House Sale

I arrived home from work on Wednesday and found the For Sale board up outside our house which was an exciting moment. I am sure everyone will agree that selling a house is rarely a pleasurable experience, but it is a significant milestone which I am very keen to pass as it is the last one which could delay our departure.

The photos have been taken and the brochure details approved. The final detail to start the marketing was our Home Energy Assessment which consists on an inspector visiting the house to assess the energy efficiency of the house. This is a new requirement in England when selling a house that the vendor is required to provide a Home Information Pack for reference to the potential buyers consisting of the Energy Assessment, Survey and Local Searches. This came into force for 4 bedroom houses this month and for 3 bedroom houses on 12th September. It has not been a popular implementation and was delayed earlier in the summer due to a lack of energy assessors - they must be still thin on the ground, as we could only book ours for a Sunday afternoon on a Bank Holiday weekend. Our house is a new three storey townhouse and is very energy efficient, so we are hoping that this may actually be a selling point. Although, I suspect it is only putting numbers and graphs to a point which common sense has told people for years – that old houses are colder. However people still buy them for the character and period features etc and they often regard new houses as “characterless”. I was converted new houses after living in a 1930’s house with character but drafts strong enough to blow your hair and heating bills enough to turn it grey.

So, fingers crossed for viewings from next week and an early offer. I think the price should be right for a relatively quick sale and then we will move into rental accommodation until it’s time to go. So a few weeks of living as tidily as possible just in case the agents bring anyone over, we have left them a key to arrange the viewings. Although, everyone keeps telling me recently that I look like Kirsty Allsopp from the property sales show Location, Location so perhaps I am missing a great marketing opportunity for the house by not doing the viewings ourselves!