If you are eager to move onto pastures new, the chances are that you want to sell up quickly and for the maximum price. There are many reasons why people seek to move house. You might be eager to move closer to family, you may need to relocate for your job, you may need more living space for your growing brood, or you might be keen to move out of the city for a more rural way of life. Moving home can be one of the most stressful experiences of your life. This is why people don’t tend to do it too often! However, if you get it right, you could soon end up with the home of your dreams.
Moving home is like a jigsaw. You need to ensure that you list your home for the right price, that you have the time to go house hunting, that you can show the mortgage lender that you are a responsible borrower so you can obtain the home loan amount you need to facilitate a move, and that you can get through all of this without having a panic attack or nervous breakdown. While stressful, there are certain things that you can do to ease the burden when hunting for your dream pad. If you want to make this your final climb up the property ladder, you need to ensure that the bricks and mortar that you select to buy is the one that you can see yourself growing old and grey in. Take a look at this essential guide to securing the home of your dreams.
Selling Your Pad
While you may be consumed with getting onto Rightmove and organising viewings on potential new homes for your brood, you also need to pay attention to getting your own dwelling fit for sale. It’s all too easy to become subjective when it comes to our own homes. While you adore the red high gloss kitchen units that you fitted five years ago and the clutter that surrounds you is sentimental and comforting, a potential viewer may see a garish kitchen and a messy environment that lacks space. Instead, you need to make it your mission to get your home fit for sale. This means thinking of your home with your head rather than your heart.
To achieve the ceiling price for your street, you need to seduce your buyers with a lifestyle. This means presenting them with a blank canvas on which to make their mark. While it may seem counterintuitive to spend a bit of money on your pad before you list it for sale, this can save you money on excess mortgage repayments if it languishes on the market for too long. Think about painting over the deep damson purple hues in your dining room opting for a biscuit or off-white neutral tone instead. Consider brightening up the walls in your pad to create the illusion of space and to increase the light and airy feel of your living spaces.
If you do have highly bespoke and personalised features in your home, think about toning them down a little. The avocado green bathroom suite may have been all the rage back in the late 1980s, but nowadays people want white bathtubs and separate shower units. If a buyer sees a dated bathroom, they will consider it a renovation that they need to do before being happy with the pad they buy. This means that they may try to get money off the listing price or they may turn their backs on your property altogether. You need to make a potential buyer’s life easy so that they have very little to do and can just move in. When you have viewings, go for all the gimmicky sales patter, put some bread in the oven, and enjoy creating a decluttered and neutral environment that your potential buyers can walk around.
Mortgage
When you consider moving to a new pad, you might be concerned about leaving your current property. Will you be as happy in your new pad? Will you make a wrong move? Financially and emotionally, moving house is a massive decision. Think about your finances and get all of your monetary ducks lined up in a row. If you are upsizing, you may be able to release equity within your current home alongside increasing your mortgage. To have a clear idea about how much extra money you can borrow, check out this remortgage calculator to ensure that you don’t overstretch yourself and that you view houses that are within your financial reach.
When checking out mortgages, ensure that you shop around. You could use a mortgage broker, but these individuals often get commission based on providing specific home loans to buyers. This can result in a broker working for a company rather than acting in your best interests. You can do your own research and look at comparison sites as well as different building societies and banks. The big banks don’t always have the best deals. Consider smaller and more niche home loan suppliers, especially if you have a slightly unusual set-up. For example, self employed people, company directors, and individuals with poor credit may need to hunt for specific mortgage offers.
Finding Your New Home
The location of your new home could be known to you or it could be somewhere wholly new. A new region can be exciting. You won’t just be seeking a new home, but also a whole new lifestyle. If you are keen to explore new areas, it may be wise to commit to renting first. You may be nervous slipping off the housing ladder, but it can also be a blessing and give you six months or so to get used to your new surroundings. Moving somewhere brand new can be difficult and taking the plunge buying initially could result in a rash decision. Rent initially and explore the pubs, the shops, the countryside, and the neighbourhoods.
When you hunt for your new home, consider the sort of property that you want to live in. Detached homes can be grand, give you more spacious rooms, and mean that you won’t be directly linked to neighbours. However, these homes can also be more expensive than their semi-detached and terraced equivalents. To gain more space, you may want to look at adding a certain percentage of square footage to your living spaces. This should give you a clear idea of the sort of property that you need to look at.
You need to consider your lifestyle. If your family loves the great outdoors, you are real home bunnies, and you adore nothing better than hikes outside, then moving to a more rural environment could be for you. However, if you ferry the kids to ballet at the weekend, they enjoy football after school, and you love nothing more than being a culture vulture when you have the time, a more central town or city location could be more apt. This will dictate the sort of properties that you can consider when you head out on viewings.
If you are keen on making a financially astute decision be wary of those areas described as up and coming. These regions may have been described this way for the past decade or more, and they might not have the ability to morph into a well-established area. The regions that you need to look at should have seen property price rises for the past five years or more when you look at the property market history for an area. If you aren’t afraid of hard work, you want to grab a bargain, and you’re keen to put your own mark on a place, think about purchasing a doer-upper. These houses may need some love injected back into them. They can be cheap to buy and if you carry out a scheme of works, you can be sure of adding value to the pad.
Stay Put
If you adore your little patch of bricks and mortar, think about staying put. If you need more space, you don’t have to buy a bigger place. Think about extending or opening up your home. Those large kitchen diners can revolutionise your lifestyle. No longer do you have to be stuck in a poky kitchen rustling up the evening meal. Instead, enjoy a more open-plan and family orientated way of cooking, eating, and spending time together.
You could think about converting your loft space into a new bedroom and ensuite bathroom. Perhaps you want to extend outwards into the back garden to create a larger living space or an extra playroom for your little darlings. Just twenty extra square metres can make your life so much easier. This way, you won’t have to say goodbye to the place where you have created so many happy memories for the past decade.
Finding the home of your dreams can seem like a real mountain to climb. The stress that comes with it can be negated if you have a plan in place to enjoy viewings, get your house ready for sale, consider extending your own pad and get your financial ducks all in a row. Follow this guide and you can find the home of your dreams for you and your brood.