How we work with you
Our 7 Steps to Sold
Everything we do at Stowhill Estates is designed to give you a world-class home selling experience. From presenting your home in the very best light to achieving you the highest price in the shortest time frame, we’re obsessively passionate about raising the game in our industry.
We only sell unique homes. And that means we can specialise to attract only buyers who are keen to buy a unique home.
Unique homes need a unique approach to marketing. Whilst standard-type marketing strategies can be sufficient to sell houses in streets where homes are mostly similar, marketing unique properties can be more challenging.
Often, it takes just one person to fall in love with your home and pay the asking price. Finding that buyer takes time and specialist marketing skills, to tease out the very best elements of your home and present them in a polished, attractive way. That’s where we come in.
We’ve spent the last seven years tweaking and mastering our techniques and strategies in every situation imaginable to offer you the best possible experience and results. 7 Steps to Sold is the result! We can’t wait for you to be part of the Stowhill Estates journey.
STEP 1: LIFESTYLE IMAGERY
They say ‘a picture paints a thousand words’ and it’s especially true when it comes to property marketing. Good images can be the difference between a buyer booking a viewing or dismissing your home as unsuitable. We understand better than most the power of beautiful images to really bring a home to life.
Once our team of home stylists have finished adding those special touches such as fresh flowers and scented candles, our professional photographers will set to work creating beautiful images of your home, inside and out. As well as clearly showing every feature of a room, we create lifestyle images to capture the essence and spirit of your home and showcase the lifestyle that your buyer aspires to.
Video content is also a must if you want to maximise the exposure for your home in a crowded market. Video currently drives over 82% of internet traffic and growing, and homes listed with a video receive on average 403% more enquires than those without, and sell 50% faster.
STEP 2: POETIC PROPERTY DESCRIPTIONS AND BESPOKE BROCHURES
The right words help your home come to life on the page. Conversely, the wrong words can leave you feeling uninspired or ready to move on to the next property listing. We want your buyer to fall in love with your home in much the same way as you did when you bought it, so our talented team of copywriters will spend time talking to you about your home and what makes it so special to you, before creating a compelling and evocative description.
Beautiful property descriptions tell the story of your home. They invite the buyer inside through the page and entice them to want to see more. Once your description is written, our in-house designer will bring all of the marketing together to create a beautiful, magazine-style printed brochure with all the images, written description and floorplan, together with a local area guide. We will also have a visual brand and logo for your home designed to accentuate its individuality.
STEP 3: PRICE TO ENTICE
Helping you maximise the value of your home and securing the highest possible sale price is our top priority. On average, our clients receive 102.4% of the original marketing price for their home.
You might have noticed that we use the words ‘pricing strategy’ and not ‘valuation’. It’s important to remember that the marketing price is used only to generate maximum interest for your home and therefore should not be thought of as a ‘valuation’.
It’s crucial to get the pricing strategy right from the outset to create competition and urgency amongst buyers, get the most amount of enquiries and viewings and ultimately the highest offers. Price too high and your home won’t generate enough interest, leading to stagnation on the market. Price too low and you will attract buyers who are unable to pay a premium price even if they wanted to.
Your pricing strategy will be tailored specifically to you and your home, taking your individual needs into account and designed to generate as much interest from suitable buyers as possible, maximising competition and increasing the desirability of your home.
STEP 4: DISCREET PROPERTY MARKETING AND ATTRACTING PASSIVE BUYERS
Every year, around 10% of homes in the UK are sold privately and the number of discreet property listings is on the rise.
We are specialists in off-market sales and discreet property marketing for homeowners who prefer to keep their property sale private. We work closely with a number of hand-picked property search agents nationally and internationally who have retained clients actively looking for their next home.
In addition to reaching all those buyers actively searching on Rightmove for a home to buy, we target the passive or discretionary buyer in a proactive way. Our distinctive personalised ‘For Sale’ boards are a great way of capturing interest from local buyers who ‘would love to buy that house if it ever came on the market’, while our targeted social media campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, Youtube TikTok and LinkedIn are a great way to reach opportunist buyers on a global scale.
STEP 5: ENQUIRIES AND VIEWINGS
We ensure that we capture every single lead that comes in for your home, from multiple sources. Buyer qualification is crucial and we ensure that every enquiry is properly vetted before booking a viewing to establish their level of interest on your home and their ability to proceed with and fund a purchase.
The brochure for your home is sent to potential buyers ahead of the viewing. This is a superb way to generate excitement and anticipation ahead of them seeing your home. Viewings are always accompanied by a team member who has met you personally and who knows your home inside out. Detailed feedback will be delivered to you by your preferred method within 24 hours (we like a chat on the phone but if you’re busy you might prefer communication via a WhatsApp group chat).
STEP 6: MONITOR, REVIEW, IMPROVE
Once you’re on the market, we regularly monitor the effectiveness of your property marketing online and analyse the ‘click-through rate’ or CTR which is the number of buyers who have clicked on your property listing for more information and spent time looking through the pictures and written details.
To ensure your home is kept looking fresh on the online property portals, we rotate the two main images weekly and make regular tweaks to the description if necessary. This will catch the eye of people who may have already seen your home and initially dismissed it.
We’ll provide you with weekly updates on your property marketing and after six weeks, we will meet you for a face-to-face review. If we’re not already discussing offers at this stage, we’ll work with you to make adjustments to your home’s marketing strategy.
STEP 7: NINJA NEGOTIATION
The negotiation of offers on what is most likely to be your largest tax-free asset is the most crucial element of our 7 Step process and should be handled by an experienced negotiator. A senior member of the team will handle negotiations on your home from start to finish. Most buyers make offers with a degree of emotional attachment to your home. Although we don’t want to manipulate this, we do want to use it to your advantage so we’re not afraid to negotiate hard on your behalf. When a buyer makes an offer on a home, we have a very clear and transparent process that sets everyone’s expectations and helps everyone along the journey. When you accept an offer from a buyer, we make it clear that we will stop viewings once they have given us their solicitor’s details and provided their financial position. However, we won’t change the status to ‘Under Offer’ until the buyer has booked their survey and paid their search fees to demonstrate a level of financial commitment.
STEP 8: THE BONUS STEP!
The final step on your journey to a successful sale of your unique home is to create your bespoke ‘Home Sale Strategy’. This starts with an hour of your time with us to scope out what you need and to hear your plans in detail. We know you don’t want a sales pitch, or to feel pressured in any way. Nor would we. That’s why we take a consultative approach – sitting down and having a chat over a cuppa to see if and how we can help you move on. Call our friendly team for an informal and confidential chat – we can then guide you through the best options for you and your family and decide if a Home Consultation is right for you.
You can reach us by telephone on 03330 344 144 or by email to hello@stowhillestates.com We’d love to help you move on with your life, in any way we can.
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