THINKING OF SELLING - WHERE DO I START ?
People often say that selling a property is the most stressful time of your life. Juggling a sale and purchase and trying to co-ordinate all the moving parts. It’s extremely helpful to know at the beginning of your house sale, what the steps along the road will be and what would be required from your Solicitor and Estate Agent.
CHOOSING THE RIGHT ESTATE AGENT
The first thing you will need to do is contact an Estate Agent who will schedule an appointment to come out and inspect your property. They will give you the advice you need in relation to the estimated market value of your house and how best to sell – whether it’s Private treaty, Auction or Tender. They will also give you some advice in relation to any home improvements, repairs or changes that will help with the sale of the property. Do not take this negatively from the estate agents as they are on your side. They are only interested in achieving the best price possible for your property and if this means a coat of paint, tidying up the gardens, replacing a carpet – these things should be considered as the agent has your best interest at heart.
FINANCE
After speaking with the Estate Agent you will have an idea of the costs involved in selling a property and also the estimated selling price. This may help you in the next step of your journey if you are trying to work out your finances and if you are going to get additional finance from a bank or other lender to purchase a new home. Knowing the market value of your property and giving all the relevant information to the financial institution will enable them to assess how much of a loan you could obtain. This then in turn will enable you to see what type of property you can trade to and what new homes are in your price range. It is likely the bank will require a lot of paperwork and documents from you to assess your financial position. It’s best to request a checklist of everything at the start so they don’t keep coming back to you in dribs and drabs looking for additional information that will subsequently delay the process.
Once you have assessed your financial position with the sale of your house and the bank, then the next step is to contact your solicitor. It’s incredibly important that all documentation is correct and accounted for or it will cause delays further down the line.
LEGAL DOCUMENTATION
Title Documents
It is important you ask your solicitor to request the title documents from your bank at an early stage as this can avoid delays when you go sale agreed. The solicitor is not in a position to issue contracts until such time as they have the title documents from the bank. Any delays here could add to the stress for both you as the seller and the person buying their new home.
BER Certificate
All properties must have a BER Certificate (Building Energy Rating) indicating your homes energy performance. BER ratings range from an A to G rating. ‘A’ being the best and ‘G’ being the worst. Your Estate Agent should be able to give you the names of local BER Assessors or alternatively if you go to www.seai.ie they will have a list of assessors in your local area on their website.
NPPR
This is the Non Principle Private Residence Tax which was in place between 2009 and 2013 for all rental properties only. You should have paid €200 per rental property per annum and your solicitor will require the NPPR receipts. If you have not paid this tax at the time there is a considerable penalty to clear this charge. It’s best to check this early to avoid any surprises at a later time.
LPT
This is the Local Property Tax and again your solicitor will require the receipts to show that the tax has been paid up to-date. The relevant date for assessing the tax is the value of the property in April 2013, so if there is a significant differential between the selling price and the band in which you were paying your LPT you may require a letter/report from your estate agent to justify the market value of the property in April 2013.
PLANNING
This can be one of the biggest stumbling blocks in a sale. It is imperative that all planning is in order as banks or other financial institutions are unlikely to accept any planning irregularities. Some people may have put in velux windows to the front of their house, converted the attic, added a front porch, built a detached garage (above the exemption limit). It is a must if you made any alterations to the property that this is dealt with at an early stage as planning retention maybe required which will take 3 months and could run concurrent to the sale process if required. If you have sale agreed on your home and a prospective buyers engineer comes to do their survey and notices there are planning irregularities, then this could delay the process by a further 3 months and put the sale in jeopardy.
GETTING ‘HOUSE READY’
Once you have all the paperwork in order then it is time to prepare your house for sale.
You should work off the recommendations received from your Estate Agent as these are all based on achieving the best possible price for your house. This could be from decluttering, replacing carpets, painting some rooms or freshening up the gardens, putting extra gravel on the driveway or a host of other small changes.
THE ESTATE AGENT
The Estate Agent is going to require some documentation. They will issue you with a PSRA Agreement (Property Services Regulatory Authority) for signing with the agreed fee and outlay stated in it. This will need to be signed by both you as the property seller and the Estate Agent. They will also require a proof of ID (current passport or driving licence) and a copy of a utility bill (dated within the last 6 months) as proof of address. It is likely the Estate Agent will charge an outlay to cover the cost of signs, websites, brochures and other items they use to market your home prior to going to market and they will also issue you with a Statement of Advised Market Value.
VIEWINGS
Once the property goes on the market and online the estate agent will contact you to arrange viewings. We generally try to group the viewings to minimise the disruption to your household – with viewings perhaps once or twice a week at 15/20 minute intervals.
When you’re selling your home you will also need to stick to recommendations from the Estate Agent which are:
Have all internal lights on so that there is no need to touch the light switches.
Keep all the internal doors open.
Wipe down the surfaces like handrails, doors and worktops just as a precautionary measure.
OFFERS
Once offers are received by the Estate Agent they will contact you to keep you updated throughout the entire process along with giving advice and recommendations. Once the sale is agreed the Estate agent will receive a booking deposit and then they will issue 4 Sales Letters:
To you the vendor selling your home
To the purchaser buying your home
To solicitors for both the seller and the buyer
At this point it is beneficial for the solicitor to have all the relevant documentation we mentioned above. They are then in a position to issue a contract speedily and will be able to deal with any queries that may arise from the buyer’s solicitor.
If the buyers are obtaining a loan from a bank or other financial institution a Valuer will inspect the property on the bank’s behalf. The Valuer must submit their report to the bank before they will issue the loan pack to the prospective buyer. The bank may also wish to get a survey carried out on the property which will be scheduled through the Estate Agent.
SIGNING DAY
The Estate Agent will continue to follow up and communicate between the solicitor and buyer to make sure that everything is moving along smoothly throughout the process. Any updates are passed on to you as the seller. Once the buyer has obtained the loan pack and the solicitor is happy with all the contracts and queries have been answered; the prospective buyer will sign the contracts for their new home and pay the balance of the 10% deposit.
The buyer’s solicitor will then send the contracts to your solicitor as the seller. As the seller you will then visit your solicitor and sign the contracts, if you are buying another property then it’s possible you will be signing for the new property also. It is very difficult however, to get a sale and purchase to line up and close on the same day. There could be a delay on the issuing of the funds at the last minute from the financial institution or funds might not hit the solicitor’s account on time. This can be a stressful time where all the boxes are packed and removals ready to go but the sale has not completed.
THE BIG MOVE
We recommend to anyone selling their home to take an ESB and gas reading and leave a copy of these readings on the kitchen worktop along with the MPRN number and GPRN number for the new owners. This makes life easier for them in transferring over the utilities into their name. Also we recommend to any home sellers to leave a note with useful information if the new home owners are moving from outside the area. Helpful numbers such as waste disposal contractors, if there is a septic tank who services or empties, number for a local electrician or plumber, or any other helpful advice they think might be beneficial to the new owner.
Once the sale has completed as a seller you can drop in any extra keys for the property to the estate agent. They will hold onto them until they get notification from your solicitor that the sale has closed. They will then handover all the keys to the new owners.
This is an outline of the typical sales process, this is not definitive but it gives you a great idea of a typical transaction. Every property has different issues whether it is planning, recommended works prior to marketing, title deeds and more. But with this guide you should be prepared for what lies ahead.