Tricks of the trade

Karen –
This is my all-time favourite subject – so... apologies, but I’m going to have to join in with my (twenty) two penn’orth.
I couldn’t agree more strongly with your post. Every word rings true.
There is a huge amount of negativity surrounding the housing market – and has been for more months than I care to remember. You may recall I call it ‘antihype’. It does no-one any favours – but then neither does the boom/bust cycles of the housing market. There is a government-funded think tank currently looking into ways to stop this cyclic market – but this will be like sewing buttons on smoke, as there is no way you can stop people from buying houses when they want to, or need to. And people are sheep, as we are currently experiencing – all or nothing.
Having sold hundreds (modesty prevents me from claiming ‘thousands’) of homes in the past thirty years, I feel I am almost qualified to pen/type my thoughts here. But, first... a confession. I lied. Well, not so much a lie – just a use of the wrong terminology. The word ‘sold’ is probably the most misused (and overused...) in the industry. I have never ‘sold’ a house in my life. But I HAVE been involved in the before-mentioned 000’s of transactions whereby buyer and property are matched, united, and live happily ever after...
You see, the house does the selling. The skill is to match the right property with the right buyer – and the majority of the time, that is done for you by the buyers themselves.
Buyers aren’t stupid. They know all the tricks. The fresh coffee/bread/apple pie (my old suggestion) all are now old hat and don’t carry much weight (but the apple pies were nice at the time, thank you everyone – and now I carry ALL the weight!).
So now, of course, you have to ‘stage’ your house. Minimalise everything. Replace strong colour with pastels and beiges. At least that’s what Ann Maurice, Sarah Beeny et al will have you believe. Instead of coffee, the house smells of fresh emulsion. Mmmm... Truth is, if a buyer wants to buy your house, they will buy it – and there’s not a lot you can do to put them off. Yes, you can make it look and feel more attractive/spacious/whatever... but houses sell - whether they smell of roses or rottweillers. The latter just take longer to sell, or sell for less money, than the former. I’ve had the ‘pleasure’ of marketing houses that had pigs as air fresheners – but they sold! Why - because the buyers wanted them. And they turned down better houses in the course of looking.
Although there are a percentage of buyers – investors - for whom property is a business (and this percentage actually controls the market), your average homebuyer is either a complete novice or hasn’t moved for several years, and buys with their heart, not their head.
Experience has proved to me that there is a buyer for every house - and a house for every buyer. As I said before, they just have to be matched together.
So, I guess that makes me – and every Estate Agent, builder’s Sales Negotiator, etc, a Master Matchmaker! Move over Cilla Black – we’ve a lorra lorra houses and buyers to unite...