Getting Ready to Move Home in Richmond Next Year

It happens every year. It feels like no sooner do the clocks go back in October, that tinsel-draped trees pop up in the shops, every other evening is a mince pie and mulled wine somewhere, and if you ever do stick the radio on, it turns out that all Mariah wants for Christmas is you. 

Now that the nights have drawn in and the mercury has dropped, for many the idea of moving home now seems a nuisance at best; probably better to just get Christmas out of the way and then get on with moving….

Well, as mentioned in the opener: we do understand. We do also tend to bite our tongues just a little when people say to us, half apologetically, that “nobody’s really looking right now are they? Everyone’s just thinking about Christmas”… because we know, being here at the coal face, that people really very much are still looking, and more to the point, if someone is viewing in this fortnight before Christmas, they are serious (because if they weren’t, they’d be in Argos). 

This particular piece today is especially for those Richmond property sellers and buyers who really have decided that there’s simply way more to December than moving home… but who do have every intention of getting on it in the New Year. 

We hear you; we appreciate you. 

Still, there are a few things that you can do in December to grease the rails for January, without having to bite the bullet and get the board up outside, or to start traipsing around houses. So, let’s take a moment to run through those things… 

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Prepare your Property for Sale

This is the obvious one, and the subject of Property Lifestyle Blogs ad infinitum, so let’s not labour this one too much – but it would be silly not to skim through some key points. 

If you are a homeowner whose move requires a sale, then as busy as the Christmas period is, it does give you some opportunity to do that decluttering and redecorating that you’ll no doubt have heard all about before. The thing about Christmas, is that you will probably be having a bit of a tidy and a good clean anyway – especially if you have guests coming. So, if nothing else, just keep that up. Think: what is currently ‘out’ that you can hide out of the way’? Well, now’s the time. Piles of papers? Time to file or bin them. That grim bit of mastic in the bathroom? Wouldn’t want sister-in-law to see it, now, would we… but actually, we probably don’t need viewers seeing it either; it’s one of those jobs worth tackling. 

The Christmas Decs are going back in the loft in the New Year once it’s all over, so again, that’s a good opportunity to park a bit of excess furniture up there too whilst you’re at it. Once everything is tidied out of the way, it’s one final clean and a good vacuum, perhaps a carpet shampoo, and you will be market-ready.

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Register with Local Richmond Borough Estate Agents

You don’t need to trawl the high street anymore, you can register with estate agents in Richmond, Twickenham and Teddington from the comfort of your own home – or even from the comfort of your favourite local coffee shop. 

The big portals – Rightmove, Zoopla, OnTheMarket, etc. - will allow you to register your property search criteria with them for daily updates when new relevant properties come to market.  

That’s OK, but if you have a little more spare time than that, why not register with agents directly. They are quieter than normal, they have time to take your call, to have proper conversations with you about the market, about your search, about their service too, if you wished to ask about it… They will also know what they have up their sleeves for the New Year, primed and prepared and ready to launch; Rightmove et al do not know that. What if there is a local estate agent that already has the perfect property on your favourite street, it just isn’t online yet? 

Worth a conversation to find out. But you don’t even need to talk to them if you don’t want to; check out their own websites, you can normally register online, and it is still a bit more personal than sending in a requirement lead through Rightmove.

We aren’t an agent that recommends clients wait until Boxing Day to launch to market, but others do and plenty of sellers will – so it is worth being pre-registered, simply to not miss new properties hitting the market in that post-Christmas surge.

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Suss out Local Estate Agents in Richmond, Twickenham and Teddington 

If you are looking to sell your property, then whilst you are registering with Estate Agents, you can take the chance to learn how individual agents behave. How did they handle your call? Would you like the agent you instruct to handle your potential buyers that way? 

If you are not buying, but you are thinking of selling, then you won’t have necessarily gone through that particular process – but you could still nevertheless spend time doing your homework. Check out the different Estate Agents’ adverts. Do they sell property like yours, in the same price range? Have they got anything similar to your property ‘Sold Subject to Contract’? How are their photos – professionally taken? Badly edited? Do any agents have a particular style you like – be that their photos, their style of writing, anything in the marketing strategy that makes you stop and think: oh, that’s clever – I like that.

Are the Estate Agents utilising video in their marketing?

The worst time to be making a choice about which Estate Agent to choose is when you have them sitting on the sofa opposite you.

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Get a Valuation of your Richmond Borough Property

We know you have made your decision to hold off marketing until after Christmas, but you could still get a valuation done in the next few days. Estate Agents are quieter than normal, so you’ll have a good chance of getting seen for a start, and they can spend quality time assessing your property and providing you market as well as marketing advice. It’s not a bad idea at all to go on the market in January – I don’t have any intention of telling you it is. However, Estate Agents do get far busier in January, as many sellers have the same idea – so waiting until January to book might well mean that the valuation itself gets pushed back, and that photos then get pushed even further back, and before you know it, it’s February before you are listed and you’ve missed out on a run of good potential buyers that already started looking as soon as the crepe-paper crown came off.

If you have the ability to get your property valued now, it means you can go into Christmas with a plan – it’s one less thing hanging over you. You might even choose to instruct an agent now, even if you ask them to hold off doing anything until after the festivities – it might mean getting your photo photographed on the 3^rd to go live on the 6^th, as opposed to being photographed on the 23^rd and live by Valentines Day… 

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Realistically, we know there is still a market alive and kicking even in these last few days before Christmas, but we absolutely respect people’s personal thoughts and opinions, and indeed circumstances – for many people, it really is too busy! 

But, do think about getting yourself a step ahead – because when the New Year Market kicks off, it does it with a bang.

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