So, you've decided to move from your London home. Here's how to protect your self from excessive costs.

If you wisely opted for minimum stress by buying a new-build for your home, you will already have taken a big first step towards saving costs and maintaining sales value. A new property provides the owner with many benefits which can eventually be passed on to a buyer in due course. For instance, if your home is covered by a 10-year National House Building Council (NHBC) Buildmark warranty and insurance policy , you can ask a good selling price and not expect to have to concede a price reduction for building defects found in a buyer's survey. In addition to hassle-free surveys, buyers will be attracted to a newer property with the transferable benefits of low maintenance costs, plumbing and wiring in good order; and gardens, well-designed and easily kept, tending to be smaller than older properties. Also, newer homes will usually benefit from good levels of security, safety and energy efficiency where modern technology, materials, locks and alarms have been used.

The second big step in protecting your self from excessive costs is to look carefully at the process for selling your property.

Now you have managed to get on the property ladder in London, the prospect of making some money out of your home (as well as it being home sweet home, of course) is very welcome indeed. As circumstances may have changed, perhaps you now need to move out of the area to change job or accommodate a growing family. You chose your home carefully, and it was probably only affordable to a tight budget ? you knew what everything would cost and you managed the outgoings. So, having taken this much care as a savvy buyer, nothing will hurt you more than to see large slices of the profit you have made disappearing into a black hole of costs when the time comes to sell your place, or when the price of the place you're buying is elevated by sellers or developers trying to recoup sale costs.

The introduction of Home Information Packs (HIPs) has made topical the costs involved in selling and buying a home. However, strangely, opinion in respect of estate agent fees is still relatively guarded and even muted. Let's face it: the cost of obtaining a HIP pales into insignificance when compared to paying estate agent commission.

Whilst many moving costs vary little or not at all in connection with the value of the property in question, estate agents' fees relate directly to the sale price of the property and therefore impact proportionally upon those selling higher value properties. Guess what? That means Londoners are in the firing line like (almost) no others in the UK. Every day, Londoners pay thousands of pounds (even tens of thousands of pounds) in commission to estate agents, a cost which is proportionately higher for them simply because of geography.

It's odd. Even putting aside additional costs of sale and purchase, such as legal fees (often the brunt of attack but, interestingly, relatively small in the scheme of things) and removal costs, the amount of money channelled into estate agents' fees is huge. Why do we remain passive to these 'dead' costs? Well, a growing proportion of those selling their homes in the London realise there's another option: selling privately online.

Selling a London property privately online enables a seller , for a flat fee , to save thousands of pounds in estate agent commission fees, advertise to millions of potential buyers, and stay in control of the whole selling process.

Buy smart , sell well

Mike Paterson

MySaleAgreed

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