Why do people have unrealistic house prices?

[uptodatetech]

Why is it that there seems to be the odd house for sale in a set area with completely unrealistic asking prices.

I mean you're not going to fool somebody into paying £200k more than the house down the road just because you ask it.

There is a house on a street near to me where they are asking £600k for a 4 bed terraced house. The house next door in need of a bit of DIY sold for £250k in 2014. House prices have risen 20% in that time frame, bringing us to £300k. Say the work done added 50k, tops 100k to the house; it'd be worth £400k which sounds plausible considering other homes Zoopla prices. But no, why is this exact same size house on for £600k?!

Is this some sort of ploy by estate agents to raise the value of property in the area?

It will just sit there unsold.Estate Agent will have given them some crazy figure and they fancy that.Is it a probate.

we had 2 estate agents reccomend silly prices for our house. the owners obviously have blindly followed that and not looked at on right move at what the actual houses in area have sold at. It`ll just languish there!

A few from my house hunting woes...

• Estate agents have told them that's what their house is worth. The sellers then want that price (or above) and won't take anything less because then 'they're losing money'

• That's how much money they 'need/have to get' to buy their next house

• Inheritance. The higher the price the more they get

Some people get a price in mind and then that’s that. There’s a house round the corner from us that was on for a range 325-375k. I spoke to someone who viewed it and he said it was awlful, needed loads of work, not worth more than 300k. He told the home owner that, she said ‘no I’ll probably get over my range’. (Which is a bizarre thing to think.) it didn’t sell so now she’s put the price up to offers over 375k?!

People also often take lower figures as a slur on them personally. Like "we saw it valued at 400k, but when we viewed it, thought your decoration and possessions were so vile were only prepared to offer 300k tops"

Ignoring the fact no other house in the area has ever sold for 400k and this one needs a new kitchen and bathroom, and you may as well napalm the garden to start with.

It will just sit there unsold probably or if they're prepared to wait someone might come along who really wants it.

There's a 4bed house on our road sitting on the market for £650k. It's a nice area, houses normally sell v quickly and identical houses have gone for £450-500k in the last few years. There is nothing at all to make it worth an extra £200k and unsurprisingly it hasn't sold. The owners moved away for work so it's just sitting empty. They appear unable to look on Zoopla etc and see what the market says it's worth. Pure greed as they were only there a couple of years, no idea how they think it has appreciated that much.

My elderly parents were told by three different agents that their previous house should go on at £275k with a view to fetching £265k, similar to others on the street. They wouldn’t have it and insisted on putting it on at £295k. They received a few offers at £265-270k and were offended. I kept telling them that the market was giving them a message. Anyway, it languished for 18months and the agent pretty much lost patience and gave up. Eventually, someone viewed it out of the blue and offered £270k which they negotiated up to £272k and finally, it was sold. But what a lot of unnecessary hassle. The house had a prime position (corner plot, sea view) but it was old fashioned compared to others that had been sold.

Sometimes vendors are daft.

We offered £320k on a house we loved but felt was over priced. They pushed for more but we said no. Ended up moving into a much more sensible house and we're really happy but the house we walked away from stayed on the market for another year then sold for £20k less than we'd offered. There loss.

Their not there

Its not always the estate agents over valuing - many people just have an inflated view of what their house is worth and just wont be told by anyone! So it will just sit there......

My neighbours put their house on the market for £50k more than any other equivalent houses in the village sold for.

They said they wouldn’t sell for less as it was ‘better quality’ than other houses locally quoting that they’d done everything ‘top notch’ It had a 25 year old kitchen and was in need of complete refurbishment. They were genuinely deluded as to the way others would see it.

Surprisingly it didn’t sell and they ended up taking it off the market.

It had good room sizes and great potential so I understand them feeling it was a good house but the cost to redo it all would have been sizeable

Some people are convinced that their own house is SO special, it has to be worth a lot more than everybody else's.

Some estate agents overvalue in order to get the business.

Some people say they 'need' such and such a price, in order to buy the next house/to buy 2 houses because they're divorcing/to buy house and pay off debts - etc. etc. - and they think that because they 'need' £Xk, someone will be mug enough to pay it.

Or it may be any combination of these. .

The buyer decides how much they will pay for a property. No-one else. Why don't you put an offer in for what you think it's worth?

It amuses me when people do this. I think that because someone’s house is their pride and joy then everyone else will think the same. They they get irritable when it doesn’t sell or they get offers which are much lower. A house is only worth what someone will pay for it

Because sometimes it works. Particularly if they are prepared to wait.

It's particularly annoying when it does work and pushes up all other houses in the area.

www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/51131387?search_identifier=dd2cff98b64b235a01180d710d0e9f0e

Here it is!

Looks like the builders have been in, laminated, painted it white and then left all their crap in the back yard.

Its a toss up between estate agents over valuing or just sheer fantasy from the sellers. I've had a property valued by different estate agents from 105k upto 180k the higher valuer insisted this was a bargain and they could sell it in a week! I also made an offer on a property which I walked away after the seller rejected 150k 12 months later the property sold for 110k less than my opening offer.

So strange

I think people just get deluded. I have a friend who bought her house at the height of the property boom....then tried to sell it for way over its value because she believed it was bound to have increased in value because that's what houses did. It has been on the market for years, she refuses to drop the price despite being desperate to sell, she is now renting another property because her house wasn't big enough for her family.. so she's losing money in rent while her own house languishes unsold... all because she was fixated on what she believed it was worth and therefore feels she's 'losing' money by accepting any less.

Because sometimes it works.

This ^

The road I live in doesn't have 'matching' houses. All the houses were built individually, over different decades, in different shapes and styles and sizes - it is very difficult to compare, or 'guesstimate' how much your house 'ought' to be worth. Even the semi we are the other half of, is a completely different house from ours.
Recently, a developer bought a house in our street that was a fairly standard little semi, he extended it, and refurbed throughout. Don't get me wrong, it was beautifully presented, but the asking price was just ludicrous for our road. It sold quickly however to a couple moving up from down south, who (in comparison to what they were selling) thought it was great for the money.
So, sometimes it does work to market it at some ridiculous amount.

You should never use Zoopla to value a house for a start. That’s your first mistake. The second is not realising that even in new build lego house areas you will get the odd house that is very different to the others. Also, a house will sell for whatever people want to pay for it. If there’s no rush to sell then you can just keep offering the house at a specific price and eventually someone may come along to buy it with a 50k discount thinking they got a bargain.

It’s really how how some people’s minds work. There’s a house a few streets away that was first put on the market last June.

It remains unsold, but last month they’ve increased the asking price by £100k!
Like that’s going to generate a flurry of interest where there was previously none

You should never use Zoopla to value a house for a start. That’s your first mistake.

I used to be a member of a financial board, and there was a really sad thread where there was a poster deeply, deeply in debt and the only thing they could do was sell the house and/or go bankrupt.

They were fixated on the Zoopla valuation and just wouldn't hear anything against it (or the advice of price it to sell), despite there being zero interest at that price. They never did return to say what happened, despite this rumbling on for months and thousands of posts and people giving a shit and trying to help.