Tag Archives: Pricing

The market is definitely quiet at the moment, it’s true. The buyers seem to have receded with the summer sun, and may not reappear until the daffodils emerge in the spring.

If you’re in a huge hurry to sell, then you may be considering dropping your asking price, probably egged on by your estate agent, looking for a quick sale at your expense.

However, dropping your asking price should never be a knee-jerk reaction to a slow market. There are many factors to consider. At best, even a large price drop could make absolutely no difference to your viewings whatsoever, and at worst, it could actually damage long-term your likelihood of selling at anything close to the price you were originally hoping for.

So, let’s look at the psychological effects a discounted asking price could have on a potential buyer:

1. Wariness

The initial surprise a buyer may feel which draws his attention to your advert is very quickly replaced by wariness and cynicism that something must be ‘wrong with it’ to have such a low price.

2. It invites analysis

Selling on price causes buyers to be more analytical of the offer – the bricks and mortar. Because their decision to buy is rational (based on £s) and not emotional (based on feelings), they will be searching for the downside – that leaky tap will be an issue, the soggy garden a serious problem. Buyers making their decision on emotions are looking at your house with roses-around-the-door-tinted glasses.

3. Low price = low quality

Buyers usually want to spend at least their budget, and often end up spending more. Think back when you bought your house – did you stay within your budget? We are conditioned to believe you get what you pay for. After all, if we bought on price, we’d all buy our clothes from Primark and drive around in Skodas. The truth is we like quality; we aspire to it; we deserve it. Show us a property slightly beyond our means and we will want it all the more. A confident, optimistic asking price says ‘buy me – if you can’.

4. Lack of confidence

What buyer wants to offer on a decreasing asking price? Would you buy shares as they were falling? When will it stop? Will your investment prove foolish? Each price decrease indicates the seller’s lack of confidence in his own asking price. If the seller isn’t confident, why on earth should the buyer be?!

So before you drop your asking price, remember the passionate belief of all of us at HomeTruths –

People do not buy homes on price.

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

If everything on the inside of your home is picture-perfect, it is very easy to think that your home will sell quickly. But what if there are external drawbacks that may deter a sale? The interior of your home aside, external factors are often forgotten about because they aren’t part of ‘the home’, but there are some your buyers may be thinking about. One of the best ways to see through your rose-tinted spectacles is to think like a buyer, and see what might be challenging to them…

Surrounding properties – If similar properties are for sale in your area, it is very important to keep an eye on what is going on with these homes. If a buyer is already sold on the area, they’ll be looking at those on Rightmove, too. How does your door compare to your neighbour’s door? If yours is chipped and aged, and the neighbour’s door has just had a B&Q refresh, they’ll be getting the first visit. Keeping up appearances is essential when the competition is so close.

Pricing – While your price may have been perfect when it was put on the market, what if the market has changed? If your house was put on a year ago and hasn’t shifted, prices could have changed. Any of your neighbour’s properties that are newly listed could be much cheaper than yours, making you look oddly expensive. Compare your price with your neighbour’s similar properties, and talk to your agent about altering the price to reflect market changes.

Hurdles – A buyer may fall in love with your home and be ready to sign on the dotted line, but a massive barrier could stand in their way. As an example, what if your home isn’t going to be ready to move in to on the date that they are requesting? In these instances, be prepared to negotiate. Suggest local temporary housing and storage options to them, which can make an otherwise impossible move highly achievable. Especially useful if your buyers are moving a great distance.

Neighbourhood – Local facilities are often very important to buyers. If your neighbourhood is quite similar to another in your town, buyers might draw a comparison between the two. Why not do the research for them? Look for amenities that buyers will be looking for such as good schools, playgrounds, restaurants and sports grounds. List the locality of these local benefits on your property listing. Why not put together a few brochures about these places too, and leave them in your home for people to look at?

Thinking like a buyer can really help you to be ready for anything when you’re selling your home. Having the right mindset and being flexible and open with your approach, can make your goal of moving more achievable.

Happy moving!

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

Sam

It may be too cheap!

Here are 3 reasons you may need to increase your asking price:

Agents talk a lot about dropping the asking price so that it appears in a new price range. But surely that means it disappears from the one it was in?! Given that buyers spend around 3 months on average looking for their next home, the pool of people who are considering your home is changing four times a year, so you aren’t necessarily going to appear in more online searches, just different searches.

