About Us:
The Coastal House specialises in the sale of Coastal and Waterside property. Serving the residential South Devon Property Market, The Coastal House Estate Agents will bring an enthusiastic and unique service to the homeowner and buyer. With the help of the latest technology, we provide an unrivalled quality of service and presentation.
Choose our agency to sell your property and as well as our own marketing efforts we are the only agent in this area who can bring a distinct and specialist marketing edge for your home.
We are the only Dartmouth Estate Agents to have offices on both sides of the River Dart.
Interview with Julie Hill, owner of The Coastal House (July 2015)
What is The Coastal House’s unique selling point?
We sell property within a 6 mile radius of the coast or river, across all types or property and price points. We focus our attention on clearly defining our brand values and differences. You see this in the attention we give to marketing ourselves and our clients’ properties – be it on our website, window display boards, brochures etc. I am a qualified photographer and I personally take all the photographs to maintain a consistent and high standard that portrays a property in its very best light. We have a ‘blue sky’ policy for all our photographs and our brochures are produced offsite to a high standard. We work closely with clients to build the right brochure and particulars to sell the property – we even invite owners’ comments into this, which is very well received by potential buyers.
We’ve relaunched our website this year – it’s mobile friendly, updated frequently and of very high quality. We are very proud of it. Unlike other agents we keep an office in Kingswear. Michele Stevens who manages that office has long experience and knowledge of this much sought-after village, which is a real strength for both buyers and vendors.
How do you read the current market?
The market is healthier but still fragile as buyers remain cautious. The market shocks we all experienced 8 years ago are still playing out and some big economic uncertainties persist. Nonetheless, there is more stability now the election is out of the way.
The pick up in instructions after the election has been slower than we’d expect – we think vendors are still waiting for prices to recover more strongly but the fragility of the market could easily dash those hopes.
Buyers have so much more knowledge nowadays; they’ve access to more information about price comparisons and price trends. Estate agents have to be professional – you can’t ‘flannel’ a buyer so a vendor needs to be sensible with price expectations if they want to sell quickly. A vendor has to listen to the market as much as ever.
What advice would you give to vendors and buyers?
There’s a lot of frustration with the more drawn out conveyance process. Everybody’s being more cautious, mortgage lending is tighter etc. But if there’s a will to act quickly on all sides, good preparation by vendors before they hit the market and decent communication to reduce the stress in the process then it’s still possible to complete the process quickly.
Buyers should make sure they’ve got their proof of funds ready before they make an offer – it will always put them in a better position when negotiating with vendors and gives them a first mover advantage over other buyers to secure the property they really want.
