Selling a Property

Presentation!

Professional marketing and presentation is the key for selling or letting any property. We are renowned for our up to date marketing techniques. Our innovative and creative methods ensure that your property gets the maximum exposure which helps to sell or let your property quickly. This is done in a variety of ways:

City Quays Website

Your property will be advertised on our user-friendly and up-to-date website. Our website is directly linked with our computerised database to maximise efficiency.

Auto emailing

We utilise the latest computerised system. Our advanced technology matches tenants with properties as they come on. It then automatically emails the property details to all active applicants. This is done as soon as we receive your instruction.

Branded Car

Our fleet of branded BMW Mini's create name awareness and attract more prospective Tenants and Buyers for your properties. Our branded cars act as our mobile advertising medium being seen all over the Docklands, meaning your property will very quickly become hot stuff!

The Selling Guide

At City Quays we appreciate that selling a home or a property requires important financial decisions and that these decisions can affect you and your family. With our client-centred approach and excellent customer service, we can help you achieve the maximum price for your property with the minimum amount of hassle. Our simple and straightforward step-by-step guide here proves just this, as we give you the ins-and-outs of the selling process.

The Perfect View: Maximum Exposure = Maximum offers!

Our policy is to accompany all viewings. Having access to your property at short notice is important in order that we can show your property to prospective purchasers as soon as they contact us with an interest in viewing your property.

Our policy is to notify you of any viewings that are taking place and to follow up the viewing with a phone call to give you detailed feedback from the applicant.

Making things easier

We advise that you instruct your solicitor as soon as you are ready to start marketing your property. This will avoid delays and allow time for your solicitor to collect all the necessary documentation required to transfer the ownership of your property to a buyer. (This process is known as conveyancing).

We recommend that you use a solicitor who specialises in conveyancing.

Each of our offices will have a selection of solicitors that we work with on a regular basis who we would be happy to recommend.

Getting your property noticed!

When you instruct City Quays to sell your property, you will receive our comprehensive marketing package.

Getting your property noticed is key, and at City Quays as soon as we have received confirmation of your instructions to market your property with us, we will arrange for colour photographs to be taken and for floor plans to be drawn up that will appear on our website, and in our brochure.

All our prospective buyers will be alerted to your property via telephone calls, text messages and email alerts. Further to this, the photographs are then used in our extensive marketing activities which include your property being featured in our office window, in various internet property portals, in mail drops, weekly and monthly advertising.

Your local office will discuss with you the best campaign of advertising for your property to ensure maximum exposure to enable us to achieve the best price in your required timescale.

The importance of first impressions

First impressions count and it is important that you keep your property as presentable as possible throughout the time that your property is on the market for sale. How you present your home can have a huge impact on people's impressions and your success in selling your property for the price you would like to achieve. Here are a few little things you can do to help with the sale of your property:

• Air the rooms.
• Fully draw back the curtains to get maximum daylight in the rooms.
• Paint the front door and ensure the entrance is clean and tidy.
• Spring clean your property (including skirting boards and windows).
• Give the bathroom sinks and baths a wipe over.
• Have some flowers in the main room.
• Weed and clean up the garden.
• Maximise a feeling of space - get rid of clutter. This is particularly a good time to do it as you will not want to pack and transport unused items to your new property.
• Redecorating may not be necessary - discuss this with your local City Quays agent.
• Make sure the shower works and is free from mould.
• Do a check to see if there is anything that needs to be fixed such as a doorbell or dripping tap.
• Put a lock on any rear gate.

The All-Important offer

As soon as we receive an offer on your property, we will discuss it with you and then confirm it in writing. If you have received an acceptable offer you need to make a decision as to whether or not to continue to market your property; we can advise you on this.

There is always the possibility that you will receive multiple offers and that you may receive several identical offers and need to decide between buyers. In these instances we will spend time with you going through the individual details of each of the offers to bring this situation to a satisfactory conclusion:

Open bids ("Dutch auction"): City Quays will negotiate with each buyer until they drop out, one by one, and the highest offer is left on the table. This method can achieve a high final offer from a buyer in the best position to proceed.

Sealed bids: Buyers are invited to submit their final offers in writing to City Quays, and the sealed bids are opened at a pre-agreed date and time. The highest offer wins. This method is seen to be fair to all buyers. As people are casting their offers blind and have only one chance, they are encouraged to put down the maximum they can afford. However this system does not necessarily take into account which buyer is in the financial best position to proceed.

Contract race: The buyers are advised that you, the vendor, will sell to the buyer who can exchange contracts first. This avoids you having to choose between buyers.

