Disappointed with house valuation

[mumma24]

House valued at £625,000 to £650,000 by 3 agents but I think it will sell for more to the right buyer. We would consider listing for offers over £675,000.
and willing to wait for the right buyer but feel like agents are just looking for a quick sal. All our previous 4 homes have sold within 4 weeks. Dont really want to list privately but what else can we do

Agree We just need slightly more space as Adult Kids here now etc but the cost of movig makes it absolutely ridiciulous with EA selling costs, Solicitor fees Stamp duty etc etc I literally dont know who moves!

I live in Scotland where offers over is normal and in the area I live it is common place for the offers over to be £5000 below valuation. I live in an area where up till last year a two bed flat with its own front and back garden would sell for around £200,000 and a three bed flat for around £225,000 and properties here sold quickly within two weeks. One of our neighbours has put a three bed flat on the market for offers over £225,000 and I don’t know if it is because they are asking for too much by starting at the price most here would sell for at the top end, because the market is slowing down or a combination of the two but it has now been on the market for five months. I would definitely be wary of pricing too high.

I think for every house there is a buyer at the right price. In my area (commuter town half a hour from London) basically everything that has come on in the past 2 years has had to drop price once or twice before selling. If dropping the price, to get value out of it you really need to drop enough to get into the next Rightmove price bracket so your house will be seen by new people. So for us, once we dropped to £1.25m we got the offer at £1.3m (it was then a competitive situation). Previously we’d just dropped from £1.45m to £1.35m and that did absolutely nothing.

Good luck @mumma24 you will need it. We have had around 12 houses for sale within 1-2 miles of us over the past 2 years (lovely rural village in the shires/middle class.) All the ones priced at £300K (or less) to £450K have gone quite quickly.

The ones priced at £550K-£650K+ are not selling. They're nice, and big, and got a decent amount of land, and some may say they're worth it, but many peoples budget doesn't go that far. (And even those who can 'max' themselves out don't want to do it, in case the interest rates shoot up again.)

So.... I think you'll be waiting for a while yet - sorry.

At the moment many houses for sale are willing to drop so if you get less you offer less. Smaller mortgage. I'd wait until march though.

End of the day a house is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Time well tell what market value is.

We are finding this as potential buyers; lots of sellers out there who aren’t that motivated to move and have a very fixed idea of what their house is ‘worth’ (often based on peak prices during the pandemic). These sellers would rather keep swapping agents or sit on the market for months before delisting than reduce to a sensible price that current buyers are prepared to pay.

How small is 'small' is the question?

Our previous 2 houses had what I would call 'large' rectangular/galley kitchens (about 2.5m x 5 or 6m) and I HATED them. Unnessacerily large and end up doing laps of the kitchen to reach everything which is exhausting and they just where magnets for clutter.

Our new house had the same and we spent £15k to split it in half by ADDING a wall to create a 2nd bathroom and smaller kitchen. Our new 'half sized' kitchen is perfect, I can stand in the middle and dont need to take more than one step any direction to reach everything yet it still has everything we need and the lesser unnecessary counter space means less space for clutter to build up.

That said we did look at a couple of houses that had MINUSCULE kitchens and it was off putting. One house the kitchen was on the landing (really weird design in a 3 story town house) and it was litrally a sink unit and cupboard, that was it, it was like 1.5m x 1.5m plus had stairs going off it both ways so no wall space anywhere else. Another house the kitchen had been added in a little porch extension and then they had the kitchen cupboards in the living room.

One thing that annoyed me in several houses (including the one we bought) because I just cannot understand why is that several houses did not have space for a fridge in the kitchen. I honestly never realised it was such a common thing until looking at houses and its not even that they had small kitchens its just they had NOWHERE to place a fridge.

Obviously the 2 tiny ones above where like that but our house that we bought had a back door, 2 full wall length windows and a knocked through open planned stairwell and the only full wall had cabinets along the whole length. So no practical place to put the fridge but loads of houses where like that, just illogically designed. Several houses we saw had the fridge random places like under stairs cupboard, the basement, in garage or brick shed, in hallway, in living room. I understand having a second freezer or something in those locations but not your MAIN fridge/freezer. When we added in the wall to split the room in half that gave us space to put our fridge in.

Honestly if its over 6m2 (box bedroom size not cupboard/porch sized) and has a place to put a a fridge Id be happy.

