THE ART OF A GOOD SALE
IN this market, it’s possible to get a bigger house, in a better location for the same price as the house you have now. The only snag is you have to sell your own, and more than likely at what would be deemed a loss.
But then, the asset value of properties given during the boom were notional, and so too is the price you probably carry round in your head as the value of your own house.
In order to move and get where you want to be, then you must scrap preconceptions if you are to sell.
And that’s not as daunting as it seems — the lower end of the market is doing well, so selling the semi to buy that larger or detached house is possible. You just need to accept the hit and relish the fact that you’re buying low — the swings and roundabout school of property economics.
And when you’ve decided on moving, put the house on the market immediately — but only after you’ve checked out agents, been given quotes for their fees and have checked out the prices made in your area.
Then it’s time to get down to business.
Getting a house ready for sale is one of the most stressful experiences you can go through and it’s a truism that your house will never look nicer or better than when it goes on the market.
We are perverse people — what may be good enough for us certainly won’t be good enough for the visitor.
It’s why the Stations of the Cross is an excuse to paint and clean from top to bottom and why weddings induce not only coronary infarctions, but brigades of tradespeople.
With the passing of the property boom, getting a house in order to sell is more important than ever.
In the old days, a bike shed with potential could be bid up to the stratosphere if it was in the right area, but now any house at all has to shine to sell.
And perversely, the more modest humble houses are holding their own and the big, snooty mansions are maturing like old cheese on auctioneers’ notice-boards.
The reason isn’t just down to the bubble-burst, but perhaps also down to a sharp re-appraisal of what’s important in life.
Like having enough money left over after the mortgage, or being able to live without a credit card or overdraft facility.
Or not wanting to spend anymore than is necessary to purchase a house, hence the need for a finished product.
With this in mind, first impressions for a property sale should start at the price and work from there.
Do not rely on the unfounded assumption that your house is going to be the only property in the whole of Ireland that will buck the market. It won’t.
And try not to get too insulted when you’re told that your particular pile is worth a lot less than you expect. Get a number of opinions and go with a meld of the advice given.
It may be quite normal for us to see property as an extension of ourselves, (isn’t that why the whole country went down the tubes?) but truly, it’s not healthy psychologically.
So step back, run a gimlet eye over your gaff and look at it as if you’re seeing it for the first time. Or stand in the garden at evening time and look in. Is it inviting? Warm? Is the garden tidy and the exterior smart, or does it look a bit haphazard, untidy or worse, uncared for?
Then you need to get to work bearing in mind that awful phrase, ‘kerb appeal’.
Start at the outside and work in: draw up a list and itemise immediate remedial work.
Cut the grass and keep it shorn — it makes such a difference and a lot of people overlook this most basic approach.
Go a bit further and clip the edges and tidy the beds: cut out around trees and underplant with brightly coloured bulbs or annuals — it looks cheery and keeps down the weeds.
Paint the shed. Buy pots and fill them with shrubs. Put the pots in front of the shed and put more on the patio.
Spend a few bob on good garden furniture and lose the greyed plastic stuff, or if money is scarce, pick up a cheap but smart bistro set and see it work wonders.
Clip the hedges, paint the gate and pillars and if all of that’s too much — call in The Man.
Luckily, The Man is not too busy at the moment and should respond to your alarm cries with alacrity. Just nail down a price and let him off.
This will save time and effort for you, the householder, to get stuck into the interior. Again, assess the jobs that need doing and make those calls.
Book the painter for the week after the clear and clean, or block time off work and do the job yourself.
Either way, set out a clear, sensible time frame and tick details on or off the master list as you go along.
Then, begin the big clear-out.
Now, I’ve seen a lot of houses in my time and for me personally, an over-cleared house is sterile, lacklustre and bereft of personality.
Do take down family pictures if you must, (I’m not too nosy, but there are some out there that are) and get rid of bills and appointments or other personal letters, but leave the stuff that makes a house a home.
Hand-prints from playschool, paintings, ornaments, books and magazines all speak to a life led — they give an impression of a house for living in, not a showpiece.
Fresh flowers appeal to the same senses as fresh veg, it’s why supermarkets put them at the entrance, they conjure up all that we like to think of as wholesome and good — ditto at home.
Oh, and in terms of scent, it’s lovely to get a gentle whiff of essential oil — but blaring air freshener is another matter: as with all things in life, less is more.
I broke my rules and bought a few of those stick things in a bottle with a name like fresh cotton: what I got smelled like clothes drying on a radiator — win some, lose some.
But getting back to clutter, an untidy house is not pleasant to visit and it distracts utterly from that which you want to sell: namely, the house.
Keep it within limits and make sure every household member knows the rules: zero tolerance on untidiness is the only option.
Worse of all is a cluttered and dirty house — it will make you want to run a mile.
Honest to God, I did once have to kick an underpants under a bed on my way round — now that is not a way to sell a house.
What a vendor should aim for is something in between — you’re selling the lifestyle, but not the life, if you know what I mean.
It works on the same principle as a farmer’s market — throw in a bit of organic, a bit of down-home country and a bit of art and you have something that people will be drawn to and hopefully, love enough to buy.
In other words, be slightly original and you’ll attract more attention, but also stick to the knitting, art won’t save a draughty, ill-fitted house and make sure that everything works.
Selling your house is also the time for the mother of all spring cleanings and before that starts, you need some judicious pruning.
Get rooms cleared and pack all of the unused stuff for the charity shop, including those I’ll-get-into-them-someday, size 11 jeans, dire wedding outfits, fat clothes and ’90s evening wear — get rid.
And it becomes surprisingly cathartic, you soon get so into the swing of things that two skips later, you’re still firing stuff out.