Accepting an offer

Once you have accepted an offer on your property the following details need to be agreed:

• Details of any fixtures and fittings to be included or excluded in the sale of your property.
• Date for the buyers or lenders survey on your property.
• Date for exchange of contracts.
• Date for completion.

Throughout this process we will be on hand to advise you and negotiate for you (if needed) and keep you informed every step of the way. This and the following stages of the selling process are critical as this is where many sales fall through. At City Quays we believe that by working closely with our vendors, applicants and solicitors, problems can be averted, and a successful sale achieved!

Service charge accounts

If you live in a leasehold property your solicitor may require the following documents whilst preparing your Contract of Sale:

Service charge accounts and buildings insurance (This is generally not applicable to freehold properties)

We recommend that you forward copies of your service charge account for the past 3 years, estimates for the next year and your building insurance certificates to your solicitor. Try to get this sorted soon after you instruct us to market your property. It will help speed the process if your solicitors have this to hand when you have accepted an offer on a property.

If you reside in an apartment block you can ask your solicitor to get this information from your Managing Agents.

If you live in a freehold property your solicitor may request the following documents:

• Title documents (from you or your Bank/Building Society).
• Evidence of payment of last Council Tax (last 12 months).
• Paid utility bills.
• Guarantees and warranties related to damp proofing, etc.
• Gas safety check certificates.
• NHBC certificates.
• Planning and Building Regulations approvals for extensions etc.
• Exchange of contracts- the End is in sight

An exchange of contracts occurs once all the queries have been satisfied by the buyer's solicitors and once they have seen the local searches and have agreed to them.

Your buyer may need a mortgage to purchase your property, and thus only once they have received a confirmation on their mortgage offer will they buyer be ready to exchange contracts.

The contract needs to be signed by you and the buyer. The deposit (which is usually 10% of the purchase price) is transferred to your solicitor. Once they receive the deposit, the contracts can be exchanged. It is at this point that the sale is legally binding.

The completion date is set.

Completion- Heading for the finish-line!

A completion can be set for any day from the day of exchange to a few weeks after exchange, depending on each party's requirements and what was agreed.

The balance of the purchase price is sent from the buyer's solicitor's account to your solicitor's account.

It is at this point that you have sold your property.

Stamp Duty Land Tax

What is Stamp Duty?

Stamp duty or Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) as it is formally known as, is a tax charged on all land and property transactions in the UK. Anyone buying a property or land will pay a tax rate depending on the purchase price and the property type.

The Old Stamp Duty

The previous Stamp Duty, known as the slab system, is charged on the ENTIRE purchase price. This meant that there were sudden increases in stamp duty once the price went above the next threshold. The Stamp Duty reform now means that 98% of homeowners in England and Wales pay less and only transactions worth more than £937,000 will pay more in tax.

Under the old system, if you purchased a property for £250,000 you would have been charged 1% in Stamp Duty which equates to £2,500. However, if the price was £1 more, the stamp duty rate of 3% would have been charged on the total purchase price, an extra £5,000 which totals a bill of £7,500!

How much will we save?

Example property	Stamp Duty	Change
£125,000	No stamp duty
Average help to buy home £185,000	Old rules: £1850 New rules: £1200	Saving: £650 Effective tax rate: 0.7%
Average family home £275,000	Old rules: £8,250 New rules: £3,750	Saving: £4,500 Effective tax rate: 1.4%
Average London home £510,000	Old rules: £20,400 New rules: £15,500	Saving: £4,900 Effective tax rate: 3.0%
£937,500	Old rules: £37,500 New rules: £37,500	Saving: No change Effective tax rate: 4.0%
£2,100,000	Old rules: £147,500 New rules: £165,750	Increase: £18,750 Effective tax rate: 7.9%

How the new Stamp Duty is different

The new and reformed Stamp Duty is now more progressive, and will only apply to the amount of the purchase price that falls within the particular duty band. This means, you will only pay the rate for the proportion of the property that is above the threshold. It is similar to income tax, and although the percentage rates appear higher on some tax bands, the overall charge will mostly be lower.

New Stamp Duty Rates

Under the new system, we'll use the same example as before. If you purchased a property for £250,000 you pay nothing for the first £125,000, however a 2% rate will be charged between £125,000 and £250,000 which equates to £2,500.

If you buy a property for £300,000, the 5% will only apply to the difference between £250,000 and £300,000. This 5% equates to a bill of £2,500, plus the previous 2% rate, for a total bill of £5,000

Why do we have to pay it?

