Seller Guide

This guide is intended to help you understand how Movewise can help you in your property sale: what we do and don't do, and how we will work with you at all stages of the process.

Who we are

We are an independent team of experienced property professionals focused on helping and advising you through the property sales process.

With Movewise’s technology for analysing agent performance and unique market position we are able to deliver a superior property sales solution to every seller in the UK by sub-contracting agents and centralising relevant aspects of the sales process.

We use the local agents to provide marketing under their brand name, deliver buyers that they already know, and host viewings. The rest of the sales process can be centralised and optimised.

Movewise is able to deliver a superior sales performance, as sole agents do not have access to all the buyers in the market. So we can ensure you don’t get stuck and forced into price reductions with one agent and a narrow pool of buyers.

Kirsty Burnham leads the property team at Movewise and has been in estate agency for 20+ years. Before Movewise she had a long career at Douglas & Gordon in Battersea, London, and most recently ran a sales team there.

Kirsty Burnham, Head of Property

0203 409 4350

What you can expect from us

• We can coordinate anything in relation to your property sale.
• We will monitor and review your property sale weekly.
• We’re independent and not affiliated with any estate agent.
• A dedicated Movewise property advisor throughout your sale. If you have any issue you can escalate it to the Head of Property or CEO.
• We can afford to give you honest advice as we make less fees per sale than a regular estate agent and have far more repeat business. This means we’d rather advise you on your best course of action even if it means selling away from us, as we can work with you or your friends again. Your local agent, good job or poor, is unlikely ever to see you again.
• We can ensure you don’t get stuck with a poorly performing agent.
• If you have to lower your price, we can ensure that you are listed with more than one agent before doing so, meaning you get marketed fully.
• Quality sales progression. Not all local agents do this, particularly on lower-value properties. We monitor sales progression on all our properties.
• Transparency on our sales process. Here’s our guide.
• Give you an insight into what's happening in your market, with reports on comparable sales and other market data.
• We have 24/7 telephone call answering via Moneypenny, which routes calls and messages to each property team member.
• Our office hours are 0900-1800 Monday to Friday. We review messages and calls over the weekend and out of hours for any that are urgent.
• We can use local agents or outsourced services such as Viewber for visiting properties.

What we don't do

• Visit the properties. Our fee is typically only 20% of the total fee, so you get the equivalent to a sole agency fee and the agents sub-contracting from us are fully motivated. We can only keep it this low by being efficient. Visiting properties takes a lot of time, and we’d need to charge higher fees..
• Magic. We cannot sell houses for more than they are worth. We cannot get buyers to visit a property that is overvalued, although we can try marketing it at that price for you. What we will do is ensure it's not the estate agent that's the problem.
• Create an unnecessary additional layer of communication. If you are communicating directly with the sub-agent they may not pass on this communication. It's up to you if you want it all to go through us or not, but we are not here to create bureaucracy.

Step-by-step guide to selling with Movewise

Preparing your marketing plan

This phase is without charge. You won’t be contracted to us at this point, and if you choose to take our advice and manage the process yourself then that’s absolutely fine.

Here’s what we’ll do:

• Identify your best agents. The property team will help you to find the best local agents by compiling a comprehensive report of the most active agents in your area within the relevant price range.
• Interview and negotiate with them. With your agreement we will speak to the top ranking agents and negotiate the best fees for you. In most cases we can negotiate the same fees (or better) as you would be able to if you went to the agent directly.
• Discuss possible marketing plans. We will then email/call you to discuss the fees as well as our thoughts and suggestions as to the best agent(s) to list with. Most agents tie their clients into long exclusivity agreements. Movewise do not, giving us the flexibility to move between agents if one isn't performing.

Contracts and documentation

This is where you’ll sign up. You’ll only sign with us, whichever agent you are using in the UK. Our terms and conditions are purposefully friendly – we have no desire to lock you up. If you want to leave us, we just need time to unwind our obligations to any agents we contracted, and that normally takes 1-2 days.

You still won’t be obligated to pay us anything unless your property sells.

