As much as you love your home, it’s time to move so you have an estate agent over to value your property. They come in, tell you how lovely it is and much to your surprise value it for a hefty chunk over what you expected for it. You’re delighted. A few months later after agreeing to their high fees and you still haven’t sold with the few viewings you have only generating one offer for well below asking price. What has happened to that hefty chunk the estate agent promised and why won’t they let you leave your contract to go with another agent that has buyers waiting?
The above is quite a common experience according to Which?, the consumer group. According to their research of over 370,000 properties, just under 20% of properties sold for 5% or more below their asking value. That’s 1 in 5 properties that have been overvalued by estate agents. That’s a phenomenal amount.
In a competitive industry it is a well known ploy of some agents. They walk in the door, add £50,000 to what they think it is worth, sign you up to a long contract on a high fee (and why shouldn’t you pay 3.5% + VAT of the sale price when they can get you more than you expected), conduct a few Mickey Mouse viewings then a few weeks later tell you the feedback has been it’s a little too highly priced can we drop the asking price? You say no and you want to go with another agent for a lower fee but they remind you that you’re tied into a contract for 6 months so you can’t. And there you have it, you’re stuck in a expensive contract selling your property for less than you thought at a high fee all because someone you expected to give you expert advice lied to you more bigley than Donald Trump did over the size of his inauguration crowd!
The Which? study also found that properties reduced by more than 5% took an average of 64 days longer to sell than those priced correctly from the start and found that they sold for a whopping £20,000 less than properties that hadn’t had such a large price reduction.
Of course, the flip side of the coin is you don’t want to undersell your property, so how do you find the right balance? Well, at Homefinders, we walk you through the process. We have decades of experience in the London market and keep an eye on the ever changing prices. When we value your property, we not only conduct through research on how much your property can sell for, we make a list of comparable properties for you to see and then aim to not just achieve a sale, but the best price for you.
We are committed to being experts in our field and to demonstrate that, we are members of the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) which both helps train our staff and ensure we meet high standards for our clients and even offer them an external complaints procedure in the unlikely event we don’t meet their expectations.
If you are looking to sell or are even just curious as to what you could achieve for your property in today’s market, contact your local branch to find out more.
Haydar Sehri's blog
