Why Choosing an Agent With the Highest Valuation Can Leave You out of Pocket

BlogAuthor: Tom Kirk
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Choosing your agent is a crucial part of your selling journey - find out why you shouldn't always go with the agent who offers you the highest valuation.

Highest valuation can reduce your selling price! Really?

When you make the decision to move house, it’s often an emotional, stressful time, and for a lot of sellers they are moving to somewhere bigger and more expensive. It makes sense that you would want to maximise the value of your home, and sell it for as much as possible.

Most people will speak to around three different estate agents, to hear what service they provide, what the cost of that service is, and ultimately what valuation they place on your property.

People choose agents based on the following reasons, in no particular order.

  • Recommendation
  • Cost
  • Confidence
  • Valuation

If your primary consideration is maximising the value of your property, it’s an easy trap to fall into picking the agent that gives you the highest valuation for your home. This could be the worst decision you make, if none of the other boxes are ticked.

You only have ten days

You have a window of opportunity, around 10 days from when the house first goes to market, where interest in your property is highest. People usually search for houses that have come to market in the last 7 days when searching on platforms like Rightmove and Zoopla. If you haven’t got any offers within that 10-day window, the interest in your property drops off dramatically.

The only way to generate a similar amount of interest after that ten-day window is by dropping the value of your property by 2% or more (platforms like Rightmove will show your property higher in the search results if it is reduced by more than 2%). For a house worth £200,000 you would have to reduce the sale price by over £4,000 to get people engaged again.

Here’s a graph from one of the properties we have sold recently, showing how interest changes over time. This was taken from Rightmove.

Above: Interest in property drops dramatically after ten days

The house above went on the market on the 25th June. Just look how high the interest is in the property over the next couple of days, and then how dramatically it tapers off. All those eyes on your property, and only one chance to make the right impression and generate interest.

From the property above we were able to get nine buyers to book to view the property on the day of our Property Launch. That’s nine people that have already looked at our marketing and decided the property is priced well.

Within two days of the launch event, an offer was accepted and the house sold for £2,000 above asking price. That’s what we aim to do every single time we bring a property to market, that’s why we use the Property Launch method. This isn’t a fancy gimmick, this has taken Preston Baker ten years to develop and has been tested thousands of times with sellers that chose to use property launch, against those that didn’t.

High Valuation – Low Interest

If your valuation is too high, it gets disregarded by buyers. They see other properties in your area that may be selling for the same price, that offer more; or they see houses that are similar to yours, but priced lower. In both those scenarios, you have lost a potential buyer.

If the market dictates the price and you only have a short window to generate interest, how do you maximise the value of your property? You price the property to sell, and you open up your market to as many people as possible. Just sticking your property on rightmove isn’t enough.

High Interest - High Demand - Higher Offers

Getting as many eyes on your home as possible is what sells properties, and it is what we do best. The more people interested in your property the higher the demand, the higher the competition, and the better chance of receiving multiple offers. If you have multiple people making offers on your property, that’s how you maximise value. It’s human nature to want something more when someone else has a chance of having it. It’s human nature to perceive something as being more valuable the more people want it.

If you price too high the only people that are interested are the ones that know the true value and will come in way under the asking price. If you price it to sell, then more people are interested and the price has the opportunity to rise.

What would you do?

The easiest way to understand this is to imagine you’re about to make an offer on a property. It’s been on the market for 6 months without an offer, and without reducing the asking price of £250,000. How much would you offer the seller? Probably somewhere around £235,000 maybe £240,000 at a push. Now imagine the same property valued at £250,000 but it’s just come on the market, and you’re attending an event with 9 other potential buyers. How much would you offer the seller in that scenario. You’d probably offer the full asking price, wouldn’t you?

Selling your property for more

That’s why it is important to find an agent that ticks multiple boxes and gets the most out of that ten day window. If you want to know more about our Property Launch system and how it sells properties on average 46 days quicker and for £7,262 more click here.

If you’d like to speak to one of our expert valuers, and find the true value of your property then go here.