In our series of trend reports, our founders, Albert Hill and Matt Gibberd, share their findings and insights on all things home, from buying and selling, to owning and improving. Here, Matt Gibberd explains why The Modern House staff are choosing to sell their homes now.

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So, we’re in the midst of the worst economic meltdown since the Imperial Crisis in third-century Rome, and we’re all going to hell in a jerry-built handcart. Hmmm, really? I don’t see any signs of mass plague, civil war and grown men with wet patches on their togas. 

At The Modern House, we currently have the biggest sales pipeline since the company was founded in 2005, with more than £53million of property on the verge of exchanging contracts. 

If you want to know what we think, consider this: four members of our team, including me, have chosen to sell their homes right now. Not because we’re ‘playing’ the market or trying to be clever, but because we’re simply getting on with our lives. 

Charlie Russell, Head of Appraisals, is our resident wise owl with an all-seeing eye. His three-bedroom maisonette in Peckham attracted 54 viewings and 18 offers, and has just sold to a first-time buyer. Assistant to the Directors, Nicola Loughton, got a similarly positive reaction to her two-bedroom flat in Oval, which sold over asking price within the first few days of marketing. We’ve also recently agreed the sale of a lovely flat overlooking Lewisham Park, which belongs to our Prime Appraisals Specialist, James Klonaris.

As for me, I’ve just exchanged contracts on the sale of my house in Highgate. It was designed in the 1960s by the architect Walter Segal, for himself and his family. Back in 2013, I was asked to go and value it. The house had a simplicity that somehow you only get from 1960s architecture. The grey brick walls and pine panelling, the parquet floor, the full-height glazing, and that garden… it seemed to stretch as far as Hampstead Heath on the horizon. I was given a wonderfully instructive tour by the owner, and my stomach was doing backflips the whole way round. I had to come clean and declare that we couldn’t represent it for sale because, well, I wanted to buy it myself.

After moving in, we discovered all of those little things that you don’t know until you live in a place. In the morning, the birds would come and perch on the acer just outside our bedroom window, and serenade us with chirruping. There was a resident fox, who would stand in the middle of the lawn and gaze at us nonchalantly, like a teenager with his baseball cap on back to front, and a much more reticent badger, who rustled around in the borders. 

We were unprepared for how uplifting the house was going to be. It has full-height glazing and faces south, and the sheer amount of natural light coming in unquestionably had a positive impact on how we felt. Our young daughter spent hours conducting archaeological digs in the garden, coming back with bits of assorted pottery, oyster shells and rusty old sofa castors. 

My wife, Faye Toogood, runs a design studio, and she set to work on the interiors. It was our home, and we loved it. It was to be the place where our kids would grow up and create their childhood memories.

But sometimes life intervenes, and five years later, we had two more children to think about. We were moving out of London, to be closer to grandparents, and it was time to let the house go. ‘Can we dig it up and take it with us?’ enquired our eldest.

For someone who owns an estate agency, it’s a slightly unnerving experience selling your own place, not just for me but for the team as well. What if nobody wants to buy it? When it was announced in the office that it would be coming on to the market, everyone averted their gaze in unison and tried to remain inconspicuous. One sales advisor immediately regretted wearing a bright orange blouse, and another spent an inappropriate amount of time trying to retrieve his biro from the floor. Our Prime Sales Advisor, Corey Hemingway, drew the short straw and was tasked with project-managing the sale. 

On the first day of marketing, three ‘Viewing Confirmation’ emails landed in my inbox. That’s promising, I thought. There were another four on the second day. Cripes, this might actually go quite well. 

Our marketing team were busy lining up a feature about the house in Cereal, following on from a piece in Vogue. Our 150,000 Instagram followers seemed to like what they saw. “LOVE IT!!!!” enthused George Clarke off the telly. “It’s like my ‘60s house, but better than mine!”. Thanks George.

Corey was in touch after every viewing, to let us know what the feedback was. By day ten, 19 people had seen the house and, on her advice, we accepted an offer from a cash buyer. Contracts were exchanged less than three weeks later. It was the most painless process imaginable.

You hear tales of sales dragging on endlessly, but it needn’t be that way. So, what nuggets of advice can I pass on for someone wanting to sell their home efficiently and with the minimum of fuss?

1. Marry an interior designer with a great eye, if you can find one who’ll put up with you.

2. Appoint The Modern House. It turns out we’re pretty good at this stuff.

3. Price sensibly and prepare to be flexible. It’s a house, not a Mars bar. We accepted an offer more than 10% below the asking price, acknowledging that the value is dictated by the market, not by us.

4. Understand that the first three weeks are the most crucial time in the marketing cycle. There should be a good level of viewings, and if there isn’t, it’s likely to be a price issue.

5. Never take an offer for granted, even if it’s not as much as you were hoping for. It’s a declaration of intent, and should be nurtured, cuddled, caressed and kissed. Very occasionally, ‘holding out’ for the highest possible price pays dividends; the vast majority of the time, it simply doesn’t.

6. Get all of the paperwork ready beforehand. Yes, all of it. That means electrical and gas safety certificates, the Property Information form, the Fixtures & Fittings form, planning permissions, building regs certificates and party-wall agreements. Trust me, this is worth doing. The biggest cause of sales falling through is time… time for the newspapers to print nonsense about the property market, and time for people to simply change their minds.

7. Use a good solicitor. Please, I beg you. That doesn’t mean the one who offers the cheapest fee estimate, it means the one who’s most likely to communicate regularly and answer enquiries swiftly. 

8. Listen to your agent’s advice. Trust us, we’ve done this before, and we want the best possible outcome for you and your property. 

My family and I are now on the lookout for a new home. It might be another Modernist masterpiece, but then again, it could be a Georgian rectory, or a disused barn, or an eccentric old schoolhouse. 

One thing’s for sure: we will be led by our hearts as much as our heads. For all the talk of money and market fluctuations, buying a home is a highly emotional experience. It needs to be a house that gets its talons into us and doesn’t let go, that causes sleepless nights and visions of an exciting way of living; a place where our children can make their memories of the future.