Bob Cherry, partner in CKD Galbraith’s Ayr office, offers a selection of ideas to help home owners assess their property whilst steering it through the selling process.

“In our experience, homes, the best of their kind in every category from cottages to large country houses, are selling extremely well if placed under competition, with a number of homes still achieving premiums above guide prices. (Left a 'rural charm' property from CKD Galbraith)

“The interest levels in all property however are driven by supply and demand. In essence, if your house falls into a sector that looks upon research to be over-supplied in the local market, you definitely need to employ a number of sophisticated tactics to make your house stand out from the crowd and be the one that sells," says Cherry (right)

“The houses that are in short supply are typically the idyllic cottage, an historic house in the heart of a sought after village, the town house to ‘do up’, the Old Manse located on the edge of the village, and if there is a beat of fishing or pony paddocks even better.

“These homes continue to enjoying huge amounts of interest with a sizeable number of sales being undertaken privately off-market through agents, which is great news for sellers, but which unfortunately feeds the public perception of a lower transactional rate, which is not always true.”
So what should you do to make your home stand out from the crowd?

The strategies:
* Look at your house objectively and ask yourself what the outstanding features were that made you buy it. It is more than likely a potential buyer will be attracted to those features but they need to stand out.

* First impressions do count. Buyers tell us they make up their mind to buy a house within five minutes of arriving; which means you can also lose them within the first five minutes if you don't set about creating the right impression, so do dress the house before viewings.

* If you were a potential buyer, what would you do to improve your house? For example, is there a planning permission that you have always dreamt of getting. If so take advice and see if this adds value.

* Think ahead. If you feel you might be on the move within the next twelve months, talk to a good agent about professional photographs in May or June when [optomist!] the gardens and indeed the weather should be at its best. If something comes up and you have to move in autumn, your house will be displayed at its best.

* Choose your agent wisely. In a slowly recovering market you will need the best possible advice. How well does your agent know the local and national market and operate in your property segment? An investment made with your agent in the marketing process can reap huge dividends with a dramatic increase in viewers and price.

* Do your research. Find out what other properties have actually sold for and set your guide price competitively. You want to be the one with the most interest, not the one that looks the best but with little chance of selling.

* Keep an eye on the competition.  If others are selling around you, while you instruct your agent to be honest with you, they might be frightened of losing the job when really they should be advising you on how to sell.
Cherry concludes: “Try to be as relaxed as you can throughout the process. A house with a happy feel and an owner who does not appear desperate will produce the right type of buyer and a good relationship throughout the sale process.”

NEW FRONTIER OF PROPERTY DEMAND?
Speed and convenience delivered with the aim of a smartphone is an application, engineered by Layar , a 10-month-old company based in Amsterdam, which is currently looking for a mobile developer,a test engineer, a Python Web-developer and a freelance Android developer.
Looks like Layar is busy.

It uses “augmented reality” technology, or AR, to harness a phone’s camera, global positioning system and compass. Elements like statistics and 3-D images are, essentially, layered over a live picture so the user gets a single view with all available information.

AR “mash-ups” already used to display information about tourist sites, chart subway and bus stops or restaurants,  permit interior designers to superimpose new furniture or color schemes on a room, or give crime statistics for a specific area. They are also being used by astute European property sellers.

According to the French agency, MeilleursAgents.com, results have been positive. Julien Cheyssial, (left) one of the agency’s founders and its chief technology officer, said it took a developer only two days to customize the Layar browser with prices, based on city and agency records, and GPS coordinates. Since the agency’s version of the application was introduced in August 2008, he said, there have been several thousand downloads a week.

“The feedback has been totally great so far,” Cheyssial said. “It didn’t cost us much to set up; we didn’t have to spend too much time on it, and we’ve won many clients through it.” The agency plans to expand it to other French cities, including Lyon and Marseilles.

Real estate businesses in Britain, the Netherlands and the US already have about 35 similar applications using Layar, and more are being created in other parts of Europe as well as Russia, Australia, Korea and Japan, according to Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, (right) one of Layar’s founders.

“There’s a lot of capital, a lot of money in real estate so we expect realtor brands to use it as a service to their customers and customers to use it just out of curiosity,” he said.

Open platform Layar has attracted 1,000 developers who have created 2,000 programs for the iPhone 3GS and Google’s Android OS. Other AR developers use their own versions of the technology for a similar range of uses, including real estate searches.

Mobile A.R. applications are multiplying rapidly, as both Google and Microsoft working on their versions. Telecommunications analyst, Juniper Research expects the mobile AR market annual revenues to be $732 m by 2014.

Layar already has deals with Samsung and LG to install the technology on some mobile devices.  Lens-FitzGerald expects it will have millions of users by the end of the year. “We help you browse the world,” he said.

In the UK a mapping interface
Closer to home, as in Yorkshire based Simunix which is offering a unique mapping interface of ZoneSearch makes it possible to identify target areas with the click of a button. There are three ways in which the user can perform a search, each of which provides the highest level of precision possible.

By selecting the Polygon Search function, the user can draw a polygon of any shape or size around the required search area. This can include non-addressable locations such as railway lines, fields and riverbanks. The Radius Search involves simply clicking on the map and setting the diameter of the radius.

Once the search area is set, the user selects the information they wish to search for. This includes people, businesses and points of interest. Results are then displayed in a table that can be downloaded as a .CSV file.

Finally, the Map Search presents telephone, address and resident information in a small box as the user hovers their cursor over individual properties on the map. Again, the user can select individual records that can be saved and downloaded.

Simunix has been working closely with Ordnance Survey during the development of ZoneSearch. This has had the effect of keeping costs down for many organisations as the service utilises data that is already available to them under the Mapping Services Agreement.

Apart from the increased precision with which searches can be performed and the cost saving element, ZoneSearch has displayed a number of additional benefits. There are up to 40,000 revisions made to the information every 24 hours, meaning there is no data source that is more up to date. ZoneSearch has also proven to be a highly effective time saving solution for a number of organisations.

Paul McAfee, Head of Business Development at Simunix, says, “One of our clients spent 4 hours trying to identify people and businesses in a semi-rural area after unexploded ordnance had been discovered in a field – it took ZoneSearch 4 minutes and found 10% more unique records”.

ZoneSearch is the key to ensuring that organisations are compliant with the required levels of good communication necessary for effective response and recovery at a time of crisis.

Footnote:

Interestingly, the New York Times web page which carrying the Augmented story, also carried a Sotheby's property advertisement. Plenty of dignitas, plenty of moving stills, zoom in and drag, of a property priced at £1.4m. No augmented reality there however. It'd be interesting to find out if Sotheby's too are looking at AR or if they think it still too 'way out.'