How best to price house for sale?

[BloodyGordon]

We're hoping to put our house on the market next year but given the uncertainty in the market I was wondering how best to price the house for sale?
Say we can accept a minimum of £220, how much should we put the house on for? Do people assume you can offer under the asking? It's just I don't want to list it for £220 and having people offer under this price, I'm aware houses will sell for what they're worth but if we can't get £220 we will be unable to afford the next house up so a waste of all our time iyswim.
We're in the south east and if we'd sold last year we would have got £240-£250 looking at sold house prices.
I've spoken to local estate agents and they all say something different, also I HATE offers over, I feel it's really vague but that seems to be the 'professionals' answer round this way. They've valued our house at average £240 this past month but honestly looking at the amount of houses getting reduced/going unsold I don't think this is overly realistic so I'm feeling confused by it all to be honest

I'd put it on at £245.

Is there anything for sale in your area that's similar?

It sounds reasonable to put it on at 240 with a view to getting an offer of 220.

Ours is on the market and all three agents that valued it talked about a 'headline price' with a view to getting an offer around 20K below.

Thanks MrsZB, it's tough isn't it, don't want to put people off but at the same time we can't afford to loose money, the dodgy market at the minutes not making it easy either.
There are a few similar properties for sale around but they're not selling She, again I'm not sure if it's the strange market and time of year or not, though in my opinion thery're over priced, on at offers over £240 sort of thing but they also have no off street parking/smaller garden/mid terrace etc. But again I've no idea if they've had offers etc and they're just being stubborn or like us have a set price they can accept.
I guess we'll put it on for £240 and be realistic and also keep our fingers crossed!

When I was looking ‘offers over’ really put me off, as it wasn’t clear how much they actually wanted.
I would use other sold prices on like for like houses as a guide, as you’re doing, then test the market. If you have no or very few viewings then it’s probably the price, but you can always lower it.
This time of year will be slow though as people don’t want to move right on Christmas. Also the market is generally slowing at the moment, so interest might not give a true reflection of value

A lot of the skill is getting people through the door in the first place so if there are lots of properties at £240-5 that aren't selling, perhaps they are not getting viewers in the first place even if the vendors are prepared to take offers?

I'd put it on at about 235k I think, and expect an offer in the 220-230k range.

I think this is better than 'offers over' or giving a price range. The problem with price ranges (especially if they're quite broad) is I really don't know if a vendor would genuinely be interested in an offer at the bottom of that range or not. So for example our absolute max budget is 300k and one house I saw was on at a guide price of 295-325k. We decided not to view in the end as we really weren't clear if we could make an offer that would be acceptable to the vendor or not, and didn't want to set ourselves for disappointment.

Vendors look at at 10% discount so £240 would give a £24k discount

Remember what your looking at is also negotiable

We've just sold in the south east. Slightly higher price bracket though. The agent originally put it up at £275 even though we knew it wasn't worth more than £265. We had a few viewing but no real interest. After a month we dropped to £250 & within a week had 2 offers of £255. We went back to both asking for final offers & one upped theirs to £265 which we accepted. So we ended up getting what we'd originally thought & looking back we probably should have just started off at the lower end but the agent was pretty insistent that we start at £275.

If you're not going to go to market until next year then keep an eye on sold prices in your area over the next few months & look at what's on the market & how long it's there for. You should also be able to see if people are having to drop prices, which seems to be happening a lot in our area at the moment.

Good luck with it all. We're not planning on moving again for a very long time!

I think that MyShiningThing's experience is relevant in this market. If there is lots on and not shifting - then you need to beat the competition - so a low price to get lots of people through the door who then bid with each other - so you end up getting a good price anyway. If lots on at 240 and not shifting what about 229 - that is psychologically quite different and will stand out as realistic priced to sell. Even in a tight market there are people who need to get on with their lives - eg need another bedroom etc and cant stare down the market for years - you just need one of these. But "next year" is a long time away. Look v closely at sold house prices for similar to yours in 2016 and 2017. Then look at what is on, for how much (and for how long it has been on) an make sure you are competitive - undercut to get them thru the door and then hold tight for an offer near asking?

We have just put our house on the market and the overwhelming advice from a number of estate agents was to be realistic with the guide price and not put it on too high. A guide price is just that, you are inviting offers around that price.
Good luck!

I've been thinking about things a bit more & would also say it might be worth speaking to a mortgage advisor before you make a decision on pricing. Get them to run the figures to find out exactly how low you can go & still afford to move. We did this before we dropped to £250 because we knew we were going to view a house that we would potentially offer on & needed to know if we would still be able to afford it if we sold at the lower price. It took a lot of the uncertainty out of it to know exactly what figures we could work with.

I'd ask the agent at what point they'd phone you with an offer and tell you they thought you should seriously consider it - that's often wildly different from the offer price. Based on that I'd then ask them what they'd advise for quick sale/agressive sale etc.

Thank you everyone for your input, I'll continue to watch the market over the next few months and see what happens, and very good point about what the estate agents would consider a good offer for our house GU24.
weve got a good idea what we can get mortgage wise but yes, I'll get a concrete idea before we put the house on to know where we stand ShinyThing before we start the ball rolling, and interesting that you did get offers over and your house founds it's natural price so to speak, it means pricing competitively as per above suggestions might not be such a risky call. Ah, where's that crystal ball when you need it...?

Hello, we're thinking about moving too and have the same problem deciding what to sell for. Stress!!! We've found the 'historic price' section on The Move Market quite helpful - I hadn't head of it before, but it shows graphs of house prices in each postcode area so you can see where the value of your house is probably going.

themovemarket.com/tools/historicpropertysaledata

It might help you out trying to decide how to price your house. Hope you're not having too much of a headache! Don't know about you but trying to have serious discussions about house prices whilst also running after a 1 year old who has recently learned to walk is not my idea of a peaceful evening in!

If similar houses are selling for £250, I'd put it on at that. But be honest whether they really are similar - better decor, better space, an added conservatory etc can all add substantial amounts.

I think at the moment house prices are doing some very strange things and the effects are really local. In my road, two tiny semis just sold for about £60k more than I would ever have thought they would be worth. The whole area seems to be becoming trendy for younger people as they are priced out of more expensive surrounding places.

I would personally be careful about putting your house on the market at far below what similar properties are on for, as it will make some people think there must be something wrong with it. You could always go to market at £239k or something and see what happens. If there’s not much interest, you then have the capacity to drop by about £10k, and still be in a position to accept offers below the asking price if necessary. I don’t know where you are in the SE, but in the areas we bought and sold in last year (round London mainline), houses were typically selling fairly close to asking price, or they were being reduced and getting pretty much the new amount.