Selling Up

I have recently been doing some house visits. We're looking to buy and I'll tell you what I have noticed, a lot of places are chain-free at the moment.

It makes you wonder what the reasons are behind these sales.

A few years ago the biggest reason for the sale of houses was that the family was moving to a bigger house. But these days there are so man reasons to sell you house.

Some of the no chains places will be from repossessions, but there are no motives to analyse there so we're not looking at those.

A lot of those ones I have seen are people who bought-to-let realising there's no fun in that market now. So they're selling up. Otherwise they would be left with a lot of their money sat in a building and no way of getting to it.

But people are selling their houses these days to get their hands on the cash stored in it even if it's the house they currently live in. While people may say that house prices are down 10% year on year, anyone who bought a house last year probably isn't going to sell it yet. And if you bought your house a few years ago its value will now be greater than the mortgage you got on it. You are in positive equity and if you sell you can turn that equity into cash.

That would be very handy if you need some money. Of course the other factor in satisfying your monetary needs is the speed. If you need to get your hands on the money in your property you will need to get it quickly. If could do without using that money for months you wouldn't even be thinking about it now.

If you want cash for property in a timely fashion have a look at www.gateway-homes.co.uk