Selling a home, step by step
Buying and selling · 3 min read · revised August 2026
| Term | What it means here |
|---|---|
| Preparation | Repair, clearance and paperwork gathered before anything is advertised. |
| Evidence | Recent comparable sales of similar homes in the same sub-market. |
| Launch | The first two or three weeks, when the largest and best-informed audience looks. |
| Negotiation | Price, conditions, timetable and deposit, considered together. |
| Contract | Signed and deposit held; the sale becomes real. |
| Completion | Keys, funds and the discharge of any existing loan. |
The first three weeks are most of the sale
When a home is first advertised it is shown to everybody who has been looking for months and has already rejected everything else available. That audience is the largest and the most capable of recognising value the property will ever have, and it disperses quickly. A home priced correctly at launch meets that audience; a home priced hopefully meets it too, is declined, and then meets only the trickle of new entrants each week thereafter.
This is why the pattern of successive reductions so often ends below the price that would have worked at the start. Time on the market is itself information, and buyers read it accurately: a home that has been available for months is assumed to have been refused by people who knew the area. The asking price is not an opening bid in a negotiation. It is a filter that decides who ever comes.
Evidence, not aspiration
The only reliable guide to a price is what similar homes in the same sub-market recently sold for - sold, not asked. Adjust for the differences you can defend: floor area, condition, outdoor space, floor level, aspect, parking, monthly charges. Refuse to adjust for the things you cannot: the money spent on a renovation, the price paid originally, or what is needed for the next purchase. Buyers pay for the property as it now stands compared with the alternatives now available to them, and no part of the seller's history enters their arithmetic.
Presentation is about legibility
Preparation is worthwhile in proportion to how much it helps a stranger understand the space in ten minutes. Clearing, cleaning, repairing what is visibly broken and letting light in all pay for themselves because they remove doubt. Large discretionary renovations rarely do, because the buyer would have chosen differently and is mentally deducting the cost of undoing the work. The exception is anything a survey will find anyway: it is cheaper to fix on your own timetable than under negotiation.
Chains and the value of certainty
A sale that depends on another sale, which depends on a third, is only as reliable as its weakest link. When comparing offers, a seller is comparing probabilities of completion as much as prices: how much cash the buyer has, whether their finance is agreed or merely hoped for, whether they must sell something first, and how long they need. A difference of a few per cent in price is often worth less than the difference between a purchase that is going to happen and one that might.
After the contract
Once contracts are signed the seller's work is mostly documentary: producing the paperwork the buyer's searches call for, resolving anything on the title, and arranging the discharge of the existing mortgage so that the lender's charge is released on the day funds arrive. Delay at this stage is almost always paperwork rather than intention.
This describes the mechanics of a sale in general terms and is not guidance about any particular property or transaction.