After five weeks of ups and downs in our quest to find our dream Irish property, we are seriously wondering if we imagined all this publicity about Ireland being a buyer's market after the downturn. We are young foreign buyers and have come armed with cash, and I must admit we are having trouble getting rid of it. There appear to be 40,000 properties across the country, all competing for a limited pool of incoming euros, and I think there are a few things that you should know.
1 Putting the term "dormer bungalow" in your advert won't sell your house The first thing you see when you arrive in Ireland is a dormer bungalow. Then, as you drive around, you see about half a million more. There is nothing wrong with a dormer bungalow, but with 2,000 properties for sale here advertised as dormer bungalows, and a good portion of the remainder resembling dormer bungalows, it just isn't a distinguishing feature.
There are some other phrases that also get a little lost in the search for the ideal property. If your agent is writing up your ad (presumably this is one of the things they do for their commission, more on that later), let them know that any property that is not a new build or a derelict building should not list any of the following as features: electricity, windows, insulationand road access.
Furthermore, we all expect a little exaggeration, but any plot of land that is advertised with “planning permission possible” for [insert architecturally designed building here] is unlikely to fool anyone during this time of Irish planning permission austerity.
2 Price on application will turn potential buyers off Price on application (POA) is an interesting term, one that is generally reserved for country estates. That's it. If you have listed your two-bed dormer bungalow on a spacious circa 0.453-acre block with distant sea views as POA, it will turn buyers away; all you are achieving is a suspicion that you will set the price higher than the other 1,200 properties listed as two-bed dormer bungalows on circa 0.453 acre blocks with distant sea views. If you do receive enquiries, and the property is quoted above market rate, forget it.
Furthermore, you are really hampering your chance of being found. Depending on the search engine, POA will drop you off the listings when using the kinds of search metrics that 99 per cent of buyers use (ie price range).
3 Making the best use of photographs will attract buyers to your property
There are only a few seconds to attract a buyer during their online search – their keen eyes will flick over your front photo (first), then your introductory description (second), then they may click through to your listing (third, if you are lucky). This means that you need to put some effort into the first two. During our search, we feel like we have seen every photo of every house for sale in Kerry and Cork, and also a lot of unrelated photos of nearby tourist attractions that often get appended to house listings.
Best not to post photos of your house with a horse living in the hallway, or of the bedroom with some dirty pants on the floor or a lot of dark images. And do try to make sure that your photos are not upside down or that the cement factory normally situated behind the house has not magically disappeared. We have seen it all.
While there may be a justification for posting only one photo, or none, it isn’t obvious. This is 2014 and we expect to see before we view; we expect to flick through photos and visualise what it is like inside, we want to study floor plans and we always, but always, look at the property on Google street view. We will definitely find out about the cement factory. You have been warned.
4 Don't fall victim to missing estate agents There is no way to polish this. Of the 25 houses we viewed in the past month, how many were attended by an estate agent? Two. Two viewings. Where are all the agents? Why don't they attend viewings and tell you that the street really is rather quiet, most of the time, and that the house is a wonderful fixer-upper and that there have already been two offers on the house, so we had better be quick or we will miss out. Where are their sharp suits, their leather folders and their black oversized vehicles?,
The serious side of “the curious case of the missing estate agents” is that if you are not living in your property and that property is more than a 30 minute drive from the agent’s office, you need to ensure that viewings are being facilitated in a timely manner. Or at all.
We have been trying to view an unoccupied property in Kerry for three weeks; the Cork-based agent has been unavailable for viewings, because it is “quite a drive”. We have poked our head over the fence, we have stayed in the area, we have talked to the neighbours and we love the property.
In this case, what do you do? Most foreign buyers don’t have time to wait for a viewing, nor do Irish buyers for that matter. Agents; beware. In such an instance, buyers will stop at nothing to contact the owners for a private viewing – if a sale goes through on a private basis, where does that leave the agent regarding commission?
Rigorously vet the agents before choosing one. All agents post on property search engines, so check the listings – if there are spelling errors or it is accompanied by dark, gloomy photos, move on.
Before getting anyone out to value your property, call the agency and enquire about several of the properties they currently have for sale. Email them and check their response times, manner and knowledge. Arrange a viewing. It might seem like a time waster, for both seller and agent, but the reality is that if the agent is any good, they may not sell you a house but they will gain a new client.
5 Consider selling the property yourself If you can't find a good agent, you may consider becoming that long-feared beast, the private seller, traditionally associated with anarchy and unrealistic prices. Yet, the reality now is much more positive. We have met some fantastic private sellers, with beautiful homes which are well-advertised and well-priced. It is possible for sellers to list directly on property websites, and many have set up their own sleek websites in a bid to stand out.
I would only warn that the internet can be your best friend or your enemy. It is possible to find property price histories, even outside Daft, with only the most basic IT knowledge.
If you are not sure of your house price, but you think you might want to sell it, don’t just post it on Gumtree or DoneDeal for €1million to see if you get a bite (in fact, don’t post your property on these sites at all), because the cookie trail will remain for many years.
Buyers do understand the pricing history in Ireland, and drastic drops which align with the crash will not be held against you, but chancers will generally be dismissed in the first round.
Ensure that you value your property realistically from the moment you decide to sell and don’t react immediately to media publicity about projected price hikes; it’s transparent.
6 If you are not getting viewings you are doing something wrong We love Ireland, we want to live here but our house search has dragged on, for the most part because we wasted time viewing properties which were listed in a way that was deceptive, or only finding potential properties when we took a wrong turn and saw the For Sale sign.
The reality is that although there are a vast amount of properties for sale in Ireland, many of them are poorly listed and under-marketed. The property must speak for itself, but if you are not getting viewings then you may be doing something wrong. If you can avoid the pitfalls outlined above and polish up your listing, there’s a good chance that you can rise head and shoulders above the market.
