Top 5 Blog Posts To Sell Your Home

Whether you are selling your home, buying a home, a landlord, a tenant, or just generally interested in all things property (and who can blame you – so are we!), here at Martin & Co we are always try to provide the best help, advice and guidance possible to you.

Over the past few months we have shared with you a number of tips and advice and today’s post, we’re sharing five articles, specifically aimed at sellers, from our Martin & Co Today blog.

So if you are looking to sell your home or if your home is currently on the market and you could do with some advice for getting it sold, check out all or just a few of the posts below – they received the most clicks since publication to date – you won’t be disappointed!

Whilst it’s very tempting to leave responsibility for your property sale to your estate agent, there are in fact some steps you can take yourself,to improve the interest in your property – in other words, to get more viewings! Here are my 5 changes you can make for a quicker sale and a great post to read for each one:

1.   What To Look For When Choosing An Estate Agent To Sell Your Property

2.   How To Get Your Property Ready To Sell

3.   Is DIY Home Selling A Good Idea?

4.   Six Warning Signs You Need A New Estate Agent

5.   Beat The Clock With Our 10 Top Tips For Tidying Before A Viewing 

So that’s it. We hope you find these useful when selling your home.

For more information on selling a property, pop into your local Martin & Co branch where one of our local experts will be more than happy to discuss your options with you.

Alternatively, you can visit our dedicated sellers section of our website, packed full of information, resources and tools to help you sell.

What has happened since the pension reforms?

The new pension freedoms that came into effect in April 2015 were expected to change pensioner and “soon to be pensioner” behaviours. What has happened?

37% of homeowners over 55 said they planned to buy a new property, and 14% said their future plans were as a direct response to pension changes.

However, buy-to-let mortgage approvals are growing more than four times the rate of first-time buyer mortgages at the moment, so this sector remains strongly supported.

Pensioners have directly responded to the changes by opting not to buy a pension annuity; annuities have fallen in value considerably: £3.1bn in Jan-Apr 2013, £1.8bn in 2014 and down to £1bn this year. Not only has the value of annuities fallen, but the number of annuities bought has also fallen steadily from90,000 in the second quarter of 2013 to just 17,800 in 2015.

As an alternative to pension annuities, pensioners can use Income Drawdowns – this is essentially taking money out of your pension pot and treating it as an income. Drawdown sales have soared, namely because everyone can now access them with no restrictions. The total value of drawdown products sold to June 2015 reached £1.3bn compared with just £670m last year.

We commissioned a set of market intelligence reports showing that buy-to-let returns can outperform pension annuities by up to 25%. If you are nearing retirement age and have  considered Buy-to-Let as a vehicle for income contact your local Martin & Co office today or download a market intelligence report by visiting www.martinco.com/askmartin.

Source: Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/special-reports/11865691/How-weve-used-the-new-pension-freedoms.html

Small Business Rates Relief & VAT issues – Exeter – 21 October

Joint RICS Exeter for an interesting and hopefully cost saving seminar covering VAT issues and Small Business Rates Tax Relief. The seminar starts with a speaker from Centurion VAT specialists looking at VAT issues arising in construction, land and property transactions & we will be discussing minimising costs & delays and also which buildings and projects can qualify for VAT relief. 

This will be followed by a presentation by fellow Chartered Surveyor Ian Sloan FRICS, looking at how to save money for your clients (and possibly your own businesses) with Small Business Rates Tax relief and who can claim and what savings can be available in industrial, office and retail premises.

Please click below for more details:

http://www.rics.org/uk/training-events/networking/business-rate-relief-vat-issues/exeter/