Overpricing helps nobody. Here's what really happens.

Overpricing helps nobody. Here's what really happens.

Phil and I sit with a lot of people thinking about selling. The conversation nearly always lands on price - and it nearly always starts the same way. Someone up the street sold for a number, so that becomes the number.. and off we go.

When a neighbour's house sells well, we ask why. Was it an outlier, something about that garden or that view your house doesn't have. Was it a stronger market than the one we're in now. Was the buyer simply desperate and paid over the odds. There's far more to a sensible valuation than “the one down the road went for x.” A good appraisal cites real comparable sales, not a hopeful figure plucked to win your business.

That last bit matters more than sellers realise, so let's say the quiet part. A high valuation is the easiest thing in the world to give. It's flattering, it wins the instruction, it costs the agent nothing on the day. What it costs is you, four months later, when the reductions start. Plenty of good agents now pitch under the number on purpose. A lower entry point brings more people through the door and a bit of competition does the rest. None of that is a secret in the trade. It just never gets said to the person paying for it.

So when someone tells you your house is worth more than the evidence supports, ask who that number is really serving.

Overpricing does not get you more. It gets you time on the market, a reduction and usually a lower final price than if you'd priced it right from the start. You lose, the chain behind you stalls, the buyer who might have paid a fair price wanders off to something else. Nobody wins.

This is where people reach for a ''friendlier'' surveyor and it's worth heading off. In Scotland the Home Report is done up front and it isn't a price tag. It's what a lender will lend against and what every buyer's solicitor reads before advising on an offer. A surveyor signs their name to that figure and carries the liability for it. Get a second view by all means, different firms do land in slightly different places. The honest gap between two good surveyors is narrow though. It isn't the distance between the evidence and the number you were hoping for.

The same logic kills the idea that you'll simply bully a buyer up. Your buyer faces the same Home Report, the same lender, the same solicitor. “Someone will just pay it” falls apart the second you remember that someone still has to fund it. The elusive cash buyer who rides in to cover the gap is rarer than people think - and they know it, so they knock you down, not up.

Now the other half of the truth and any agent who tells you different is lying. Even in a busy market (and East Lothian/Edinburgh is one of the busiest in Scotland right now) individual homes still stall. Once you're on the open market there's a huge amount of luck involved. Sellers usually come to us for the off-portal route and that's where we start, but we're not precious about it. Some homes do better with the widest possible exposure - and if the portals are right for you we'll take you there. You'll get the best exposure money can buy, so when the enquiries don't come it isn't that nobody can see the house. You can price it fairly, present it beautifully, do everything right and still hear silence. A lot of that is noise. A bad week for interest rates, a run of gloomy headlines - and buyers go jittery and sit on their hands. It has nothing to do with your house and everything to do with the mood outside it.

That's the point where it's easy to decide the agent is 'useless'. If they've priced it sensibly, that's an unfair call. Look at the local market instead. What's selling, what's sitting. It nearly always gives you your answer and usually the answer is patience rather than another reduction.

Sometimes though the answer genuinely is to drop the price and that's when you're tied to a deadline of your own. If you've had an offer accepted on your onward purchase, time isn't free any more and a sensible reduction to get moving beats losing the house you actually want.

Price it right, always. Just don't confuse a fair price with a real buyer and don't let anyone talk you into going high to see what happens. What happens is you lose time and money - and so does everyone standing behind you.

Have you found where you want to go next. That's where Phil and I start.