Selling a house or piece of land isn’t easy. Apart from finding the right buyer, you need a host of documents and certificates. Having these in order, however, can make the process surprisingly smooth

Selling a house is a long and tedious process. You need to get the documents in order, get the property valued, look for prospective buyers and manage the transfer of funds. If you plan on buying a new house at the same time, the process can be even more stressful.

While you can hire a broker to do all of the above for you, it is important that you know the process yourself, if only to ensure that you aren’t cheated.

Valuing your property

If you live in a city or town, you may already have a good idea of what your house is worth. The value of the property is influenced by several factors, such as the neighbourhood, available amenities, age of the building, and its proximity to, say, an airport or business hub.

If the property you wish to sell is in an underdeveloped or rural area, you’ll need help evaluating its worth. Look into hiring a professional property assessor to help you gauge the value of your property. The Ready Reckoner, which contains government-approved rates of residential and commercial properties, is a valuable resource. This book can be bought at most stationery shops. However, it’s only updated once a year, in January, and isn’t always in sync with reality on the ground. Pradeep Khandave from Shubham Realtors says, ‘The value of the deal cannot be less than the value given in the reckoner.’

Search for prospective buyers

This is usually the most time-consuming stage, even if you do hire a broker. Give your broker a clear idea of the price you want your house to fetch. If he feels your expectations are unreasonable, he will say so and give you a revised price. As your broker’s fee is linked to the sale price, he will try to get you the best deal possible.

You can also list your property in the newspaper classifieds or on property websites such as magicbricks.com and makaan.com. You will have to pay for this listing. This can be Rs.450-1,000, depending on the website you are advertising on and the duration.

Once you have a few prospective buyers, it’s important to check each one’s creditworthiness. Which buyer you choose will depend on several factors, such as the buyer’s current income, whether he’s able to get a loan, whether his documents are in order, and so on.