Agents disagreeing about value

[Amara5]

We have had three agent valuations and they are completely different.

Agent 1: £460,000 (sold a house on our street a few years ago but I didn't get the sense the agent knew what she was talking about).
Agent 2: £500,000 (have also sold houses in our part of town)
Agent 3: £580,000 (sold our opposite neighbour's house about a year ago for a lot of money but our house is very different to theirs)

Place do not come up for sale that often in our area and it is highly sought-after. I have no idea why the valuations are so different though - there is over a hundred grand between the highest and the lowest.

Do I just need to get a 4th opinion?

Is it an unusual property? If not, then it's worth getting a desktop valuation to see what that says. I did a limited comparison a little while ago, and the one below gave results closest to actual value achieved (I'm not suggesting you sign up to them in particular - just that their valuation tool is seemingly pretty accurate!)
instant-valuation.emoov.co.uk/

You need to be checking compatibles within the last 6 months- 2 year. When we sold last year the agents came with information about local sold prices.

We had this when selling last year - 3 EA valuations with £100k between them. It's weird timing as last year's stamp duty holiday hiked prices and it isn't clear what's going to happen now. But also the lowest one kept revising it a bit upward during his visit when he saw our faces! Ours also was difficult to value as nothing else really like it and was in better condition to neighbours'.

We did a soft launch at the top end price, where people already on EA books viewed and gave feedback - they all thought it was too high, so we went to £10k lower for it going on market, then reduced to the middle figure, £50k below the original high point which is where it sold.

It's tricky to compare because in our area, which is the part of town that is particularly desirable, not much comes up for sale. And while the property isn't particularly unusual, it's not the same as the ones that have sold (ours is a Victorian property with a massive garden - others that have sold have been modern with small gardens). Perhaps this is the reason for the discrepancy in prices.

Zoopla is saying £550,000 but I don't think Zoopla is meant to be that accurate. I can't get emoov to work but will try it later.

Thanks @RidingMyBike that's helpful. I don't want to be greedy but also don't want to kick myself for underselling it.

If no other similar properties have sold in your area recently its not surprising it's difficult to get a consistent valuation. Also property market is moving very fast at the moment so valuations of perhaps 12 months or even 9 months ago are so good a guide.
It really depends on your situation. If you are not in a hurry to sell - and don't mind your house sitting on the market for a while I'd probably be tempted to go with the higher valuation and just see what happens. At the end of the day your house is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it - and you wont know that for certain until people start coming ot look and potentially put offers in.

We're not in a massive hurry so maybe that's a good option.

If you are not in a hurry to sell - and don't mind your house sitting on the market for a while I'd probably be tempted to go with the higher valuation and just see what happens

Respectfully, I would disagree with this approach.

The reason being is described best in a marketing report I read a little while ago:

Keen to get the best price, sellers will often ask what is wrong with ‘going high’, believing that their initial guide price represents the maximum achievable and that buyers can always make an offer

Buyers, though, want the best house they can afford and will not look at anything else. If your house is in their range but doesn’t appear to offer what they think they can get for their money, they will not consider it at any price. Conversely, less wealthy buyers for whom your price is even 10% above their maximum, assume you will be insulted by a low offer, so they will not look at your house, either. Indeed, if your price is outside the thresholds set when buyers search online, they won’t even be aware that your property is on the market. The upshot of this – with one, rare exception – is that ‘going high’ in the current market guarantees that it will take longer to sell than necessary, waste the surge of interest that properties new to the market always attract and, in the process, miss the chance of a premium

It's definitely worth looking at the price bands for searching on Rightmove etc. Thats why we dropped ours by £40k eventually as it meant it appeared in the next price band down as well so was visible to a lot more people, whereas dropping £35k wouldn't have done that.

If something does hang around there is also a question mark for buyers about what's wrong with it. We viewed one like this a couple of weeks ago - been on since August. We'd anticipated it might be something wrong with the roof etc and nearly didn't view because of that!

Agree with checking price bands on rightmove. If that range crosses and band boundary, consider pricing at the top of the cheaper band.
I had a budget of £310 when I looked, so I set my rightmove filters at below 350. Anything priced an ambition 355 I wouldn't have seen, even if others had valued it at 300 and the sellers would have accepted a lot less.

I agree don't go in too high, or you risk sitting and becoming a turkey. Off the top of my head I'd go somewhere between agent 2 and 3.

Have you done your own RM search for comparable properties, just to see what else those different amounts can buy? You can probably make a judgement from there where's yours should sit.

We had two valuations.
Sounds familiar. Our experience was-
Agent 1: £390 K. Very reluctant to consider £400K.
Agent 2: £480 K.
We wanted a fairly swift sale due to need to move for family reasons so decided to market at £450K with EA2. (Calculated what we had paid, how much we had spent on improvements and % rise in market.)
4 viewings, 3 offers £440 - 445K.

It’s all down to opinion, widely different valuations aren’t they? Just bear in mind that EA are keen to get properties on so the top valuation may be to tempt you into listing with them. The market will always find the right value. I think if I was in your shoes I would list for £540k, and see how it goes.

Yep I'm wary of being sucked in by greed! I might get a couple more agents round and then decide.