The PROPERTY DOCTORS, Sydney Australia Novak Properties

NOVAK NEWS - GET YOU HOME MARKET READY: 10 SIMPLE STEPS TO SELL FAST AND FOR TOP DOLLAR!

• Billy Drury and Thomas Sims • Season 27

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Unlock the secrets to a smooth and profitable property sale as we bring you ten essential steps to make your home market-ready with minimal effort. Join us as we highlight the invaluable insights shared by Tom, our expert guest in property preparation. We'll guide you through the strategic process of working backwards from your desired move-in date, considering crucial factors like settlement periods and average days on market. Learn why familiarizing your real estate agent with your property, scheduling professional photography, and depersonalizing, deep cleaning, and decluttering are key to capturing buyers' hearts. 

As the busy spring market approaches, our team is here to offer you tailored support and collaboration. Discover how a custom 28-day step-by-step outline can simplify your preparation and help you avoid feeling overwhelmed. We believe a shared problem is easier to manage, and open communication with our experts ensures you get the assistance you need. Tune in for practical advice, expert tips, and a supportive approach to preparing your property for a successful sale. Let's turn your home-selling journey into a seamless and rewarding experience.

Speaker 1:

Getting your property ready for sale is probably one of the most daunting tasks a homeowner can come up against. We're going to tell you 10 essential things you need to do to maximize your investment. Minimum impact, maximum return.

Speaker 2:

Stay tuned. Good evening, good evening everyone. How are you? Tom? I'm good. How are?

Speaker 1:

you, yeah, good Good, you've had a busy day selling. Yeah, we have have selling and preparing to sell this is where I love getting your insights, because you're the, you're the ninja, you're the novak guru when it comes to prepping um a property to come, you know, for sale. Um, obviously, you do a little bit of the admin side of things, but also offer some tips and tricks to vendors going through the process. Um, it's a lot of what I do. It's a lot of.

Speaker 2:

It's a lot of work? Yeah, it is. It's a big workload but it's quite interesting and it's fascinating to see and do everything we must do before we get a property, just live on the market.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, now do you see a routine or a bit of a process that suits everyone, or is it always a little bit different for different people? What does normal look like? How long does it take to get your property ready for market?

Speaker 2:

Look, it's generally a process. There's a standard process that we like to follow, but everyone is different, so a lot of our clients like things done a different way than the next client, so you kind of have to manage that while you're doing your process. So when you go through your step-by-step to get your property live on the market and ready to sell.

Speaker 2:

Yes, um you need to work with your client and especially your vendors there, who you like to be working with throughout the entire time, and that's where you start to build a relationship and kind of understand each other now I reckon if you're a homeowner getting your property ready to come to market, it's actually easiest to work backwards from where you want to end up.

Speaker 1:

So we actually just had this conversation with a client around the living room table, dining room table, chatting about, you know, buying and selling and you know getting into the new place. If you focus on the date you want to be into your new home, sometimes it's easier to work backwards, and what I mean by that is you can then take into consideration your settlement date, you can take into consideration your expected days on market and then you can take into consideration how long you think it's going to prepare to get to that point. So let's just say you want to move before the end of the year, which is coming around quickly. You know we're almost into September now, end of August. So you've got September, october, november, december, really four months.

Speaker 1:

The average settlement is six weeks, to say 12 weeks if you want a bit longer. So there's, you know there's two to four months to just for settlement. Two to four months if you're going to really push out long. And then the average days on market is sitting at about three weeks for an apartment on the northern beaches at the moment a little bit longer for a house, say four weeks. So you can pretty much start working backwards now from those dates yeah.

Speaker 2:

So if you're looking to move into your new home by the end of the year, are you saying that the time to sell is kind of now and within a month from now?

Speaker 1:

well, you certainly won't want to be sold now, because then you've got to worry about what are you going to do for four months. But if you're thinking about making a move for the end of the year and I can't believe we're saying it you've probably got to be starting to have the conversation with your agent between now and the next sort of two, four, six weeks. I always think, like anything, not just buying and selling real estate, but anything is nicer on your own timeline. It's never nice to be rushed or stressed working towards a different timeline that's not your own. So that's probably, you know, a good piece of advice.

Speaker 2:

You also don't want to feel any stress whilst you are selling your property and moving into your new home, which is part of what we like to do. We like to take the stress off of you whilst selling your property and just leave the work and leave everything to us, so you can actually just relax and breathe and get excited for the new stage in life, for the new move now I know it's going to be different for everyone.

Speaker 1:

If you're a bachelor on your own in a one-bedroom apartment, it's going to be reasonably simple getting the property ready, but for a family it might take a little bit more preparation. I guess the fundamentals, though, we'll go through really quickly. What does the normal sort of prep look, work look like?

Speaker 2:

so the normal prep work would be for us, the agent, to get get ourselves into the property, yeah, familiarize ourselves with what we're dealing with here. Yeah, so then, whilst we're doing other open inspections, if clients don't like that property that they're at, we can refer them over to your property. Yeah, then, once we get ourselves familiar, we then like to get photos organised. We have professional photographers that are brilliant at their jobs. They make your property look beautiful online and let people see for what it really is.

