What is wrong with my house?

"What is wrong with my house?" The client was resigned and confused. She called my office because for two years she had been trying, without success, to sell her house.

"The house is beautiful, and so are the surroundings, but there are no buyers. I no longer know what else to do to finally sell it. I am worried, because the house has been standing empty all this time. Without an owner constantly present, it is exposed to all sorts of unforeseen situations. And it generates costs. Can you help me?"

I looked at the terms of the listing that had been published on the internet.

The first thing that caught my eye was the price - 890,000 PLN. I checked the location. A small locality in Silesia, practically a village.

I already had a preliminary view, but I still wanted to verify in person what I had seen in the photos. According to the client and the description, the house was large, yet the photos in the listing mainly showed the garden and did not show the strengths of the house.

I realised that the house had been shown in a way that made it harder to identify the location. The agency probably wanted to protect its own interests.

We took new photos, bringing out the strengths of the house and its interiors. So that a future owner could imagine their family in that space. So that their heart would skip a beat.

The question of the price remained. In this case the client's expectations were too high. At that price the house would sell without any problem in a city, but not in the countryside. If I was to help with the sale, the client had to hear the truth about her valuation and simply make it realistic. Because the point is not to put a property on the market, but to actually sell it.

The conversation resulted in a price that took into account market realities, the features of the property and the owner's expectations: 750,000 PLN.

I prepared a new listing with the new photos. Two days later I received a phone call.

"We have made up our minds. We went to look at the house from the outside. Everything looks exactly as it does in the photos.

Can we meet?"

The meeting ended in success. We agreed the details of the transaction. Both sides were satisfied: the client, because she sold the house on good terms and within two days of listing it, and the new owners, because in their view the price reflected what they had seen.

What was behind this quick success?

• open communication based on market realities
• a valuation appropriate to market conditions
• a suitable presentation of the house's strengths (it is not enough to have SOME photos, they have to be the RIGHT photos)
• the client's flexible attitude to the expected price