• Signing our Terms and Conditions. If you decide at this point you would like to proceed we will send you our online Terms and Conditions to sign. Please note that our fees are only payable on completion, and there is nothing else to pay: we pay the agent who successfully sells your property. The percentage fee in our Terms and Conditions includes VAT.
• Basic onboarding documentation. We will ask you to complete the required anti-money-laundering (AML) documentation, which we will provide to the agents if requested. For this we will need the following for all named owners of the property:
  - A copy of a bill from the last 3 months with your name and address
  - A copy of either your passport or driving licence
  - A photo of yourself and chosen photo ID so we can see the likeness
• High-risk onboarding documentation. Most property sales are classified as low risk because they are low in value and owner occupied. Under UK anti-money-laundering guidance, some property sales transactions will be classified as high risk, for example high-value properties, company-owned properties, and those where the owner is abroad. Property sales classified by HMRC as “high risk” will require additional information for both our and our sub-agents’ AML processes, for example documentation verified by a post office or bank. We can coordinate couriers for this documentation to make things simpler for you.
• Property questionnaire. We will ask you to complete a property questionnaire so that we are able to give the agents as much information as possible about the property and your onward plans.

Listing your property

We’ll coordinate this with the local agent(s). We contract great photographers and arrange local agents to handle the keys.

• Arrange photos and floorplans. Once the Terms and Conditions have been signed we will arrange professional photos, floorplans and 3D showcase photos (which enable virtual viewings) and provide them to the agents. Movewise pay for this, we use NicheCom. The reason we do this is so that we can move between agents seamlessly, providing the new agent with the material they need to market your property.
• Arrange EPC. If you haven’t got an up-to-date EPC we will arrange for this to be done for you (payable by you). The EPC assessment can be carried out at the same time as the photos and floorplans.
• Discuss access. We will ask you to confirm how the agent(s) can access the property for viewings. This may be by making an appointment directly with you, or via a tenant, or you may agree to give keys to the agent to facilitate easy access. The agent will carry out the viewings.
• Provide information to sub-agents. We will provide all the information to the agent and ask them to produce the marketing material – online listing details and brochure.
• Property Information Pack reports. These are optional but we recommend utilising PIP reports, which Movewise will cover the cost of. PIP reports enable you to manage, prepare and share documentation required once the property is under offer. Doing this in advance speeds up the property sales process considerably.
• Your approval. We will ask you to approve the details before we are able to make the property live online.

Getting you under offer

Here we’ll be working with you all the way through to getting your property under offer, with whichever agent we need to get an acceptable offer for you.

• Monitor. We monitor viewings and give you feedback on a weekly basis.
• Price adjustments. We will not alter the price of a property listing without your agreement.
• Transparency over how we market properties. We have a Movewise sales strategy guide that outlines how we think it is best to manage a property sale. Each property is unique, and so is its sales process, but our strategy can give you certainty of getting a result, and we’ll tailor it to your requirements.
• Introduce new agents. If the agent(s) aren't performing as hoped we will move to a new agent or instruct a new agent alongside the first (with your agreement) until we get you sold.
• Market reports. Each property sale is different. If yours is not going as planned we can help you see what is happening in your local market with market reports or comparable sales reports.
• Offer negotiation. We help with the negotiation of any offers with the agent(s) to ensure we secure you the best market value with the best possible buyer.

Sales progression

Once you are under offer we’ll help you get the sale over the line.

• Solicitors. When a sale is agreed you will need to instruct your solicitor. We have solicitors we can recommend should you wish us to provide you with details. See our guide to choosing a solicitor.
• Managing your sale to completion. We monitor the progress of the sale through to exchange and completion and keep you fully updated along the way.
• Leasehold properties. If you have a leasehold property or a property that has a management company, the sales process can take significantly longer. You can assist with this by either instructing a solicitor prior to agreeing a sale or making sure that as soon as a sale is agreed your solicitor applies for the relevant information immediately.
• Fee payment. You only pay one fee and that is to Movewise. In practice this is paid by your solicitor to us on completion. We then pay on average 80% of this fee to the sub-agent that provided the buyer under the terms we agreed with that agent in the marketing plan preparation phase at the start.

If you have any more questions on how we work, please ask your property advisor or send them to sales@movewise.co.uk. Our goal is to ensure every property sells for its maximum price and you get a stress-free and seamless experience. We’re always looking to improve, so if you have any feedback or suggestions please send them to us at the above email.

Thank you and good luck with your sale.

The Movewise Team