Floor Plans – Help Buyers Make An Informed Decision

Buying a home is a massive moment in a person’s life. It is impossible to remove all risk from buying a home, but buyers can make an informed decision that helps them feel more confident about the process. If you are selling your home, you can play a part in helping a buyer feel more assured about their decision.

As buyers need information, it makes sense for a vendor to provide buyers with as much information as they possibly can. Of course, there is a lot of information to share about a home, so it is essential to provide information that buyers need and which helps them make an informed decision.

Given that Rightmove is the leading online property portal in the United Kingdom, their research findings into what buyers look for should help vendors prepare and present their property. A study undertaken by the property site spoke to 10,000 people and the result was 33% of prospective buyers would be less likely to inquire about a property if there wasn’t a floor plan in the listing. The same survey also found that 20% of buyers ignore a property listing if there is no floor plan.

When you sell your home, you want to attract as many buyers as you possibly can. The thought that one in five prospective buyers will ignore your listing if there isn’t a floor plan will be a warning sign for many vendors. Most vendors are unwilling to allow that many potential buyers ignore their listings, and this means adding a floor plan to your listing should be an integral component of the sales process, not a nicety or additional feature.

A floor plan provides facts for buyers

As has already been stated, buyers need information, and they want evidence that helps them feel confident. It is vital that buyers feel as though a home meets their functional requirements, but the house must meet their emotional requirements too. These needs can often feel like very different things for a buyer, but both of these needs can be sated with facts.

We all know that staged images and well-lit shots enhance some property listings. In a competitive marketplace, it is crucial to grab buyer attention, and therefore, producing images that appeal to buyers is part of the process. However, while buyers are attracted to stylish photos, they know that there is a practical aspect in the process, and a floor plan provides details regarding space, size and flow of the home.

A floor plan allows buyers to picture themselves in the house

One of the most critical aims in presenting property is to help the buyer imagine living in the home. This outcome is why decluttering is an essential component of the sales process. When you declutter a house, you create more space, but you also remove the personal artefacts and memories that mark your house out as your home.

These images and memories may be comforting to you, and a lot of prospective buyers find them cute, but they act as a barrier when selling your home. If a buyer views a house and it features images of the homeowners family sharing great times, the buyer thinks of the house as someone else’s home, not their own home.

Decluttering removes these barriers, and a floor plan allows a prospective buyer to imagine themselves in the property, walking from room to room. A floor plan may seem blank and bare, but this is a suitable platform that allows prospective buyers to dream about the life they could have in the home.

Vendors are advised never to leave a room completely blank because this can overwhelm prospective buyers. However, when it comes to floor plans, the bare facts, dimensions and flow of the house, allied to images and video clips, help a prospective buyer to piece together their version of your home, and this may help them form an interest in your house.

Returning to the Rightmove survey, 80% of respondents indicated they use a floor plan for every house while 12% suggested they only used the floor plan when they had the time to do so. With rental properties, only 28% of rental listings, at the time of the survey, featured a floor plan.

Don’t be left behind in the market

If you are looking to sell your house, a floor plan should be a necessity, and if you don’t use one, you are hampering your chances. If the majority of listings offer a floor plan, you also need to provide a floor plan. There are arguments for being different in the property market, but you should look to be different in ways that add more value, not less value.

If you are in the rental market, the incentive to use floor plans is to get ahead of your peers and rivals, not stand pace with them. If you have an opportunity to offer more value than rival landlords or listings, do so, because it helps you to stand out from the crowd.

Be the property listing people remember

Don’t forget that buyers and tenants review a lot of properties, and it can be hard for them to differentiate between the homes they see. By offering a floor plan, you add another element that helps to differentiate your home, and this will hopefully help to place your home in the memory of prospective buyers or tenants.

If you are looking to sell your house, you need to be proactive, you need to help buyers, and you need to provide information. One of the most effective ways of engaging your audience and offering invaluable information is by providing a floor plan in your listing.

At Hunters, we appreciate selling your home is hard, but we know how to engage buyers and persuade them to purchase a property. If you are keen to sell your house effectively, contact us, and we will do everything we can to place you in front of willing buyers.