Not requiring a Home Report to sell your property, is a common misconception that Peterhead surveyor Steven Dale hears time and time again.
In this opinion piece, Steven, who works at DM Hall Chartered Surveyors, sets the record straight, stressing that without a Home Report, people risk a £500 fine.
Opinion by Steven Dale
It’s a common misconception that Home Reports are not required if you sell your home without the help of an estate agent or solicitor. This is not the case. If sellers place a property on the market, even as a private sale, they can be fined £500 if a report has not been completed.
Since they were introduced in 2008, it has been the responsibility of sellers to provide a Home Report, prepared by a chartered surveyor, before bringing their property to the market.
The report has three constituent parts: the single survey; an energy performance certificate; and a property questionnaire (sellers have to provide honest answers to a series of questions about their property which may be of interest to purchasers and their solicitors).
In addition, and importantly, most reputable local surveyors will also include a mortgage valuation report, the final piece in the jigsaw which allows the purchaser’s lender to use the report for mortgage purposes.
Homeowners could lose thousands of pounds
Apart from the possibility of a swingeing penalty, however, sellers who think it is a smart move to circumvent some of the sale costs may be in danger of, as the old saying has it, “cutting off their nose to spite their face”.
For, while they may consider off-market negotiations will lead to an easy sale, they are discounting the fact that, in most areas of Scotland, lack of supply means that there is intense competition for well-presented and desirable properties.
So, while they may think they are achieving a good price, what they are actually doing is suppressing competition, especially if the sale goes to a closing date. They will never know what their home could have been worth in open bidding, and could be losing out on tens of thousands of pounds.
Targeted marketing produces the best results
And they should not dismiss the fact that, in a market in which demand is consistently exceeding supply, local agents will almost certainly have lists of potential buyers who have expressed interest or who have missed out on similar homes.
There is little doubt that targeted marketing produces the best results. In the Peterhead area, the go-to agency is the Aberdeen Solicitors’ Property Centre, which encompasses pretty well all the lawyers in the area operating in house sales.
Of course, just as chartered surveyors cannot advise on which agency a client should use, they cannot prescribe the most advantageous way of marketing a home. Sellers are free to do this in whichever manner they choose.
But what surveyors can be adamant about is that sellers must have a Home Report in their possession before they even think about making their first move.
Comment by Steven Dale, a surveyor in the Peterhead office of DM Hall Chartered Surveyors.
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