AS ESTATE agents we are called upon by many clients to view and value a wide variety of property.

You will be conversant with houses as seen with in the pages of this publication.

Whilst predominantly we act for sellers of houses wishing to sell for numerous reasons, we are regularly invited to offer an opinion on something slightly different.

This can be from the odd parcel of land, perhaps a garage or a water tower, lake or even fishing rights.

Perhaps the most common is the property that offers considerable uplift if improved, renovated or extended.

When invited to offer advice we have a duty to provide the seller with a variety of methods of sale which is best suited to that property to secure the highest price.

Regularly we will take planning and legal advice before proceeding to market.

The most common method of sale is by private treaty.

This is where we act in the sale on your behalf, put together a sales brochure and plan a marketing campaign, following the accompanying of viewings and on receipt of offers we negotiate best price and on acceptance instruct solicitors.

The property is then sold ‘subject to contract’ and a buyer proceeds with arranging finance and a survey if needed.

Naturally during this STC period both the seller and buyer can legally withdraw from the transaction, without reason or reimbursement of costs to the other side.

Whilst it is understandable that a buyer might withdraw should they find that the house of their dreams requires substantial works, it is extremely frustrating to all concerned.

So what is the alternative?

How does this sound, before you sell a legal pack is raised on your house, this will incur legal costs but part of these will be refunded by your buyer, we then conduct an extensive marketing campaign for four weeks with open houses, in that time all interested parties can view the legal pack via our dataroom.

We work towards a date when we invite parties to bid and if successful they sign a contract and deposit 10 per cent, twenty working days later you complete.

Sounds straight forward… it’s called Public Auction and has been the way we’ve sold property long before the Romans discovered Corinium!

For further information on this method of sale please contact Moore Allen & Innocent (01285) 648100.