Dear Heather

I have put my property on the market and I know the asking price is a bit high, but I would like to get a good price for it and I’m not in a hurry to sell. I am looking for some market advice.

Not in a Hurry to Sell, Paget

Dear Not in Hurry to Sell;

I’m confused, why have put your property on the market if you are not ready to sell it yet?

Most people who want to sell their home either no longer need the house or need some money for an investment in something else. I often ask my seller, when do you need that money? As soon as possible? Six months? One year? Two years?

If you are hoping someone might make a really high offer, I am here to tell you that they probably won’t. In today’s market, pricing is everything and buyers can shop and compare on the internet. Buyers know what properties are worth and even if they don’t, chances are a buyer will not be able to secure a mortgage for more than the appraised value of the house. Most buyers need a mortgage which they will get from a bank. In order to loan them money, the bank will send an appraiser out to establish whether the property is worth what they are offering, and indeed what they as the bank are prepared to lend.

Even if a buyer can afford to pay a little more, it is unlikely they will want to pay over the appraised value because there are many other good deals out there. In my experience the longer a property sits on the market the less likely it ends up selling for at the end of the day. It becomes ‘old goods’ and people may assume there is something wrong with it.

So what time frame are we looking at, from offer to closing? From the day you receive an offer, let’s say today, which is the July 3, you can expect anything from a few days to a couple of weeks, to negotiate the price of the property and the terms and conditions of the contract. So now we are at July 17.

When that has been agreed and the sale and purchase agreement has been drafted up, it’s not unusual for it to take between a month and six weeks for everyone to review the sale and purchase agreement.

During this time, the bank has to send out an appraiser, the purchasers are pursuing their finance arrangements, deeds have to be found, and a structural survey completed if necessary. All of this potentially puts us around the end of August, particularly if multiple parties or travel arrangements are involved. Sometimes our sellers live overseas.

Once the sale and purchase agreement, also known as the contract, has been signed, the conveyancing documents have to be prepared, the tenancies have to be renegotiated if necessary, boundaries have to be surveyed and staked, etc and a planning search has to be submitted to the planning department which takes at least 30 days to process.

The average property sale takes at least four to six weeks from signing and stamping of contract to closing, so we are now at the middle of October. Which is almost four months to closing.

And now, we are just heading into peak holiday season. Many people travel in the months of July and August, or they have house guests and it is hot, so real estate just doesn’t sit very high on their agenda. Unless your agent has someone who is actively bringing an offer to the table, it is likely that you will not get any offers until everything gets back to normal after the summer holidays. If successful, this would bring your closing to either just before or just after Christmas. Many people don’t want to move over the Christmas period due to family commitments and activities, which could extend your closing even further.

So, ‘Not in a Hurry’, my question to you is this: When do you want your money? Because the longer your house sits on the market, the less money it is likely to sell for. As you can see it is easy to miscalculate how complex and time consuming the sales process can be.

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Heather Chilvers has been working in Real Estate for 25 years.

If you have a question for Heather, please contact her at hchilvers@brcl.bm or 332 1793.

All questions will be treated confidentially.