If your price has a 9 at the end of it – round it up! By having an asking price ending in 999 you’re potentially missing anyone who has more money to spend. The old-fashioned pricing of £599,000 £595,000 etc just doesn’t work any more. By pricing your property at a rounded figure, for example £600,000, you then ensure that your house appears in as many searches as possible.

Buyers like to spend their budget – and some! If you’re too cheap your house may be dismissed as inferior to a more expensive alternative – just because it’s more expensive than yours.

Remember – homes don’t sell on price – they sell on emotion. Your buyer needs to make an emotional connection to your home, and if they do, price becomes far less important to them. In fact, if it’s just a little bit out of their budget, all the better – it’s actually more attractive to them!

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

When to put your home on the market, and why timing is so important.

Often, when we decide to sell our property, we simply engage an estate agent and then ask them to market it immediately. However, putting your house on the market at the wrong time of year for your particular buyers may mean that your property launch is more of a dribble. You need early and strong interest from buyers who want to move, and that takes a little planning. Newsflash – certain times of the year are better for selling particular properties than others.

The key is to know your buyer and plan according to their timescale, not yours. Different types of buyers like to move at different times of the year, according to their own needs. It’s not healthy for your eventual sale price, or for your emotional wellbeing, to have a property languishing on the market for months, so the better you can plan your launch, the more likelihood there is that your property will sell quickly.

Who buys when?

Young couples and singles: First time buyers often begin their first home search very early in the year. Perhaps they have spent one Christmas too many at home with their relatives, and realised it’s time to move out. Their search often starts in earnest in January and February, and their purchases at the lower end of the market – apartments and terraced homes – then supports the second and third time buyer market – semi-detached and detached homes. This, in turn, supports the larger properties, and so the cycle goes on. One thing to remember about young couples and singles, is that they tend to look at lots of different properties, and as they are not in a hurry, their search can go on for months, and even years. So be patient with them, and let them take their time to make up their minds.

Families: Family buyers tend to buy at three distinct times of year: autumn, spring and early summer. Do you recognise the significance of these times? They are school term times. Buyers with children don’t usually like to house hunt during the holidays. First, they have better things to do, perhaps going on holiday, and second, it’s a whole lot more stressful viewing a home when you have a bored and whiny child to contend with. Mums and Dads tend to wait until the children are in school, so they can view the house in peace.

Downsizers: Older couples and singles usually prefer to look at homes during the warmer months, so bungalows and retirement homes will often languish on the market over the winter time. The elderly don’t want to venture out to look at homes in the rain and snow, and nor do they want to move house in the winter time. For them, summer is the ideal time to sell, and to buy, and this type of buyer tends to look at fewer properties, and make their minds up more quickly.

If you know who is most likely to buy your home, you can plan your launch to market more effectively. Remember that the less time your home is on the market, the closer to your asking price you are statistically likely to get, so plan for a quick sale!

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

Proceedable buyers generally have mixed emotions about their impending purchase right now. On the one hand, they may be feeling a little invincible, being one of the highly sought-after minority that currently make up less than 25% of active viewers. As a consequence, they may well be looking at properties which were previously out of their price range, anticipating a hard-ball negotiation with the seller.

The other emotion they are probably experiencing is fear, or at the very least, nervousness. Has the market reached its depths? Is it going to fall further? Will they be trapped in negative equity?

Sellers – you need to appreciate your buyer’s motivations and issues in order to be better placed to negotiate with them successfully, and end up with a committed buyer and a good deal.
Here are my suggestions for a mutually beneficial outcome:

1. Don’t rush them – buyers are understandably a little jittery at the moment and they may need longer than usual to make up their minds.

2. Compete well – investigate your competition – buyers are now looking at one average, 15 – 20 properties before deciding to offer on one, so you need to be the best in your category. If you offer the best deal in the area, you can be more confident about your asking price.

3. Give a little away – house buying and selling is a very fraught time, with many obstacles to be overcome before completion. If you have the foundations of a good relationship with your buyers, they will feel more willing to make compromises and be flexible over say, included fixtures and fittings or completion dates.

4. Communication – if things start getting a little tense, ask your agent to facilitate a ‘round table meeting’ if you discuss matters face-to-face with your buyers, there is less chance of misunderstanding occurring and third party corruptions of conversations.

5. Expect the unexpected – in this market, there is every chance that your buyer may get cold feet, may lose their buyer, have their mortgage offer withdrawn or may try to gazunder you. The latter is when a buyer deliberately waits until you are ready to exchange contracts then drops their offer, often significantly. Decide on an action plan for each and all of these eventualities, and don’t start packing until it’s signed.

