An article by: Nick Berriman.
It is with great delight that I am writing this article for the first edition of Wolverhampton and Staffordshire Magazine, a new magazine launched by the well-known King and Queen of Lifestyle Magazines in this area, and my good friends, Gisella & Geoff Wiley. Their track record in this field is unparalleled and we at Berriman Eaton are delighted to be involved in this new venture.
For the full colour PDF version of this article with images, please click and download here.
But is the property market currently as exciting as the appearance of this superb new magazine? Possibly not…. Times are starting to become harder in the market, but I still maintain that the market is not as bad as the media is portraying. We are still busier than we were before the pandemic distorted the level of transactions that were occurring in what became a frenzied market.
So what do you need to do to be a successful seller? It is very simple – be realistic. Sellers that are living in the past couple of years and believing that every house will receive multiple offers from multiple buyers will be disappointed. Realism is key and do not have over optimistic expectations.
Having said that, there are still signs of life out there! Contracts have recently been exchanged on the sale of a property that went on the market with us at a significantly higher level than it was valued by one of our competitor agencies. Despite this we agreed a sale at more than £50,000 over our guide price! Another property recently went from having a sale agreed, which was in excess of £500,000, to completing in 11 working days, a record for this firm!
Whilst I do not think that we are in a buyers’ market yet, we are certainly not in the sellers’ market that we saw in 2021 / 2022. There is more equality out there, and that is no bad thing. What any healthy property market needs is stability and I believe that is what we will see next year.
Although the economy is still undoubtedly suffering, there are green shoots appearing. We have seen that the cost of living has reduced in a couple of instances on a monthly basis, inflation seems to becoming under control and mortgage interest rates are predicted to be falling in the months to come. If all of this continues, things could be very different next year. We will see!
In the meantime, as mentioned earlier, realism is the name of the game. Sellers need to work with their estate agent to get deals done. There is much tough negotiation out there and it is vital that your agent is working hard for you. It is always easy for a lazy agent to push you towards accepting a low offer just to get their commission paid, but a good agent will be fighting hard for you in your corner in every instance.
At Berriman Eaton our ethos has always been to get the best price from the best buyer. This is not always necessarily the highest offer, but the one that will be most likely to proceed to completion. To find the best buyer takes commitment and hard work, but that is what you will always get from us. If we can be of any help, please do not hesitate to give us a call.
