Recently, a friend of mine returned to the UK to sell his house after having rented it out for a number of years. To his dismay, he found his house in a sorry state of disrepair and the whole street bristling with ‘For Sale’ signs. A lost cause? Within three weeks, he had a full-price offer and, within two months, the purchase completed without a hitch.

Having visited the house a while ago, I know that it was nice – but no nicer than the other 20 identical houses for sale in the same street. Of course, I wrote to him and asked for details of his secret house-selling trick, and last week, I received his reply. I think it’s worth repeating here because it might help you to sell property in Spain – even at the moment. Are you ready to learn his secret?

“No tricks, I’m afraid – just a bit of old-fashioned marketing (the real kind: thinking about the market). The estate agent thought that our likely purchasers would be either a first-time-buyer / young couple, or a recently separated woman with young-ish kids. We guessed that either of these would be busy types (couple both working, a singleton with kids to get to school, and a job).”

“We also thought that we’d be selling to a woman so we: replaced the kitchen and all the appliances; repainted the inside and outside of the house; replaced all the carpets, reinstated the third bedroom and swept the chimneys. We figured that it would be essential that our buyer be able to complete on a Friday, move-in over the weekend and have the kids ready for school on Monday.”

“We left the garden ‘to do’ other than planting some border flowers – which came out on the same day that our recently separated mother with her two kids, aged 7 and 10, moved in.”

Technically, my friend didn’t stand a chance to sell his home quickly and at full price because there were so many other houses available (which weren’t selling) and the market was worsening by the day. However, by thinking like a buyer and thinking about the buyer, he was able to make his house the ‘one’ that got sold. If all his neighbours had taken the same approach, there’s every chance that he wouldn’t have made the sale – but they didn’t.

My guess is that his neighbours reasoned something like this: “It’s a bad market so I don’t want to invest any more in this property than absolutely necessary. If I get a buyer who’s serious, I’ll take care of the bits and pieces which need tidying-up then.”

If I’m right, their attitude of happy mediocrity made my friend’s house stand out like a beacon so that it was the only possibility. In fact, the others probably excluded themselves quite quickly for this particular buyer – under time pressure to complete and move in to a fully functional family home.

Now, your ideal buyer will probably behave differently because they’re probably buying a second home. If you’re currently trying to sell a property in Spain, have a serious chat with your estate agent. Ask him or her who ‘normally’ buys properties like yours in your area and for what reason. Get a handle on your pool of potential purchasers – where do they come from, what concerns them, what’s important to them?

If your estate agent can’t help you with this – find another estate agent and repeat the process until you’re confident you have a working profile of who might be in the market for your property. Now, that you know what’s important to potential buyers, look for the common themes in terms of what needs doing to distinguish your property from all the rest. It might be some basic decoration, or something to do with the outside space, or whatever. You’re looking for the handful of things that all of your potential purchasers will value.

At this point, resist the thinking, “Hmm, I don’t really want to throw more money into this property, especially now when the market’s so bad”. You certainly don’t want to be splashing home improvement money about with abandon but if you’ve done your buyer analysis correctly, these are the tweaks which will allow your property to rise to the top of the pile. Houses ARE being bought and sold – and yours could be one of them.

Once you’ve completed the home improvements, make sure that all of the marketing material is updated to reflect these new facts. Take new (and professional) photos, speak directly to the needs of the buyer you have identified.

Shouldn’t your estate agent be doing all this FOR you? In my opinion, they should be doing this WITH you – but I’m confident that if you initiate this conversation, you’ll quickly find out whether or not you’re with the right estate agent.

Either way, if you actually have a stab at thinking like a buyer, you can’t help but improve the odds that your property will be the one that’s purchased – because most sellers will do absolutely nothing at all – just like the neighbours of my friend – you know, the one who sold his house.

One last thing: Reading the comments at the bottom of this article entitled 25 tips to sell your home in a downturn, clearly, the price must be right too.

Martin Dell, Kyero.com