House went on market last week of April and agent suggested a reduction today

[Housepriceq]

Our house went on the market in the last week of April. We based it on the price suggested by the agent. The agent had also marketed a similar property which went under offer in under three weeks at a similar asking price, with owners accepting a reduced asking price from the buyer in ballpark of what we would also be happy to accept.
It looks a bit rubbish for houses to be reduced, although I know many of them are. I just think one week is a bit soon. I’d rather they took house off market and put it back on in a few days as a new property with a lower price! Are they able to do that? Has anyone got experience with being advised to reduce so quickly? I also thought it was a slow market at the moment.

I agree with this. There are also agents that substantially undervalue for quick sales, lining their own pockets. It’s a dirty business.

The main thing that gets viewings is to be priced competitively, use one of the price drop apps to check what other sellers are doing, run the numbers through a mortgage calculator and ask yourself if the target market will really want to pay that monthly amount if they are using a mortgage.

There’s absolutely no bar to entry with the Estate agency
You’re probably dealing with somebody who failed to secure themselves a role at McDonald’s to help you with your life changing decisions

What are the price drop apps?

No viewing at all is very unusual, especially at this time of year. Are you brave enough to share a link?

That's why I would use my own intelligence & experience of buying & selling rather than AI or a mediocre EA (though some are very good at what they do).

@Twiglets1 ,

I used AI to try to back up my own lived experience, which I also quoted.

The idea that everything happens on the internet isn’t true. A good hard working estate agent thinks outside the box and shows people properties they may find interesting, rather than what they might be focused on on Rightmove etc.

There are quite a few now, some are more complex than others giving various stats etc.

https://www.propertylog.net/

Not at all unusual in many areas now I believe.

@Arlanymor

“Hi Tarquin: I am just emailing yourself….”

Don’t forget the unnecessary reflexive, so beloved of estate agents.

This - the agent with my friend one valued it at £450 K and one at £500 K and one at £550 K agent lie and will say anything to get your money and the house.

It makes very little difference to them if they sell it for £500 £530 or £550 K 1% is £5000-£5500 they lose £500 you get £50 000 less

I used to be an estate agent - we actually worked much harder on properties that were on with us as the sole agent. Properties that were also listed with others gave us less commission so we didn’t care as much. It didn’t increase our competitiveness at all.

If you've had no interest and want a quick sale, reducing is the best option. We went on the 16th April, have had 10 viewings and 2 offers so far. We have another 5 viewings booked in this week.

Houses in the areas we are looking at moving to are selling really quickly, so there is definitely an appetite out there. However, higher priced properties are hanging around a bit longer due to mortgages etc.

Thanks.

Very, very true - good addition!

There are very few buyers in the price bracket (over £1m). The property is very big and on a prestigious road, but needs updating. Agent has just suggested reducing by another 150k. We reduced it by £100k a month ago. We have told agent we are open to offers. Very little is selling at the moment (other agent suggested almost 200k more than initial price it went on for). It’s not priced at high numbers of a few years ago. Four beds (terraced, semi, some detached) on very average roads go for around 800-1.1m here. This has a huge master bedroom and ensuite, another three decent size doubles either room to swing a cat and a few more rooms upstairs that could be bedrooms/dressing rooms/gym/office. Properties similar to this normally take four to six months to get an offer, but longer in today’s climate. A smaller house across the road (but more modernised) went for around 2 1/4m a few years ago. Ours (well house we are selling, not mine, which is a fraction of the size) is under 1.5m at the moment. A smaller one round the corner sold for around 1.5 recently.
The jump from a three to four bed is big, assuming one is a tiny box room and then there’s another huge jump above that, although more bang for your buck at the lower end of the jump.

Unfortunately I suspect that Tarquin has them signed up for 6 or 12 weeks.

With hindsight it would be good to have a clause that allow the seller to walk away from the contract if the agent suggests a lowering the price.

I might try that when we come to sell...

@Housepriceq "A smaller one round the corner sold for around 1.5 recently." - sold as in "sold price in Land registry is 1.5M", or just STC on Rightmove? You have no idea of the actual sold price until it's in LR.

That is only 11% below your original asking price?

What would be the point of that, the agent knows you are not going to get a buyer at the original price, other agents will know the same? If there was demand at that price the viewers would be lining up, many agents do this specifically to get business because they know sellers are so wrapped up in fanciful notions of what their property is worth and don"t want to contradict this at the start of the business relationship.

The market has obviously collapsed for your size/type of house in the area. Pull it until next year when the market could be more favourable. Do your own homework on sold prices of similar properties before you relist it. Also try to list when it will not have much competition in the price/size range.

It's a good remark regarding the area. I can't believe my own eyes, but in our area a lot of the properties sold recently are above 1M mark, even 2-3M. Business as usual for the millionaires.

Because they won't inflate the value.

@JustAlicethat’s a good point.

I made a sarcastic comment in the group chat last night. I said we can reduce it by 100k now and as we know summer is usually slow, we can reduce it by another 100k in a few weeks. In normal times, this type of house would not be under offer by now. I’m not against realistic pricing, but there’s not been much difference between the viewings between how it was originally priced and since the price reduction. If I was selling my own house or buying, I’d definitely be being a bit cautious now. It was completely different when I bought. Properties were flying off the shelves!

I’m not the only one involved in the sale and so it’s a joint decision. One is very keen to sell before Autumn. Lock in period is also four months.

One viewer gave feedback as to what she’d value it at which is a price we are all happy to accept. I think agent just suggested putting in an offer if she wanted, rather than being a bit more proactive and saying we’d accept that price if she offered. He said people are embarrassed to put in below asking price offers.

Years ago I had a job in an estate agent (it was a stop gap, don’t hate me)!. They would actively suggest other areas to buyers within the agency chain. We are with a chain agent, but in practice there’s no incentive with this chain to really do that due to commission structure. Of the three agents, one priced it a couple of hundred grand higher, one didn’t show but sent emailed letter with similar price to agent we’ve gone with.

Forgot to say the sarcastic comment was taken seriously.