Most people who sell their home want as much money for it as possible. How can you prepare your house or flat and maximise the selling price: Are repairs or renovations worthwhile before the sale? What belongs in a sales documentation? Do you need a professional realtor? And how does this bidding process work that everyone is talking about lately? With our answers, you should sell your house or flat faster and for more money.
Car sellers polish their cars to a high shine to improve their chances of selling and to achieve a higher sales price. As a house or flat seller, you should do the same, but without cheating or hiding damage. Carry out small and simple renovations or repairs before you advertise your house or flat and invite prospective buyers. Obvious damage that is easy to fix can be expensive. A dripping tap in the kitchen or bathroom, for instance, can lead to negative conclusions about the overall technical condition of a property and put undue pressure on the price. First impressions count: you should tidy up the house or flat, clean all the windows, replace broken light bulbs, oil squeaky door hinges and mow the lawn.
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Refrain from elaborate renovations. The danger that a prospective buyer will like the living room in lime green better than in light blue or that a prospective buyer would rather have a country house kitchen than a designer kitchen is (too) great. Spending money on painting and plastering, a new bathroom or a new kitchen usually doesn't pay off. Unless you are lucky and find someone with the same taste. If not, the buyer would have to pay for your investment with the purchase price plus the cost of a different coat of paint in the living room or a different kitchen. Such unnecessary additional costs are likely to discourage many prospective buyers from buying your house or flat, or depress the selling price. That's why you should leave value-adding or value-enhancing measures to the buyer. With one exception.
With our Renovation Calculator you can check the renovation demand and estimate the costs. If you are unsure whether the investment is worth it, ask a realtor who knows the demand. In your Houzy profile you will find verified realtors from your region under "Finance" and "Valuation".
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Improving energy efficiency is a value-enhancing measure and always pays off. Regardless of whether you want to sell your house or flat or not. On the one hand, you save a lot of energy and therefore money if you insulate the facade, the roof or the screed, replace all the old windows, switch from oil or gas heating to a new heating system or produce your own solar power with a photovoltaic system on the roof of the house. On the other hand, with energy efficiency you also increase the living comfort, the property value and the sales price. With the new Energy Calculator from Houzy, you can check the energy efficiency of your house free of charge and easily simulate the impact of individual or several energy measures. In addition, the Energy Calculator calculates the investment costs, the subsidies and the long-term savings potential.
In our article "Improve energy efficiency: How to avoid costly heat loss" learn more about energy efficiency measures and how you or the buyers can benefit from them.
Before you put your house or flat out to tender, you should determine the value and set the selling price. Our property valuation, based on the selling prices of similar properties, is a solid basis for negotiations. The market value estimate is not the selling price. This is determined by supply and demand. Ultimately, buyer and seller have to come to an agreement. With the right strategy, you can get more out of it than your house or flat is theoretically worth. Many experts recommend setting the selling price slightly higher so that you have room for negotiation. If you set the price too high, you may be stuck with the property for longer and have to adjust the price downwards. This gets around and puts off potential buyers. Again, it is worth talking to a realtor who knows the market and the region.
You can check the current market value of your property(ies) with our Online Property Valuation . You will then regularly see the changes in value in your personal Houzy account. How we estimate this market value, we explain in our article "Hedonic Valuation: See how we rate the market value of properties".
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With meaningful documentation, you will not only sell your house or flat faster, but often also at a higher price. That's why it pays off for you to invest a little more time in the content and a little money in professional images. Here, too, the first impression counts. In addition, the sales documentation summarises all the important documents that the buyer has to submit with the loan application. So you make financing a little easier for him or her, and benefit from this too. What at least belongs in a complete documentation, we summarise in the article "Selling a house: Sell it yourself or hire a realtor?".
Are you a sales talent and have a lot of time for viewings and negotiations? Then you can conduct the talks with serious prospective buyers yourself. If not, you should hire an experienced realtor. He or she knows how to negotiate successfully and what is important for potential buyers. For the family with children, the kindergarten or school nearby is an argument, for the older couple, it is the barrier-free flat with lift from the underground car park to the third floor. In addition, many potential buyers are more confident to ask critical questions because the realtor reacts objectively and unemotionally.
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In nine out of ten cases, yes. On the one hand, because realtors take a lot of time-consuming work off your hands, on the other hand, because they know the market and possible buyers and usually sell your flat or house for a better price than you do. Most of them charge 2 to 3 percent of the selling price as an agent's fee. If they sell your house or flat for 930,000 francs instead of 900,000 francs, it pays off. It makes sense to hire someone from the region who has comparable properties on offer. In your Houzy profile, under "Finances" and "Valuation", you will find up to three realtors from your region who we can recommend to you with a clear conscience.
With the bidding procedure you can maximise the selling price in markets or regions with strong demand. You must refer to the bidding procedure in your tender. You can set a minimum bid, but you don't have to. All serious bidders make their bids after the inspection. After the first round of bidding, you inform everyone of the highest bid and the bidders can outbid this bid if they wish. As a rule, the bidding process is completed after two rounds. If you are not satisfied with the highest bid, you can conduct further rounds or end the procedure without selling. The bidding process is completed as soon as you and the buyer have agreed and signed the purchase contract.
The bidding process is particularly suitable for sought-after houses and flats in attractive locations. Because the procedure is time-consuming, it is worth hiring a realtor.
With our calculator, unique in Switzerland, you can simulate the influence of individual short-term measures on the sales price, estimate the costs and compare them with the possible additional revenue. In your Houzy profile you can calculate, among other things, how the individual measures can influence the sales price. This gives you a basis for deciding which measures are worthwhile for you:
Sales price optimisation not only increases the potential sales price, it can also improve sales opportunities and shorten sales time.
