10 GOOD REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD NOT TRY TO SELL YOUR LETTING BUSINESS YOURSELF

1) You won’t have the resources needed to ensure a smooth, stress-free sale

Selling a letting agency  is totally  different to selling a house. It requires a vast amount of technical expertise and industry  knowledge . You  will need an accurate valuation, a  compelling  information pack, careful  buyer selection, legal expertise and the list goes on.

If you don’t have all of this expertise yourself (and no-one expects that you should), then you will  need to source that expertise from several different sources . But that takes time and know-how and you might pick the wrong advisors.

Or, you can let Adam J Walker & Associates, the UK’s leading seller of letting agencies, take care of it all for you. We have sold over 500 letting agencies and have a team of 8 staff with over 40 years of combined service.

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2) You won’t get the best price

It is almost impossible to achieve the best price by selling your own business. A good broker can add value at every stage of the process. How?

By preparing an accurate information pack that shows your business in the best light.

By having access to a database of thousands of potential buyers many of whom you would never have found for yourself.

By running a proper marketing campaign over a 6-week period to produce multiple offers which will drive up the price.

By helping you choose a reliable buyer who won’t try to chip the price at the last moment or use sophisticated accounting tricks to cheat you out of money in the completion accounts that should have been yours.

At Adam J Walker & Associates, you’ll get all of the above, plus our 30 years of experience and vast technical knowledge, which means your sale is much more likely to complete first time on the terms that you originally agreed.

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3) Your information pack will be inadequately prepared
and this will drop your sale price

The way your information pack is prepared will have a massive impact on the price that you can achieve for your business.

A carrier bag full of bits of paper simply will not do. You need to show off your business in the best possible light and ensure every detail is accurate and every figure is cross-referenced with the accounts in order to avoid problems later in the sale.

Needless to say, that’s how we do it at Adam J Walker & Associates.

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4) You won’t attract enough buyers and
this will also drop your sale price

More buyers means more competition and ultimately a better price for your letting agency. How many buyers can you realistically reach on your own?

We have over 12,600 buyers on our database, which has been built over the last 30 years. Many of these buyers are buyers that you would not find yourself.

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5) You’re more likely to accept the first offer that comes along, which may not be the best

You may be trying to sell your letting agency but in the meantime you’ve got to run it and juggle life outside of work. Understandably, this can make waiting for the best possible sale price incredibly stressful.

This ultimately means you’re more likely to accept the first offer that comes in, whether or not it’s the best possible one you can achieve.

At Adam J Walker & Associates, you’ll get a proper marketing campaign with a formal closing date for offers at the end of the process, ensuring you can see all the offers on the table in a timely manner and select the best one for you.

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6) You may end up with a sale completing on unfavourable terms

The highest priced offer is often not the best one. There are multiple other factors to consider and without in-depth technical expertise, you may end up accepting an offer which comes with trick clauses that reduce the net proceeds of your sale, leaving you with far less than you expected.

For example, you need to consider the payment terms, penalty clauses, cost of any redundancies, cost of lease disposals and the way in which the completion accounts will be prepared.

All of the above and more will be considered by our expert team when you sell with Adam J Walker & Associates.

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7) You’re more likely to choose the wrong buyer

Some buyers have a reputation for chipping the price at the last moment or using sophisticated accounting tricks to cheat you of money in the completion accounts that should have been yours. If you have no or little experience selling letting agencies, spotting these buyers can be near impossible.

What you need is a buyer with a spotless track record. With our decades in the business, we know which buyers can be trusted and which can’t, and this will have a huge impact on how smoothly your sale proceeds and the net proceeds that you walk away with.

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8) Due diligence is a lot harder to complete

The due diligence process is immensely complex and it usually involves at least 100 hours’ work. Do you have that kind of time?

With Adam J Walker & Associates, you’ll have an 8-strong team ready and willing to resolve any issues that arise. If necessary, we can involve our specialist due diligence consultants to assist with more complex problems.

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9) You may end up with the wrong solicitor

Your choice of solicitor will have a huge impact on how quickly and smoothly your sale proceeds and on whether it completes at all.

This isn’t hyperbole. In our 30 years in the industry, we’ve seen some truly awful solicitors who have sometimes been wholly responsible for allowing sales to collapse unnecessarily.

Thankfully, we’ve also come across some fantastic solicitors and 5 of the best solicitors are on our panel.

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10) You can be left at the whims of unscrupulous buyers

Many buyers will try to chip the sale price by up to 25% on the day of completion. We know this because we’ve often been asked to remarket businesses after this has happened in a private sale or with another broker.

At Adam J Walker & Associates, we know which buyers to trust and which to avoid, thanks to our decades of experience in selling UK letting agencies, during which time we’ve acquired this essential insider knowledge.