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11th August 2021
A private property sale is a situation where a seller decides
to deal directly with a buyer rather than involving an estate agent. Often this
means a transaction between friends as it can be hard to find a buyer
otherwise.
Here at Maslen Estate Agents we've seen this happening more
often recently and have had to deal with a number of sales where someone in a
chain will be selling privately.
Although it might sound like an easy way to save time and money,
it can end up badly and might even cost you a friendship.
Mixing Business with Pleasure
At the bottom line selling a property is a business deal and there are plenty of old sayings and sage advice about not going into business with friends.
Where large sums of money are involved it can be hard to
separate friendship from 'good business sense'. For instance, if you were
selling to a friend and their survey brought up some previously unknown problem
prompting them to ask you to reduce the price, how would you feel? What if they
told you they were having trouble raising the funds and asked for a last-minute
reduction?
Chains and Dealing with Other Estate Agents
Another thing to take into account is that third parties involved in the process won't know your friend, so they may well not take a chance on them, resulting in your offer to buy their property not being accepted.
It is the job of any estate agent to look after their
seller's interests, and that means making sure that buyers are serious and have
the funds (and a strong chain) to see the deal through. This can make any chain
which involves a private sale much more complicated and risky than usual.
Often a private buyer won't engage with us in the usual way, so it makes it very difficult for us to do our 'due diligence' process. At Maslen we've had at least one recent clear example of this where our seller has lost out on buying a property with another agent purely because they couldn't check out the chain fully and wouldn't take a chance.
Sale agreed, job done?
After we had arranged a buyer for one of our recent clients, the home owner thought that our job was then done and they wouldn't be hearing from us again.
Nothing could be further from the truth and any reputable estate agent would be horrified that clients would think this was the case!
Getting a sale across the finishing line and handing over
keys is a process that starts with marketing a property and finishes the on the
day of completion when the move is made. So much of our work actually takes
place after the sale is agreed and if you choose to sell privately that this is
something that you'd have to do yourself.
Problem solving
It's a fact that most sales involve more than two parties as there will usually be some kind of chain, where sellers are buying another property and buyers are selling one and so on.
In some cases this can get quite complicated and a huge part
of our work is making sure that everyone involved in a chain is moving forward
at the same pace.
Not only that, solicitors, surveyors, money laundering
checks, land registry and local authorities searches all rely on third party
professionals doing their job within a certain time frame.
Dealing with these people on behalf of our clients is all part and parcel of an estate agent's day to day job.
So if you'd like to sell your home without the stress and complications of all the work that goes on behind the scenes, or if you'd simply rather not risk falling out with a friend, then call us today on 01273 278866 for an accurate and up to date valuation, and let's get you moving.