Richard Butler-Creagh had many successful years in property development before he started his own company Henley Finance in 2013. The property market can be difficult especially in these economic times. However, it’s not all doom and gloom, here some tips on what you should do before selling your home that will help make it more sellable. 

When you’re getting ready to sell your house, it’s difficult to know where to start. But a few quick tips before you sell your house will ease everything that follows. You might even get a few more dollars for your former home sweet home.

Here are some tips to do before selling your property:

Painting

You should paint bathroom ceilings if they need it, paint kitchen cupboards if the colors are outdated. Consider changing the handles of the doors as well. It is a very inexpensive way to modernize your kitchen and most cupboard handles are standard size so they are very fast to change. Be aware that re-painting entire exteriors can be expensive especially when scaffolding is involved

Gardening

You will want your garden to appear as low maintenance as possible. If you present a part that is well maintained it will give buyers confidence that you have taken really good care of your home. Make sure any trees and hedges are not coming into contact with the house itself. Ensure the walkways are clear from over hanging branches of leaves.

House-Washing & Cleaning

Sometimes all that is needed is to make a big difference to the presentation of your home
is a good and nice house wash. When these are done nicely, they can cost a bit more than you might think but they are worth every cost. Be sure to also wash gutters, paths and driveways too. When you are about to sell you also need to clean as if the local health and safety inspector is coming for a house check. Get some help if you need to and clean all those surfaces you don’t normally bother with like toilets or inside your pantry.

De-clutter

Take out everything you don’t need for daily living. When you visit a show-home event, the first thing you notice is that they have a really small amount of furniture, but they do that on purpose. The more you take out furniture out of a room, the bigger the space will feel to a prospective buyer. Hire a storage service if you really need to, and use your garage for extra storage. As long as buyers can walk into your garage and see how big it is, it’s ok to fill it with boxes and some furniture. A garage is a garage for most people.

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Great news that the Help to Buy Scheme is continuing to be supported by the government for a further period. On Monday 2nd October 2017, the government committed another £10 billion to the project which will hopefully see it in action for another 10 years.The scheme launched in 2013 by George Osbourne is designed to assist first time buyers by subsidizing their deposit so that a deposit of 5% is possible.  

With property prices taking such a giant leap in the last 20 years, at first glance you might think that the only way to level the field again is for property prices to come down.  But we know what happens when property prices fall.  Home owners go into negative equity and homes get repossessed.  The Help to Buy Scheme is an imaginative solution meaning that more first time buyers are able to get on the property ladder, but without destabilizing the property market.  Historically, starter homes were a low multiple of the local average wage, three, four or five times, but now they are considerably higher.  The Office of National Statistics reported average wage earnings for UK to be £27,271 and the average price of a home, reported by the Land Registry to be £226,185 in 2017.  This is a multiple of over eight times.  With these figures it is easy to see that the barrier for entry to the property market is getting the deposit together, and not the interest rate, which has historically been the case.  Help to Buy helps bridge that multiple gap, so with the ultra-low mortgage rates, home ownership becomes accessible.

Critics of the Help to Buy policy level that the housebuilder’s are the only ones benefitting from the subsidy as they are able to sell new homes at market price. In some areas, there has been an increase in house prices for first time buyers, but this should only be temporary as some areas have such a shortage of housing, the demand for a small supply has flooded the market.  As we know, not only sustaining market price is important, but incentifying housebuilders to build for this end of the market is important too, as often more price per square foot is achieveable on a high end build.  With this formula, house builders will continue providing for this market, until the market forces the price to come down – and that will be when the demand for new homes has been satisfied.  So it won’t be any time soon but it is a good plan well executed.

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I haven’t commited myself to an organized run for a couple of years now, so it was after I had had a chat with my old marathon running pal, Neil, that we decided to go for the Henley Half Marathon on 8th October 2017.  I haven’t run a distance like that for a while and thought I would do a bit of research this time to see if there was another approach that might help me mitigate the chance of injury.  Too many times, I have embarked on a training programme and had to stop because I had IT band problems or a calf strain. 

During my research I came across something on YouTube which took my interest by a guy called Jeff Galloway - giving a talk at Google.  Here is the video:



He is an Olympian at 10,000m, published many books and frequently writes for Runners World – his field of expertise, running injury free.  What I heard in this video has changed my entire approach to running.  The most controversial part of his approach is that you don’t need to stretch.  It sounds crazy to anyone who has ever been to the gym, watched or read any fitness/health material or spoken to anyone who does yoga.  However, I really dislike stretching and so many of the injuries I have had are whilst stretching.  I accept that my calf muscles are solid even when relaxed which isn’t good, but I was ready to be converted.  

Jeff’s approach is based on the interval/fartlek technique or as he calls it ‘the run, walk, run method’ so rather than employ the technique as just a training exercise, it is a style of running where, depending on your level of fitness, the running is a certain amount of time and then you walk of an amount of time and then repeat.  The outcome is faster running, a short recovery walk, with an overall improved time and – no injuries.  The walking allows the circulation to return to your muscles more closely imitating how our ancestors would have hunted.

I have been using this method now for nearly a year and can say it is the longest period of running I have had injury free.  I have invested in one of his wrist timers which beeps at the desired interval and after a good 16.3 mile run the other day which was very quick for me, even though I finished in the pitch black, I am ready for the half marathon next weekend.  Fingers crossed – and thank you Jeff. Find out more about Henley Finance here. Follow the Richard Butler Creagh Twitter page for our latest updates.

Henley Finance was founded four years ago and is a short-term bridging finance firm that specializes in loans between £100,000 to £1,000,000 for expert property developers. Even though the market on short-term professional loans is highly competitive, we find that the ease of our system assures that we always have better borrowers than we have funds for. Henley Finance is dedicated to responsibly assisting our clients whenever it is possible. We also have a flawless track record. 

As part of Henley Finance’s commitment to providing our customers a better and transparent service, we have always been proud to calculate the loans using a more ‘simple interest’ rate.  This means that no matter how much interest our customers have accrued, we will only calculate the interest on the capital advance. This differs from ‘compound interest’ that is used by most of the banks and lenders where the interest is calculated anew on the amount outstanding each payment period, usually monthly.  So, when interest is charged on interest, the difference seems negligible at first, but over, say, a five-year period, the difference can be significant. 

Here is a sample table demonstrating the difference between simple and
compound interest of £100,000 charged at 5% per year.
 

YEARS	SIMPLE INTEREST	COMPOUND INTEREST
1	£105,000	£105,000.00
2	£110,000	£110,250.00
3	£115,000	£115,762.50
4	£120,000	£121,550.62
5	£125,000	£127,628.15

The company’s concept was formulated by founder Richard Butler-Creagh in response to the demands of the client’s needs. The key to delivering our promises is our relationship with our clients and understanding their requirements and demands. Consistent communication is a crucial element that is needed throughout the extent of the loan so we at Henley Finance rely on people that shares its values on business. This makes our processes transparent and understandable for everyone that is involved.

Richard Butler-Creagh had a very successful career in property development and he understands the needs of experts and their requirements on short-term bridging finance. Bridging loans are designed to help people complete the purchase of a property before selling their existing home by offering them short-term access to money at a high-rate of interest. One of the key features that Richard Butler-Creagh has built the company on is the repeat business. At Henley Finance, costs are kept as low as possible in the belief that if their borrowers make money, they return with more projects to fund. As a result, they have never advertised and all business is from word of mouth.

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