on other properties:

• painted walls in most rooms. It freshened them up and got rid of the marks that had accumulated.
• filled in any bumps or marks on walls and painted over them
• fixed any electrical or plumbing issues. Not visible and not picked up on survey but we couldn't sell in full conscience knowing the toilet flush was dodgy (not something that bothered the folk we bought off...)
• tidied the garden and mowed the lawn regularly
• decluttered a lot, had a storage unit for a lot of stuff.

No idea if it made a difference but it made us feel better that we had put the house in a good condition for sale.

If there are any visible issues, get them sorted so your buyers/viewers aren't looking round making up a list of things they have to do.

You want to sort out any red flags. Water marks for example will lead people to wonder what might be leaking even if you know it was something that got sorted. Or in our case, some condensation that had dropped down from a plastic bag in the loft.

I wouldn’t worry about general painting etc as it won’t make a difference sales wise. When we were looking it was location, room sizes/layout, garden, local schooling. I honestly wouldn’t have cared less about the level of decoration as long as it looked clean.

Definitely do it. We were recently advised by an estate agent that our very tired flat in a very desirable area was absolutely fine to sell. Months later, we haven’t shifted it and need to drop the price. I’m absolutely raging and wish I’d listened to my gut.

Estate agents don't give a fuck. They just want their commission.

I agree about moving stuff out of rooms- we used to put stuff in the shed and car for viewings. If the decorating is just cosmetic and inexpensive I would do it but if it's just covering up problems that will.probably come up.in a survey then I wouldn't.

You might be fuming but it won’t be that.

This

As a buyer signs of damp is one the things that I look for as it is a big red flag.

I assume you have fixed the actual source of the water damage? so it is also important that you redecorate so that the damage is not visible.

I would also tidy the garden and make sure everything is clean inside the house.

I would not consider anything that show signs of water damage. Poorly kept garden and damage light fittings also give a signal that the property has not been maintained and that there might be more hidden problems.

I would go with a different estate agent...

Unless it's a complete mess or in a hard to sell area it isn't worth it, you won't recoup your spend. Doing a little painting yourselves to cover an old leak is the exception

@Dazedandconfused10 · Today 00:58
Realistically you won't lose much money. People move in and redecorate and do the garden to how they want. People buy the house not the home so unless you have luminous paint everywhere no point in doing much. The valuation will have been done on the property in the condition as is.''

Signs of water damage will absolutely put most people off.

So of course the OP will lose money and even struggle to get offers in the first place...

The thing is there's no single right answer to this, it depends on lots of factors in particular the state of the local market, if demand is vastly outstripping supply for your particular kind of house in your area buyers will overlook almost anything and some weeds and flaky paintwork matter not at all, whereas if yours is an average 3 bed modern semi in an area saturated with modern 3 bed semis all at the same price, people can start to get picky and poor looking pictures can stop people even booking to view. Over the years I've had bidding wars kicking off within 24 hours over dirty, smelly, shabby properties and immaculate, newly renovated, show-home style ones stagnate unloved on the market for weeks, all just because of market conditions. A really on the ball agent is usually right about what kind of market you are looking at, but obviously it's hard to tell if they're saying not to bother out of laziness/lack of local knowledge or because it's genuinely not necessary. My personal general rule when selling is to do everything you can which doesn't cost money (so yes to decluttering and tidying, moving any unnecessary furniture and bric a barc out of sight, cleaning and making sure it smells good and tidying), don't do any major expensive work unless you are sure it will pay you back (so no to new kitchens, bathrooms or structural work unless you've costed it very, very carefully) and only a tentative yes to even minor decorative works, yes a coat of paint doesn't cost much but if the house isn't otherwise totally immaculate, everything being obviously newly magnolia'd can perversely make people suspicious that you've literally tried to paper over cracks, and won't necessarily sell it to the person who wants to do no work at all any more than if you showed it as-was. But like I say it does all depend on context.

Sorry that's not that helpful in answering your q, I'd perhaps compromise with your XH on doing the gardening, the tidying and easy fixes like the light fitting and water marks, but don't repaint throughout? I would have thought a solid weekend or maybe 2s worth of work would do it?

The only things I would fix are those which would encourage potential buyers to negotiate downwards on price; so make sure the source of damp is resolved and painted over, fix the light so it looks like you actually care about the house, and declutter. You won't need to spend more than a few hundred pounds, if that.

Don't bother with decoration for the sake of it, it would be a complete waste of time and money, as anyone moving will want to put their own stamp on the place.

Thank you all - that was a bit of a mixed bag of responses, but I've picked out the gist of it and I do really appreciate everyone taking the time to comment. We've lived here for nearly 30 years so its difficult all round with divorce etc., and buying and selling has changed so much! I feel people don't look much beyond the decoration in this area, they want everything perfectly white and grey (maybe even silver!) and yes, we do have a lot of 3 bed semis on offer locally. Everything in the house is sound though, there shouldn't be anything on the survey (famous last words!)