I have a ten pound note here and I think I would like to sell it…
I have taken a photograph of it and measured it, 5.10″ (14.2 cm) x 2.15″ (7.49 cm) so now I am going to put it on the internet ‘For Sale’. Trouble is, how much do I advertise it for? Of course I want as much as possible, I mean, it is far better than the £10 note recently sold by one of my neighbours, and I have even ironed it, so it’s immaculately presented.
I have decided to market it for a little more than I actually want to achieve, because, let’s face it, everybody wants to negotiate nowadays, and really I am not in a major rush to sell it…
OK, so now let’s think about this logically. Nobody is going to give me £12, £11 or even £10.50 or £10.02… but then this £10 note does have it’s value printed on the front, so even somebody really stupid would know that I was trying my luck if I put a higher price!
If however, I put it on the market at £8 or even £9, I think that the response might be a little bit different. Chances are that I would achieve very close to the £10 I want, I would probably have lots of interest – because my £10 note is NEW TO THE MARKET & IT IS CREATING A BUZZ… People might even be fighting over it and that, surely, will make me very happy indeed!
SO let’s be honest, you are reading this on an Estate Agent’s website, so obviously I am not selling a £10 note. But if I am selling this property instead…
- A 2 Bedroom Cassio Metro Apartment
There are about half a dozen similar sized apartments for sale at the present time, slightly varying prices but I also know that if I look online I can find out what has actually SOLD in the past 6 months too. All of the flats are relatively new, about 7 years old, they are similar in size, obviously the location is the same for them all but maybe some are on the ground floor, 1st floor, 2nd floor or in different blocks around the development. All of these factors could make SOME difference to the price achievable, but, let’s face it, if a mortgage is required then ultimately the value will be made by the surveyor (and he will just ask local estate agents for comparables, and he probably won’t give too much consideration to which floor the flat is on, or whether it has been recently redecorated or has new carpets).
So there is a PRICE for the property, and that is the price a purchaser will pay and a mortgage surveyor will lend against. It really does not matter whether you want to ‘TRY for a bit more’ because all that happens is you lose the INITIAL BUZZ, the time when your property first comes available and all those waiting applicants see it on the internet or in the newspaper or are phoned or contacted by the agent because it is ‘New to the Market Today’.
By missing out on that first flush of excitement you have to now rely on the ‘new’ applicants registering bit by bit and that will never, ever be as many as you would have reached on day one of marketing or anywhere near as exciting as reaching the initial lot in one go!
So you might give the property a few weeks or a month at the higher price, then reduce it down when you realise it isn’t going to sell at that price….. But by then you have wasted time, you have lost the impetus and you will, undoubtably end up getting LESS than you would have done, if you’d marketed during the BUZZ PERIOD at the correct price.
So please listen to your agent, check their comparable evidence (as this will be exactly what the surveyor sees) and check what else is on the market, maybe even investigate how long it has been on [remember that our average is 6 weeks from day one of marketing to offer agreed so if a property has been on longer than this time, it could very likely be over-priced]. Most of all, use your gut instinct and don’t think that ‘trying for a higher price’ is worthwhile, it is a false economy and rarely works out in the vendor or landlord’s interest..!
Oh and by the way, I just sold my tenner for 20p extra…. I swapped it for someone with a pocket full of coins, but money is money after all.
Jane (Excited at my 20p mark-up)
Blog information curtesy of Richard Rawlings Training
http://www.estateagencyinsight.co.uk/