What's the difference between guide price and asking price?

Triker

Hi all, just wondering how this all works and what it means, my property has been given 2 guide prices with a 30k difference between so I wondered does this mean I'm best to go with a guide price or should we just say its a certain price and go with that?
Cheers

GabbaGabbaHey

Any property is only worth what somebody is willing to pay for it. If the seller is willing to sell for that amount, then the sale will proceed.

There is no exact science to determine what that correct selling price is, so people involved in selling houses tend to use imprecise terms like "Guide Price", "Asking Price", "Offers in the region of", "Offers in excess of", etc, etc. They all mean pretty much the same - "we're trying to sell this house and we're looking for somewhere around this amount of money for it".

linlin_3

A guide price is far more likely to be subject to negotiation. It's EA speak for "make an offer up to" and offers are likely to be much less than if the price was not shown as "guide".

huggermugger

Ok. This is really two questions in one. a) What is a guide price and b) Why have you got such wildly differing valuations on your house?

A guide price is on the face of it just that. But for some estate agents it's a way to set a low price as a "come-on" and encourage people to come & look. What that often leads to is a lot of people haggling & fighting. It's messy & often leads to bad feeling & heartbreak. Some agents will only ever use guide prices & won't have the courage of their convictions, state the price & have done with it.

Imho guide prices should only be used where it really is impossible to judge exactly what a house is worth because it's unique or where the sellers are willing to consider any offer at all (ie they're getting a bit desperate). Any agent worth his/her salt has enough knowledge of the market & previous selling prices in the area to be able to put a fairly accurate asking price on a house.

The second is a bit more tricky. Many parts of the country are experiencing a severe lack of supply in the housing market and most agents in these areas have lots of buyers registered and far too few houses to sell. So there are lots of agents chasing not many houses and they are all fairly desperate to get your house on their books. They will try to do this in various ways. The obvious ones are to impress you with their sales technique & services that the company offers or offer you a ridiculously low selling rate. The less obvious one is to appeal to the your baser side, overvalue your house and set the pound signs whizzing round in your head.

If you swallow the bait, they put your house on the market and hope for the best. In this climate it is just possible that your house may sell for a vastly inflated price to some poor soul who has been searching for months to find a house, having sold theirs. What is more likely is that you sign a contract to stay with the agent for some number of weeks. After a fairly short time, you will be approached & asked whether you would consider lowering the price. You may well be given feedback from viewers saying that the house is too expensive. These have not been made up - it is. But now you are tied in to the agent & anyway it's a lot of hassle to switch to another agent & start all over again.

So the moral of this story is chose an agent in the same way as you chose any other service. Shop around, ask a lot of (pertinent) questions & try to get personal recommendations. And don't be tempted by flashy offers.

Have you guessed what I do yet?

speff_2

What's the difference between guide price and asking price?

In Aberdeen? About 40k. Grumble, grumble...

Speff (who is not a parent of an Aberdeen Uni student, or a property developer, or an oil company.)