The most expensive mistake in selling a house is made before the first viewing. It is the guide price, and it is usually made to win the instruction rather than to sell the home.
The first fortnight
A new listing is shown to the largest audience it will ever have in its first two weeks: portal alerts, registered buyers, the people who have been waiting. If the price is right, that audience produces viewings, competition and an offer close to the guide. If it is wrong, the same audience notes the price, waits, and reads every later reduction as a signal that there is something to wait for. Homes that launch high routinely sell for less than homes that launch correctly.
Where the number comes from
We start with sold prices, not asking prices, for the closest comparable homes: same street or area, similar size and type, sold in the last six to twelve months. Then we adjust for what the comparables cannot show: condition, layout, light, the roof, the lease, the garden, the road. Then we look at the market this month, because a valuation from the spring is not a valuation for the autumn. The result is a guide price with the reasoning written down, so you can see how it was built and challenge it.
Guide price, asking price, offers over
The words matter less than the number behind them. "Offers in excess of" a low figure can generate competition in a busy market and disappointment in a quiet one. A round figure just below a portal search threshold reaches more buyers than one just above it. We choose the format for the market and the property, and we never use it to disguise a price the evidence does not support.
Presentation changes the price
Buyers pay for what they can see. Professional photography, measured floor plans, a short film where the property earns it, and a house that is clean, light and free of the things that make a viewing awkward add real money. Repairs that a survey will find anyway are usually cheaper to do than to negotiate.
When to reduce, and how
If the first fortnight brings viewings but no offers, the price is close; the feedback will say what is holding buyers back. If it brings neither, the price is wrong and one decisive correction beats three small ones. We review every listing with you at two and four weeks with the evidence in front of us.
What we will not do
We will not quote a number to win your instruction, and we will not let a listing sit while the market moves past it. A valuation from us comes with the comparables attached, within 48 hours of the visit, and the decision about what to do with it is yours.
Written by the Norvex Property team. General information, not advice on your circumstances; speak to us about your own property.