Estate agents inflating valuations?

Mattygroves2

My step son has just bought in the same sort of area that you are in and he would confirm that places are going quickly. Standard practice seems to be open house at the weekend and offers (over asking if nice) on the Monday following.

London does seem to be very different to the rest of the Country.

Dan-Dan

For some reason, even though i have just bought, i still spend time on RM, Zoopla etc, i can see that 3 bed end terrace/terraced house in LU7, that were all IRO of 165--190 early to mid last year, are now up for 190/200/210 and coming under offer in days, i don’t see them coming back on the market either, so either the price is agreed or renegotiated and sale kept on track

movilogo

Market is completely mad at the moment! Even in Luton some houses are going at asking price within days of listing. Asking price gone up by 20-30% in last few months! In Watford, unless you can offer 10% over asking price you have no chance of getting anything.

A very good time to sell (unless you are upsizing, then you'll be paying more for your new house)

kay_1

Our house in Luton (which is certainly not the nicest of places!) sold for an amount in October 2013 but we pulled out due to not being able to find anywhere to buy. We put it back on the market in January where it sold within a day of going live on Rightmove for 10k more than what it did two months previously! :j

Dan-Dan

thats good , but presumably the place your buying (if same area) has risen likewise since October as well?

jamesmorgan

Estate Agents don't sell houses, they sell viewings. The EA's job is to advise on the right price to get the optimum number of viewings. Prospective buyers will determine what the right price for the house is. If you market at the EA's price and get no viewings for a few months, then it is likely that they have been over-optimistic, otherwise they are doing their job well.

pcgtron

I couldn't believe the rough value my agent gave me on my flat as I was looking to remortgage and hopefully reduce my LTV.
Looking at sold prices on Rightmove in my street, and similar properties, my 1 bed flat has gone up about 30% and smashed through the 250,000 stamp duty threshold.
London has gone mad (North London)

Mokka

If you are selling to buy something nearby you won't be so pleased about these price rises. Although there must be good deals in areas with negative equity still out there.
Sadly 30% up sounds about right- it's even more in some areas in London.
INHO most estate agents do overvalue properties- so good advice about short tie-in period.

cattie

I live on borders of SE London/Kent & can confirm that prices for the average house have increased by around at least £50k in just a few short months!

Properties are flying off the shelves & some fetching more than asking price when there are more than one set of buyers interested in securing the place.

I have a friend who is an ea fairly locally & they currently only have 4 properties on their books that are not under offer. Two of those are bungalows & 2 are high end properties. Quite a few properties do get sold to buyers on the ea's waiting list before they even officially hit the market.

Where I live, we are getting requests for properties almost daily, some are notes from private buyers desperate to find a place quickly & of course the usual leaflets from ea's telling us they have waiting buyers if we wish to sell.

ognum

Estate agents have a balancing act to try to value properties for sale.

They need to get enough people through the door to get an offer, this is usually somewhere between 10 and 15 viewers.

They do not want to price too low because it costs their time and money to deal with the administration of viewings, offers and preparing particulars.

If the market is slow getting the needed viewers is harder thus prices fall, if there is a mini frenzy then clearly they will increase the price to limit the viewers to those needed to get an offer.

If your house gets 90 or 2 viewings they it has been priced wrong. You only Ned one offer but of course as a seller four is better as a buyer it is not!