By following these 5 rules, you will keep your buyer ‘on side’ and the obstacles and challenges you meet along the way won’t seem so insurmountable.

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

For our clients, we focus fully on achieving the highest sale price possible. Here are three reasons not to drop your asking price:

If you don’t believe in your asking price, why should your buyer? Be confident your home is worth what you’re asking. Your confidence will be infectious, and be transmitted to your viewers via your agents.

It’s a downward spiral – where will it all end? You don’t want to give it away. Make sure you sell on value, not on price.

It doesn’t work! Sellers who contact us have almost always already dropped their price, sometimes several times, but they still haven’t sold their homes. Who wants to buy something at a falling price?

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

Property pricing is of paramount important these days. I don’t mean the question of ‘value’ – but instead the art of setting the right price so that the portal searches are optimised. For example: you have a house to sell worth approximately £1 million. The agent suggests an asking price of £999,999. “It’s a psychological price point” they tell you. I don’t agree. At all. I say – market at £1,000,000, and here’s why:

£999,999 is a cheap ploy – an ‘Asda’ price. Your buyers aren’t daft, so don’t treat them as if they are! Give them some respect and a ‘Harrods’ price. Make it £1 million straight.

£1 million is actually an aspirational price point – your buyers WANT to spend one million pounds on a house, and tell their friends and family that they have done;

£1 million is a very confident price – it says “my house is worth a million pounds” £999,999 is apologetic, humble: it says “make me an offer”;

£1 million gets your property shown in more searches. At £999,999 on Rightmove, your property will only appear in searches up to £1 million. At £1,000,000 straight, it appears not only in searches up to £1 million, but also those over: potentially doubling traffic to your property advert.

After all, as my Dad would have said, “Look after the pennies, and the pounds will take care of themselves”.

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

Women are three times as likely to pay the asking price for a property as men – at least according to Propertyfinder.com – does this mean that all sellers should be targeting the women in the hope of getting the best price?

Men and women view properties in different ways; in the main, the average British male when looking at property focuses on the structure and location. How many bedrooms, how much space, how big the garden is, and where the property is in relation to shops, transport etc. in other words, the bare facts of the property.

As a consequence, he will often keep looking until he finds exactly what it is he’s looking for on his checklist, viewing as many properties as is necessary until he finds the right one. In contrast, the average British female does her homework first, and relies far more on her gut instinct. She’s generally more interested in the ‘feel’ of a place, and trusts that she’ll know the right house when she steps inside, regardless of how many ticks it gets on the checklist. In addition, the way in which men and women offer on property differs strongly; men often see the art of negotiation as a fight, and they’re up for it. Wielding their offer like a sword, they’re brutal and determined not to give an inch. Statistics show that only 5.5% of men pay the full asking price, and 22% offer less than 90% of the asking price. Women buyers, on the other hand, are much softer and 17% of them just offer the full asking price of the property they want. 90% of female buyers offer 10% or less below the asking price, seemingly anxious not to lose their chosen property.

With this in mind then, how can you make your property more appealing to that lucrative female market? Well, start off by making sure it looks and smells clean and fresh. Women are much more sensitive than men to nasty smells, so make sure your house doesn’t pong! Clean clean and clean some more, until every nook and cranny of your house is gleaming: she’ll notice. Appeal to her feminine side with flowers and bowls of fresh fruit. A man wouldn’t be seduced by such blatant ploys but a woman will. In the bedroom, keep bedding absolutely fresh, and if possible, new. In the bathroom, appeal to her sense of luxury with lovely fluffy towels, scented candles and special toiletries. If she loves your house when she walks through the door, you’ve hooked her. And if she offers too low for you, hold out for the best price, chances are you’ll get it.

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

Proceedable buyers generally have mixed emotions about their impending purchase right now. On the one hand, they may be feeling a little invincible, being one of the highly sought-after minority that currently make up less than 25% of active viewers. As a consequence, they may well be looking at properties which were previously out of their price range, anticipating a hard-ball negotiation with the seller.

The other emotion they are probably experiencing is fear, or at the very least, nervousness. Has the market reached its depths? Is it going to fall further? Will they be trapped in negative equity?

1. Don’t rush them – buyers are understandably a little jittery at the moment and they may need longer than usual to make up their minds.

By following these 5 rules, you will keep your buyer ‘on side’ and the obstacles and challenges you meet along the way won’t seem so insurmountable.

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.

When to put your home on the market, and why timing is so important.

Who buys when?

If you’d like my help to sell your home more effectively, please answer a few short questions here and if I think I can help you, I’ll be in touch.