Getting a house valued before sale, anything to know?

ijrwe

I'm thinking of inviting an estate agent (or two, or three?) around to give me their opinion on the market value of my house, following renovations I've done.

Is there anything I should know? For example,

> Will they only come if I pretend to be very keen to sell soon (I'm not, or rather it depends on what they tell me)
> Are they prone to giving an inflated initial value to entice me to hire them, and then actually sell it for less?

Any other info about the process?
And I suppose presenting the house to them, is it like when showing round interested buyers, or do EAs look through all the tricks pretty well and see it for what it really is?

Thanks,

Jenniefour

Why not ask the agent who sold you the property to pop around and give you a ball park figure? I did this recently to get an idea of how much my house is worth now after some extensive renovations and after prices have rocketed in my area in the last two or three years. Took all of 10 minutes. However, no-one knows with absolute certainty what a property is worth until it's sold. Hence I said "ballpark". I wouldn't bother with two or three.

Be aware that unless you're a builder yourself and haven't incurred a lot of labour costs, you may not recoup all the cost of refurbishment. Don't bother presenting it as you would if it were going on the market, most agents know what they're looking at.

Nick_C

Get three agents to give you quotations. Beware, some agents might try to give you a high valuation to get the business. When getting quotes, haggle over commission and ensure you can get out of the contract at a reasonable period of notice it you are not happy with the agent.

Also, look at Zoopla to see sold prices for the area.

Finally, look at house price indexation and apply it to the price you paid.

At the end of the day though, valuation is not an exact science, and you house is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it. If you have over improved it and made it too expensive for the area, you may not get your money back.

eddddy

Two key things:

1) You are 'interviewing' the agent - to decide whether they are any good or not. The key questions in your mind should be "Why should I give you the business as opposed to another EA? How are you better at selling houses than the others?"

2) Information gathering. e.g. Is there anything I should do to make the house more saleable? What type of purchaser buys this kind of house? How long would you expect it to take to sell? (Be very careful about believing all the agent says - but you should still be able to gather some useful info.)

Richard_Webster

Ask them how they arrive at the figure they say your house is worth.

They should quote local comparables like "...we sold a similar semi to your two roads away for £xxx,xxx last month. You've got a garage, they only had a driveway, so yours is worth £z,zzz more."

WeAreGhosts

we had three valuations recently. they just did a swift look around the rooms. two of them took measurements, one didnt bother. we presented the house as we would if we had buyers round so they could see that things were tidy and well maintained.

all the agents knew we were thinking of moving but it depended on the valuation and all three were fine with that. they all came in with the same sort of figure, so no one vastly inflated it to get business.

ask how the market is at the moment - are things selling etc - have they sold many properties similar to yours etc...

if you think their fee is too high ask them what is the best they can do. i got one agent down by .25% so it is worth asking.