Property News: David Maslen on “Smarter Ways of Getting Your Price”

One of estate agency’s fundamental tasks is to secure the highest price that an able purchaser will pay for a client’s property in a given market. In an ideal world, we would have a hot-line to Camelot who would feed us with a regular supply of lottery winners prepared to pay ridiculous prices for modest properties. Unlikely, but we’re working on it!

In the real world, most estate agents operate using certain procedures and protocols that have been employed for decades if not centuries. In addition to the somewhat archaic system of property transfer we have in this country, there are traditional elements of the sales process that have become “the norm”.

Examples of these include the way in which viewings are conducted and how buyers and sellers are treated, both of which could do with a concerted makeover nationwide. The most obvious example is the way in which prices are maximised. As an industry, estate agents have facilitated a culture of offers below the asking price in this country, which is surely counterproductive to the agents’ primary objective.

Promoting offers below the asking price encourages sellers to quote ambitious prices in order to accommodate low offers, which in itself can reduce the number of viewings. Offers below the asking price should be regarded as a failure, not a success. Our reputation thrives best, not on a culture of satisfied clients, but of delighted ones, and we find this is achieved when we submit offers in excess of the asking price.

There are several ways of achieving this, using well-proven and highly strategic marketing initiatives. It would certainly be un-commercial of us to detail these here, but when the time comes for you to sell, we recommend you question your agent as to strategy behind “quoting an asking price” and how they will methodically achieve the very highest price the market will pay.