Why you should sell your home in Chatham before offering on a new one

November 3rd, 2022

Would you like to move house in Chatham but feel that the choice of available properties for sale is too limited right now? Are you worried that if you sell first you may not be able to find anywhere to move? Are you thinking that it may be wise to find somewhere first and only then put your own on the market. Well these are the type of questions that thousands of Chatham homeowners are currently asking themselves, and all perfectly reasonable too.

On the surface however there are five important reasons as to why you should really put your own property on the market before finding somewhere to move to.

Firstly let’s look at the downside of finding a property before you put your own on the market. Let’s say you start browsing the portals and do indeed find somewhere that appears to be suitable. Could this be the one? So you contact the Chatham estate agent for a viewing and if that agent is doing their job properly they’re bound to ask you what your position is. In other words as part of their due diligence and duty to their client they need to establish whether you’re in a position to buy now. When you tell them that your own property is not even on the market yet well with all respect they’re not going to regard you as a hot buyer are they well that’s a huge disadvantage when you’re competing with other buyers who may have nowhere to sell. So if you want to look at that property and then make an offer on it at anything other than the asking price or possibly more it’s likely that the seller would not accept your offer because you’re simply not able to proceed. They wouldn’t want to delay their sale by effectively making the saleability of their own property reliant on the saleability of yours. If they’re going to do that it would have to be worth their while and you’d probably be expected to pay top dollar in that situation but it doesn’t stop there.

Let’s say the seller does agree to sell to you well then you’re under considerable pressure to sell your own property quickly aren’t you? Which may mean that you’d need to let it go for a lower price than you would have liked so you end up paying through the nose for your purchase and losing money on your sale. It doesn’t stack both ways.

Thirdly as a buyer who’s not yet put their property on the market you’ll recall that I said Chatham estate agents would not regard you as a hot buyer well it’s been estimated that as many as a third of sales happen off market. These are properties that never make it to the portals because estate agents in Chatham offer exclusive access to these properties to the hottest buyers before posting them on the portals. Now this may be why you believe there is not much available, there is but unless you’re in a strong position it’s very unlikely that you’d get to hear about these properties and so often they’re the best ones as well. That’s why they go so quickly.

Fourthly, of course if you come to market first then your property could be one of those that’s offered to those hot buyers. You’d then be regarded as a hot buyer yourself even if you haven’t actually found a buyer yet. At least you’re on the market and you’d find that all sorts of opportunities open up for you so you can get moving. You’d be selling from a strong position and also buying from a strong position. If you’re trading up in a rising market then you absolutely should be selling quickly in order to avoid another potential cash gap. Let’s say the market has for the sake of the maths risen by 10 percent so you’ll say £400 000 pounds sale is now worth £440,000. You’ve just made forty thousand pounds tax free sounds. But don’t forget that your let’s say five hundred thousand pound purchase has also risen by ten percent so you’re making forty thousand pounds on your sale but your purchase is costing you fifty thousand pounds more a cash gap shortfall of ten thousand pounds. So if you’re trading up in a rising market the key is don’t wait move fast.

So all in all, five reasons to list your property before you find your next property. I’m sorry if it’s not what you wanted to hear but I only ever promise you sincere straight talking good advice why not call me and get things moving. You can reach me on 07557783325.