And when the kitchen cupboards are empty, save them for the stuff you actually use, then you’re ready to start cleaning.
Think CSI, think strobe-lights on the bathroom, think truly, deeply, madly clean.
This is where the true grit and determination of the focussed house-seller comes to the fore and if you’re cute, you’ll co-opt the OCD friend who’s target for cleanliness is the operating theatre.
Once everything is washed, dusted and scrubbed, let the painter do his thing, but err on the side of caution when it comes to colour.
Check out magazines and come up with a compromise between what you think the market will take and your choice of magenta in the bedroom.
There is a stage, which I fondly refer to as chicken-with-head-cut-off where a crisis point is reached and there is lots of running around and quite a bit of squawking.
This is all quite natural and there to remind you that selling a house really is a big step — but, like eating the elephant, is best done calmly, cooly and a bit at a time. Go for it.
BORROWING its style from the carapace of an armoured beetle, or the scales of a dinosaur, perhaps, Overton on Cork’s Douglas Road is out there not only in style, but in terms of domestic build technology.
The detached house, one of a matching pair built on the grounds of a now obliterated dwelling on this premier road, was constructed with no expense spared — and it shows.
From the copper roof and slate curved wall roof to the steel balconies, cedar cladding and two-storey glazing, its current sale price of €1.3 million will hardly cover costs: the one-third acre site alone would have cost in the region of €500,000 in the first instance.
That’s on the basis of a third of the overall site cost of €1.3 million — and that’s without factoring in demolition, clearance and planning fees, which would have ratcheted up the overall sum considerably.
And while the house has a science-fiction feel, not only in its zoomorphic shape and projecting ‘scales’, its 21st century software puts more zeros onto the end of the cost base.
It took nearly three years to construct, using the best of materials and is a ‘smart home’, with fast response air to water under-floor heating and more wiring than a space shuttle.
With the Herculean task complete and finished to the nth term, the property went for sale in September with Catherine McAuliffe of Savills, who pitched the price at €1.35 million, based more on the market, than on the actual value of the house on cost terms alone.
All of the interior fixtures and fittings are bespoke, and it incorporates high engineering values with a subterranean floor, including parking, utility, office, guest and home cinema accommodation under the garden.
Its 5,000 square feet of cabled living still manages the quotidian stuff too, like five en-suite bedrooms, a range of living rooms and outdoor space.
This luxury, striking home is an experience as much as an abode — and is astrally removed from the concept of shelter. That being said, it’s a harbinger of how we’ll all live soon, so roll on the Jetsons and lucky is he or she who gets to push buttons here.
A Lottery winner, perhaps?
- Stamp duty 2010: €88,250
- Total purchase price: €1,388,250
- Stamp duty 2011: €16,000
- Total purchase price: €1,316,000 SAVING: €72,250
IF you had the deeds and the various sales prices of this house at Murroe, Co Limerick, it would provide a good graph of the market over 200 years.
In particular, it provides a good idea of how property prices have gone in the upper end over the last two years.
Castlecomfort House was initially listed with a €1.8 million guide and that was reduced to €800,000 — over half its original asking price — in April 2010. With the reduction in stamp duty, this house offers a saving of €162,000 in stamp duty and a capital saving of a cool million. Not bad, is it? And that’s for a stereotypical, dream country house property. On 15 acres of woodland, the stately Georgian is pristine and comes with restored stone courtyard, outbuildings, a walled garden and leafy driveway.
It’s steeped in history, says agent O’Connor Murphy Gubbins, and was built by one Fr Thomas O’Brien Costello in 1820/1 who entertained Daniel O’Connell and Fr Mathew among others. Castlecomfort has a reception hall, drawing room, dining room, sitting room, cellar, kitchen, utility, guest bathrooms and five bedrooms with five bathrooms over three levels. It has a manageable 3,000sq feet of space.
- 2009 guide:€1.8 million.
- Stamp duty: €162,000.
- Total 2009: €1.96m.
- 2011 guide: €800,000.
- 2011 stamp duty €8,000.
- Total 2011: €808,000.
SAVING: €1,154,000.
A TYPICAL three-bed, Number 32 Lenabeg, Ennis, Co Clare, has just under 1,000 square feet of space and is on offer at €139,000, down from €159,000 through Sherry FitzGerald McMahon.
An end-of-terrace property, it has interconnecting living rooms and a kitchen-dining room with access through double doors to a south-facing garden. The master bedroom is en-suite and the property comes with built-in wardrobes and a fully fitted kitchen.
Its proximity to Ennis will be a strong selling point, say the agents, who expect interest from first-time-buyers.
- Guide 2010: €159,000
- Stamp duty: €2,380 for owner-occupiers. Nil for first-time buyers.
- Guide 2011: €139,000
- Stamp Duty: €1,390 for owner-occupiers and first-time buyers
- Saving in 12 months: €20,000 in capital, €990 in stamp duty
First-time buyers: no savings. Added cost of €1,390
HOUSES in this part of Cork city were making over €400,000 in the boom and now, number 44 Green Lawn, Turner’s Cross, sets a benchmark low at the guide of €197,500. A classic ’60s semi, it has just under 1,100 square feet of space and a large corner site.
On the market with Peter Skuse of Cahalane Skuse Auctioneers, the three-bed is a walk to the city. It also has a good bus service and is also close to the south ring network for commuters.
The price level will be attractive to first-time buyers who would have found city properties like this prohibitively expensive in the past.
- Cost 2010: €197,500
- Stamp duty 2010: €5,075
- Total cost: €202,575
- Guide price 2011: €197,500
- Stamp duty 2011: €1,950
- Total cost: €199,450
SAVING: €3,125
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