Things that make your home hard to sell and how to get a quick sale

By Sean Woolley, Cloud Nine Spain 

If you’re looking to sell your property, you need to try to get into the mind of your potential buyers and remove as many barriers to purchase as possible. I’ve been helping vendors sell their properties in Spain for more than 20 years, and properties that are hard to sell are usually priced too high compared to similar properties in their area, or they aren’t standing up to other properties in their area in terms of finish. If you think your property is well priced and well presented, there could be an issue with your marketing and not enough buyers are seeing your property.  

It also comes down to supply and demand. If your home is located in a popular area, where there aren’t many properties competing with yours, then you know it will be easy to sell. On the contrary, if there are lots of competitor properties on the market at the same time, it makes it harder to sell and you lose control of the price, as the buyer can bargain and play one vendor off against the other.

How can you get a quick sale 

Get the price right to make your property desirable 

When pricing your property, make sure you do your research on other properties in the area and try not to be greedy. Also remember that the advertised price is not necessarily what the properties sell for.

Get a number of agents to price the property and don’t always go for the highest valuation. Chose the agent that you trust and seems to understand the market and the area, as they are most likely to price it correctly. 

You can increase the price a little, to allow a bit of room for negotiations, but make sure you’re not out of step with similar properties in your area, as then you won’t get anyone in the door. 

Keep checking in to see if the price point you chose is still correct. If you’re not getting viewings, chances are your asking price is wrong. Update your research, have prices gone down, are properties selling at your price point? Look online and talk to a trusted agent for their advice and on the ground experience. 

Make your property look its very best 

It could be a case of staging the property and investing in fantastic photography that’s all that is needed. Or, you may need to spend some money and do some work on the property in order to close the sale. 

If you’re getting viewings but no offers, chances are there’s something about the property that is putting buyers off. Ask your agent for their honest opinion and invite some friends to view the house as a prospective buyer and give you a candid reaction. It can be hard to get perspective when you own and love the property, so make sure you get some real reactions and act upon them to improve the buyers’ experience. 

A few simple home staging techniques can transform the way buyers respond to your property. The key is to declutter, depersonalize and make improvements to key areas which buyers really value, to remove barriers to purchase and create a blank slate that buyers can project their ideal home onto. We recommend making sure all the lights are on and blinds are up to maximize light, cleaning and tidying and ensuring the place smells clean and fresh. Heat or cool the space to make it feel comfortable, keep pets out of the way and remove yourself from the viewing, leaving your property in the capable hands of your agent. This should give you the best chance of getting an offer.

In some cases, there are major issues which are stopping buyers from taking the plunge and buying and it’s a good idea to do work to overcome these barriers. 

Listen to your agents if they are recommending doing work. Many homeowners don’t want to invest €10,000 to get €50,000 back and speed up the sale process. But as you only have one chance to impress, it really is worth the effort and investment. 

You have to see beyond your tastes, to try and make your property appeal to the most potential buyers if you want a chance of a quick sale. For example, we had one vendor with a beautiful villa, but which was painted brown and it was really putting buyers off. We recommended that they paint it a more neutral popular colour to be able to sell, but they refused because they liked the colour, despite the fact that I believe that this simple investment alone would have increased the value of their property by €100K. 

Once you have your property looking its best, invest in professional photography and video. Many buyers start their property purchase journey online and good photography makes your property stand head and shoulders ahead of the rest. Investing a small amount to have your property professionally photographed is probably the single most important thing you can do to sell your home.

Make sure your property is being marketed correctly 

Don’t be afraid to question your agent on what marketing they do to ensure that your property is seen by as many people as possible online and offline. Find out where they list the properties online, ask them about their website traffic and marketing strategy, check that you’re happy with the way your property looks on their website and how the description is written. 

You should have a concise description of your property which includes the best features and benefits of your property. Think of the description as a tick-list. The more items you can tick, the more popular your property will be. The key is to make your photos and description the best they possibly can be, so your listing attracts the eye and clearly spells out why it’s such a good choice, so you get as many enquiries as possible online. The more people who contact you or your agent, the better your chance of selling at the right price. 

Ask about how else they market the agency and also the individual properties. Ask if your property will appear in any printed media, or on social media and look to see how many followers they have and what the engagement is like. Find out whether it will be sent to a database of potential buyers and if so, how many. 

Once the property is being promoted, check in regularly with your agent to find out how it’s going. Get feedback on how many enquiries they are getting about your property and how that compares to their other clients, and take advice from them on how you could improve your chances of a quick sale.  

If your price is right, the property is looking fantastic and your marketing is good, you are in the best position to sell your property quickly and easily. 

Sean Woolley is the Founder and Director of leading real estate agency Cloud Nine Spain.