IMPLICATIONS OF DIFFERENT MARKET CONDITIONS

In strong market conditions this presents much less of a conundrum. When prices are rising you can be relatively bullish in the knowledge that, unless your asking price is in completely the wrong ballpark, the market should eventually catch up with your price expectations.

In weaker market conditions, such as those we have seen over the past four years, it becomes much more of a quandary. On the one hand, you don’t want to run the risk of undercooking and underselling what is probably your most valuable single possession. On the other, if you overcook it, you could easily see tumbleweed blowing through the crucial first few weeks of marketing. And as weeks turn into months, you can then find your property turning stale in the eyes of prospective buyers, who start to assume there must be something more to it.

TOP END PECULIARITIES

At the top end of the market, the predicament isn’t helped by the fact that from a valuation perspective, the balance between art and science can become more weighted to the former than the latter. That helps to explain why the advice received from estate agents regarding value can vary quite significantly, which at times can depend on how keen they are to secure an instruction and deal with what follows a little later down the line.

LOGIC AND PSYCHOLOGY

Of course, logic suggests that if you are committed to selling, you should price at a point guaranteed to generate competitive interest, so you can sleep easy knowing you have captured the full spectrum of market demand.

But logic and seller psychology do not always go hand in hand, increasing the value of some empirical analysis.

THE APPLICATION OF COLD, HARD STATISTICS

To do this we have looked at data relating to publicly marketed stock across all agents, ensuring the analysis isn’t fettered by Savills approach.

And we have confined our analysis to properties where a successful sale has been achieved in the past two years. That means it ignores those circumstances where a property has been withdrawn from the market because a buyer could not be found at the price advertised.

Generally, selling prime properties takes more time given the discerning nature of buyer demand but there are various nuances around price cutting that are also unique to the top end of the market.

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