This is the main issue I find in my area, older houses priced around the 600k just sit on the market here, most need bringing up to modern standards, although not a “renovation” as such, they are a full refurbishment, often the last times these houses had any work done was either the 80’s or 90’s, so new heating, electrics, windows, kitchens, bathrooms, flooring, full decor, this is now a huge cost that buyers just don’t have the money for on top of moving up the market, plus the house once finished won’t be worth much if anymore than what you paid for it, I know new builds get slated on here but I can see why people buy them, people just cannot afford to refurbish houses, moving into somewhere that needs no money spending on it is hugely attractive in this economy.

Thanks for your support. It has space for two fridge freezers! As i said up thread we had notes through the door last year.
Other houses have sold but tbey have put on big glass extensions. Essentially they are open plan. There are only four of our house and ours was fhe show home so we've an extra ensuite. We have a 23ft sitting room. We've done two bathrooms but if we take the wall down it means fitting a 20ft kitchen. Ours is a cream shaker in good order . We also havs a utility. Its a great house, B engery but I'm newly disabled and cant do stairs

Five months is definitely market slowing, and price too high.

EA will tell you their opinion on the right price for your property but you can market at any price you choose. Ask them to give it a month or two at the highest price and then drop to their price if you don’t get any interest.

New forest is like this - lots of houses way over priced. Sellers haven’t realised the covid/wfh race for a pad in the country is over.

Yes definitely a problem but as demand has dropped so much these sellers are really just pooping in their own nest at the end of the day?

Same in my corner of Wales. Friends just buying a place put on the market post the last COVID lockdown. It's been empty for four years now. Was originally on the market for well over a million. The house is on a nice plot but kitchen, bathrooms, date back to the 70s. As does the decor.

The agents understand current market conditions. Of course you could tell us where your property is and how many bedrooms it has and then people may look at what else is available in your area in that price range. I wouldnt personally market a house in that price range until after Easter.

We did the same about a year ago (Jan 2025). Followed the agent's advice on this exact same strategy. Listed at £650k but we were hoping for £675k which is what we got, because we had plenty of interest and viewings, and a bidding war. But if we'd listed at £675k I doubt we would have got as many viewings or offers.

Did it reduce in price? Did the double council tax rules have any effect do you think?

Our agent said the same.

You can list your house at whatever you like. Be prepared for the fact that you might not get what you want for it though. Also statistically houses that sit longer on the market and then are reduced, automatically lose curb appeal because people suspect that something is wrong which has put buyers off. The psychology behind it is interesting. If you put it up for that amount and it doesn't sell, you're better off removing from the market for 12 weeks then putting it on again at a lower price as new to market, rather than reducing. Subconsciously to a buyer a reduced property sits on the shelf with the yellow sticker items. Great to pick up a cheap pizza for the freezer. Less appealing when it's one of the biggest purchases you'll ever make.

You will find as well estate agents will explain to clients that the "price point was chosen by the buyer". Translation: we know it's over priced. We had that a couple of times when we last bought where the estate agent explained when we queried a property they suggested. With the rise of social media and comparison sites like zoopla and right move it's very easy for customers to see exactly what the market it for themselves without even leaving the sofa.

AGENTS ARE WORKING FOR THEMSELVES NOT YOU. they want quick sale and commission. You want market valie. Do what suits you.

That's a lot of agents to come in at the same valuation...
Where I live there are so many people listing for what they think it's worth and not what it's valued at on the market resulting in nothing moving. It's interesting to watch because we had tried to buy a couple well over priced end of last year with more reasonable offers. Most are still sitting there and 2 others sold for 5-10k less than our offering.
We ended up with a 6 month old house for a great price and we have had at least 2 agents come back to us to see if we are still interested in a previous property at our last offer.. No thanks we have now bought and I wouldn't go back to something we were previously rejected on anyway.

You can list for whatever price you want regardless but that doesn't mean you'll get it just because you think it's worth more than it is.

If it's underpriced, surely it would result in a lot of interest and you could then ask for BFOs which would likely take you to up to your desired amount or more.
But to be honest, I've been watching the market for 2 years as I wanted to sell and agents are actually over-evaluating in order to get people on their books because they're scrutinised on listings and sales. The reality is however, that it's a tough market at the moment so many sellers are having to drop the original valuation.

The only issue with putting your house on the market just to see what happens in this market, is that you end up with a bunch of time wasters that either can't afford your property or they haven't even taken any steps to make a house purchase. If you're a busy household this can be a real pain unless you have a weekly cleaner come in. I guess it's not a pain if you just don't care how you present your property either, but in such a tough market you want to be putting your best foot forward.

Maybe trust the experts? And be realistic?