"Show me the Money!"

One of the most frequently asked questions by sellers/clients is, “Why doesn’t someone just make me an offer?”… They’ve mentally accepted that they’ll take a lower offer, no one has mentioned the price in their feedback so why no offer?

?It’s taken me 22 years in London agency to come up with a sensible answer but here goes…

?Making an offer on a new home should make you feel giddy with excitement. It’s the biggest investment of your life in many cases. It should give you butterflies, keep you up at night, consume your thoughts… You’ll have fear of loss - you get the picture. I accept that not all purchases will be so emotion rich but ALL have excitement at their core.

?Buyer journeys often look like this… ‘Joe Bloggs’ wants to spend ￡1.75-￡2m. He quickly realises (through seeing) that he may need to spend more like ￡2m + 10% to get what he wants. After six weeks and 15 properties in, he ends up buying at a budget-busting ￡2.3m (having started his offers at ￡2.1m). The house he bought had been recently reduced to ￡2.5m. It had been valued with a guide of ￡2.5m but had been trialled at ￡2.75m. The punchline?.. It was always worth ￡2.35m (the owners/agents learned through ‘doing’) even if it started ￡1m above Joe’s plan!

?Two things I’ve learned over time about buyers is that a) buyers normally spend more money than they thought they would and b) the art of negotiation and offering is alive and kicking, arguably a little too hard at the moment!

?Two things I’ve learned over time about the best agents are a) they show ‘requirement to requirement’ and b) they understand their clients needs and are creative with their matchmaking.

?I ask you this… Why would a buyer make an offer on a property that doesn’t excite them? For the sport of it?.. I T I S N O T H A P P E N I N G.

The way to find the biting point is to fish in a different pool. If you reduce a price you change the profile of buyers coming through your door or seeing it online. If you reduce a price, you will better your chances of being the BEST property that buyer sees in their journey… It really is that simple. If it is the best (and invariably 10% above what they want to spend) they will move heaven and earth to buy it and, as you may guess in Notting Hill, routes to money are often better than what can be found behind a sofa!

?The caveat to the above is to get your price right from the start. Don’t listen to your agent's advice and apply 10% on top… We’ve factored in a bit of a buffer for you. If you’re not getting second viewings (or offers) after ten viewings or a month - even if your property is a 10/10 - it may be time to fish in a different pond.