Selling your home is a huge process with endless decisions that need to be made. Often, there will be months of thinking and researching before you even take the plunge and put your property on the market, so it can be disheartening to spend all that time thinking about moving, only to finally get the ball rolling and nothing happens.
When a property is launched to the market, there will be various promotional mailouts, matches and new property alerts to inform the buyers that there is a new property available. This is likely the busiest time for any property on the market, so it can be disappointing when, with all of that promotion, no one comes to view.
Why is that? Surely, there is someone out there looking to buy a lovely home like yours? The agents and websites have pushed your property out to as many potential buyers as possible, but still, nothing.
Unfortunately, if there is no interest from this initial launch, the culprit is often the price of the property. This issue stems back to your valuation appointments before you even chose your agent or decided to sell. If your initial launch to the market has not been successful, your property could have been overvalued.
Over-valuing a property may seem stupid; after all, the agent will not get paid if they can't sell your home, right? But it is a far more frequent issue than you might think; here's why:
Competition between the agents - when you invite multiple agents to value your home for you, they are fighting for the business. They want you to sign up with them so they can sell your home and earn a fee. Sadly, some agents will do this by telling you an inflated price for your property. It is human nature to go with the highest price, right? But, when the property doesn't sell, they've already got you as a client and can work on reducing the price of your home to a market value so that you will sell, eventually. Unfortunately, with that time on the market and price reductions, you could actually end up selling for less.
Flattery - It is not easy to sit in someone's home and tell them a lower price than they were expecting, and some sellers can feel insulted that the agent doesn't think their home is worth very much, or at least, less than they want it to be worth. And so, occasionally, an agent will attempt to flatter the sellers with a slightly inflated price. This is done with good intentions but, sadly, won't help you to sell your home.
Optimism - A seller will be given a range of valuations for their property. It is natural to want to achieve the highest price for your home, so a seller will go with the highest figure they've been quoted and try to sell for that. This is the very height of the property's potential range, so it is often a little inflated.
Market changes - Between the valuation appointments and your eventual coming to market, the property market conditions can change. With peaks and troughs, the property market is variable, so it is possible that the market has changed whilst you were making your decision to sell.
Selling a home is a tricky process, and the property value estimation is never known precisely until there is an offer on the table, so it is a case of trial and error for most sellers.
If you have not had the response from the market that you were hoping for, it might be worth really looking at the price of the property and the initial valuation information that you were given at the valuation appointments. Now you have been on the market, you have tested the figure and know that it wasn't quite right, so it is the perfect time to reassess things and relaunch the marketing of your property with a new strategy.
Get in touch with our team of property experts for a no-obligation assessment of your current marketing to drill down into the reason that you haven't sold.