Speaker 1:

So for photos, I guess you're looking at sort of depersonalising a little bit, taking sometimes the family portraits that cover the whole wall. Maybe bring it back down to what's going to be fairly neutral, a bit of a deep clean and a bit of a declutter your three Ds, that's where I would probably start Trying to just make the space feel as big as it can be. As neutral as it can will obviously appeal to the most amount of people.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and that's a lot of work for your vendors too, if you're looking to sell.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

You actually have to take a lot of time to get that done.

Speaker 1:

Yep.

Speaker 2:

But then, once photos are in, you can start to relax already, because then we start to order strata reports for units, yeah, which are really helpful for buyers to have yes and we also do for units and houses pest and building reports, which also helps with buyers.

Speaker 1:

They get a better understanding of the building of the unit do their due diligence yeah, and it's really it's actually very helpful for the sale process so that's another one for the agent, I think, in the meantime, for your owner, um fixing any minor repairs, whether that just be fixing blinds, it could be fixing, um, you know, small bits, you know, throughout the property. Uh, that's, you know, good opportunity making sure the lights are working. That's a good one.

Speaker 2:

Aircon, sometimes a lot of aircon isn't working.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, your appliances.

Speaker 2:

Especially if you're in winter you're not really using your aircon. You've got to turn it on and you realize it needs a service.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, also sort of staging your key rooms where you think your buyers are going to fall in love with your property. That might be making, you know, making the living room and the dining room feel really big. Or it might be, you know, dressing up the balcony or the terrace or the garden or the courtyard a little bit, making that feel nice and homely. Just I think, paying attention to what your buyers are going to love your key rooms, that's a really important one, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And once those reports are in, you're starting to get ready to sell. If you need a floor plan drawn out, we also do that.

Speaker 2:

We get someone to come in usually at the same time as photos, so then you're not as disturbed with us coming in and out of your property. And then, once that's through, we then start designing a signboard for the property. We then start designing a signboard for the property. We start sending emails out and newsletters of your property being on the market and ready to sell. Yep, we even do DL drops, which is controversial in itself, but we'll put that to the side. And then, once we upload those photos and the floor plan and everything, we then get your property live and ready to go.

Speaker 1:

So how long does it take from engaging your agent saying I'm thinking about selling to putting all that into motion?

Speaker 2:

Well, that's all up to you guys who are selling. Yeah, good answer. A lot of the time people want to just get straight into it and get the property on as quick as possible.

Speaker 1:

So it could be as fast as 24, 48 hours.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it could be as fast as 24, 48 hours yeah it could be as fast as one to two days, we can From having the photos. Yeah, that's right, so we can actually order photos for the next day. If you're in that much of a rush, yep, and if you're that keen, we then get everyone in, we get floor plans done, we get the reports done and, especially with those people who are in a rush, their property is already ready to go. They've already decluttered, they've already had a nice deep clean and they're ready to go.

Speaker 1:

So if they're ready, we're ready.

Speaker 2:

And we can get it in 24 to 48 hours on the market ready with your first open on that Wednesday or on that Saturday.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we're lucky that we've got a really good in-house team. The turnaround times are very snappy and they're obviously everything's customized to how the owner would like it. But I'd say the industry norm. If you didn't have all the resources in-house and you were relying on, you know, a photographer that's outside and a floor plan designer outside of the business, graphic designer outside of the business probably be looking more like a week or two, but yeah, it's good to have the flexibility there and that it's not, you know, rush exactly and we have properties as well that aren't quite ready and clients that you know, a patient where we then slowly get things decluttered.

Speaker 2:

We get little repairs fixed, like patching up walls or doing quick repaints, that kind of stuff. Yeah, and we can ease into the listing where we get photos within a week then we can get the report during that next week. Yeah, and it's all based off of your client's timeline and how quickly they want to sell or how patient they want to be, and we like to work with them as best as possible and make them comfortable yeah, well, there you go.

Speaker 1:

I think if you're working backwards from, say, end of the year, work out what, in summary, work out what settlement you're looking for. If that's a quick or, you know, an average six week or a long settlement, there's a block out of those dates, then you can factor in three to four weeks on market and your prep time. It's fast approaching. But you know most people recognize that they might not be making a move the week or two before christmas and maybe not the week or two after new year. So say, from that week before you know christmas break and then and then through to the 26th of Jan. Generally people block those dates out for their accountants and their solicitor and their broker to be away, not their real estate agent. We're working all the way through but people are working backwards from those dates and can't believe it's soon coming down.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's right, it's the spring market coming in.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and we're ready?

Speaker 2:

I think everyone else is ready. Anything else Twad, no, nothing else, I think we're good.

Speaker 1:

If you need any help, let us know and we can actually build a custom outline of what needs to be done. A bit of a 28-day step.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we can take you through step by step what we do and how we do it, and then we can alter and amend things to do it the way you'd like yeah, but it can be, I think, daunting on your own and you know a shared problem is a problem of yeah, so it's good, always hit L, that's it.

Speaker 1:

Have a good evening, good night.