Essential guides and advice Selling A House? Find A Market

Date Published:

21/05/2008

Pre-Kid Couples And Singletons

Older professionals will probably be second time buyers and will have long-since acclimatised to some of the better things in life. They may need more space in preparation for a family or maybe just to further indulge hobbies and interests.

The fascinations of the young will have long since passed - these are the people who feel the underside of kitchen surfaces to see if they're real or just clever veneers, and who will begin to measure their pleasures in terms of quality not just quantity.

It's probably something to do with the slight stiffening of older limbs, but buyers in their late twenties and early thirties will fixate on bathrooms and showers and the therapeutic qualities of hot water in great abundance. Having been bought a trendy cookbook when they first bought their house, they may by now have opened it, and may even feel the need to have better kitchen facilities on hand should the desire to actually start banging ingredients together become difficult to deny. They may also need space for two cars, and fancy a garden for those rare and elusive summer nights when its actually worth getting the BBQ out and some friends over.

Young Families

Young couples with imminent parenthood in their sights will have altogether different concerns about location. Cool bars and restaurants will drop down the popularity charts in favour of a nice park, proximity to doctor's surgeries and health centres. Shopping centres with good pushchair access and heavy pedestrianisation may well get a thumbs up, while even rumours of openings at a popular nursery will excite an influx of goldrush proportions.

Internally open plan kitchen diners or at least roomy kitchens, user friendly bathrooms etc will always be winners, as will a garden or at least some secure outdoor space. It's a generalisation, but no-nos for this market are stairs without banisters, steel and glass, hard to clean floors and surfaces, fishponds and anything fragile at around child height. A young couple thinking ahead will also want to see growing room in a house for a further extension of the family at some point ahead. Rather than impose too much personality on a loft conversion or basement, you might want to consider keeping it safe, clean and simple, allowing the potential purchaser to consider the space for a variety of uses.