When you buy a property, the change in land ownership has to be legally registered at the Land Registry. This process requires a certificate from HMRC - which will only be issued on receipt of the Stamp Duty Land Tax due on the purchase of the property. So, if you don't pay the Stamp Duty, you can't buy your new home.

Luckily, that's one of the things your solicitor takes care of so you don't have to!

Capital Gains Guide

The service we provide - valuations

For a fixed fee of £99.00, we will do a desk top valuation using our market leading industry valuation tools, provide you with an indepth report illustrating sold figures in chart form and statistical information regarding your area.

You will get a valuation letter from one of our trained valuers backed up by a Rightmove report showing sold prices and a home track report which all RICS (royal institute ) valuers use. We aim to provide all our valuations within 72 hours, delivered in a pdf by email.

How we do it

For a fixed fee of £99.00, our professional valuations team will carry out a desk top valuation using the leading valuation tools in the industry, and provide you with an in-depth report. illustrating sold figures in chart form and statistical information regarding your area.

You will get a valuation letter from one of our trained valuers backed up by a Rightmove report showing sold prices and a home track report which all RICS (royal institute ) valuers use. We aim to provide all our valuations within 72 hours, delivered in a pdf by email.

Contact us

For valuations before the Capital Gains Tax reform, please complete the form here or contact us on 020 7231 2957.

Property owners that are Non UK residence or Expats need to act now to avoid Capital Gains Tax

The New Legislation

Here at City Quays we want to help all those that will be affected by the new changes to capital gains tax. This new legislation will largely affect expat and non UK residence property owners starting from early April 2015 onwards.

The new capital gains tax, which will be implemented very soon, states that all overseas persons that own a residential property in the UK will now be taxed on any gains made from the sale of that property. The new law will also include all residential property that is rented out. This change will scare a lot of investors but once you understand how it works it is not all bad, there are ways around it and also we can help to ease the pain a little, all is explained below.

This will affect many foreign investors and UK expats who have property in this country, including those who were hoping to sell this property before returning home. Now all of these people will need to pay capital gains tax, however, there is good news, being that any gains are calculated only from the value of that property on April 6 2015. This change in the Law will only apply to future increases in value and not previous growth.

Private Residence Relief (PPR)

Relief means that anybody living in the UK who sold their principal private residence is exempt from paying capital gains tax. Meaning that if you are a UK expat holding residential property you might be able to get around this by continuing to hold the property until returning to the UK, then living in it and selling it claiming exemption from capital gains tax because it is, or was, your main home.

Before this new legislation it was required that this PPR property was the owner's only principal residence in the whole of the world and not just in the UK, this meant that the owner had to be a UK resident. However the good news is that this is all set to change with this new legislation, with this new law to get PPR relief, the owner (non UK resident) of a UK property needs now only show that they have spent at least 90 days in the property for each year, for it to be considered their PPR. Also the 90 days can even be split between husband and wife. The PPR property now only has to be their main residence in the UK and the rest of the world.

All of this applies to properties held in individual names. Those properties are subject to UK inheritance tax at 40 per cent. Due to this a lot of foreign domiciled individuals normally obtain UK properties through companies which would allow them to avoid this 40 per cent charge. However, this is now less attractive with the introduction of the annual tax on enveloped dwellings (ATED) charge imposed on the company each year. As a consequence trusts are now increasingly used by foreign domiciles to hold UK property. In many cases a trust will qualify for the exemption from the new capital gains tax charge where PPR can be claimed.

Non UK residence and expats who have been outside the country for five years can sell their property between now and April 6 this year without incurring capital gains tax. After this date capital gains tax will apply unless they live in the property for at least 90 days for each year thereafter. Obviously this will prevent the property from being rented out other than for short periods. Or they wait until they return to the UK, live in the property and then sell which would provide partial PPR relief.

Alternative Options

Another option for foreign investors and expats who are foreign domiciled might be to sell the property to a trust now. This would trigger a stamp duty land tax (SDLT) charge but would not cause a capital gains tax problem. The trust would qualify for PPR if a beneficiary met the 90-day test for each year of ownership by the trust. Or the property could be transferred to a Qualifying Non UK Pension Scheme (QNUPS).

A QNUPS is a multi-member pension scheme which should fall outside the general charge to capital gains tax when it is introduced next April. It is also outside the scope of all the ATED charges. And the property should also be outside the scope of UK inheritance tax. It is likely to be particularly useful where property is rented out and PPR will thus not apply.