How to sell your home in Scotland

It's universally acknowledged that selling your home can be one of life’s most stressful situations. Perhaps your family has grown, or older children have flown the nest, and you need to downsize. Regardless of the reason, selling your home can be problematic. From difficult buyers to land registry issues, there are many difficult aspects that you may face during the process of selling your property. 

However, at Allied Surveyors, we're here to ensure that procuring your property's Home Report is not a complicated matter during the course of selling your property. 

A Home Report is a document which a seller is required to produce prior to putting their property onto the market in Scotland. The Home Report itself is produced by a Chartered Surveyor who is a member of Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).

Now you've decided to sell your home, how do you start the ball rolling? Firstly, you'll need to select an estate agent. Typically, sellers invite between 2-5 estate agents to evaluate their property. You might select an estate agent based on various criteria – word of mouth recommendations, for sale/sold boards in the local area, perhaps you’ve seen their social media feed or received direct marketing from them, or maybe their offices are located close to your home. 

The level of stress you can experience when selling your home is often directly related to how long it stays on the market and pricing is the biggest factor to dictate the number of buyers likely to be interested in your home in the first instance.

Once a sale has been agreed, you will need to deal with the legal aspects involved in selling your property, the conveyancing. This stage can often become time consuming. Whilst your property is having its first initial viewings, it's a good idea to instruct a solicitor to put together all of the required protocol forms including the seller’s information forms, fixtures and fittings forms etc.

It’s likely that as you come to the end of the conveyancing process, things may become more stressful. Aligning several people’s differing timetables, moving dates, schooling, removals etc. can be difficult at the best of times. Try to keep the communication lines firmly open. A professional estate agent will represent their client’s best interests to all parties and communicate with all parties in the chain, from the solicitors to the other estate agents involved. 

Delays and problems can often be incurred when sellers (and buyers) are dealing with mortgage providers. Contacting a mortgage broker prior to any agreement of a sale with a buyer to carry out a 'cost of moving exercise' calculation is a useful idea. This will not only give you a clear understanding of what you can afford on your onward purchase, but also what you can afford to sell for and still buy, if that’s what you’re intending to do.

Selling your house isn’t something that you do every day and the complex and lengthy process of selling a house is enough to make anyone feel overwhelmed.

However, at Allied Surveyors we will help wherever we can, and are well placed to advise on logistics and resources to help ensure your sale goes through as smoothly as possible.