Rightmove price bands

specialhat

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I'm about to put my London flat on the market (yes, my timing could be better, but it's a long story and it is what it is).

Market data and various valuations (and the offers I got last year - another long story) reckon it will probably sell for £305-£315k.

Now, with the stupid inflexible Rightmove price bands at £300k and £325k, I can't decide what to do. Price at £325k and make myself searchable for the whole £300k-£350k bracket, but be a bit high? Price at £315,000 but not be seen by people looking above £325k? Price at £300k but potentially not sell it for anywhere near £315k?

Tell me, oh wise MSEs!

AdrianC

You're massively overthinking.

People with a budget of £315k or so will find your place if you price it at £315k.

specialhat

I massively overthink most things! :rotfl: My brother is an estate agent and was absolutely adamant about the Rightmove banding thing. And I've had a few valuations at £325k but I just don't think I'll achieve it.

muhandis

I might be wrong, but I doubt a lot of people use such a narrow band (or set a lower limit). As far as I can tell, if you put it up at 315k, most people looking for properties under up to 350k will see it.

So (from your other thread), did you pick an agent that you're happy with?

specialhat wrote: »

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I'm about to put my London flat on the market (yes, my timing could be better, but it's a long story and it is what it is).

Market data and various valuations (and the offers I got last year - another long story) reckon it will probably sell for £305-£315k.

Now, with the stupid inflexible Rightmove price bands at £300k and £325k, I can't decide what to do. Price at £325k and make myself searchable for the whole £300k-£350k bracket, but be a bit high? Price at £315,000 but not be seen by people looking above £325k? Price at £300k but potentially not sell it for anywhere near £315k?

Tell me, oh wise MSEs!

pinkteapot

A lot of people will only put in the max price - there’s little point putting in a min price (unless you’re sorting by date listed rather than price and want to hide all the cheap stuff).

What he was probably more referring to is that if you price at £315k you’ll be a long scroll down for people who search up to £325k, and they might not spot you.

What did the agents who valued actually expect it to sell for? There’s price you market at and what offers they’d then expect you to get. I’d offer £315k on something listed at £325k - that’s not a cheeky offer at all.

specialhat

I often set a lower limit when I'm looking online - it's another way of narrowing search results, especially in a big city.

muhandis wrote: »

So (from your other thread), did you pick an agent that you're happy with?

I have found one, yes. Actually not from that list - I did more research over the weekend and found another local one via GetAgent with a good record for flats. Met him today and really liked him - now just trying to haggle the fee a bit.

chunkytfg

muhandis wrote: »

I might be wrong, but I doubt a lot of people use such a narrow band (or set a lower limit). As far as I can tell, if you put it up at 315k, most people looking for properties under up to 350k will see it.

So (from your other thread), did you pick an agent that you're happy with?

I know we didn't. When we were looking we set up criteria of the type of home and bedroom numbers but then set the pricing bands a bit wide to allow us over time to see what was dropping into our price bracket. We set at 190k - 450 with a top budget of about 400 initially which climbed as we saved more.

It let us see the place we are now in the process of trying to buy come on the market at 440k way out of our range and then get sold and come back on some months later with a new agent at 425 meaning we were able to realistically haggle with the seller to get it agreed for 410.

You're massively overthinking things. the biggest thing for you at your price will be First time buyers trying to get it for less than 300k to save them stamp duty

specialhat

pinkteapot wrote: »

What did the agents who valued actually expect it to sell for? There’s price you market at and what offers they’d then expect you to get. I’d offer £315k on something listed at £325k - that’s not a cheeky offer at all.

I had a bad experience being massively (25-30%!!!) overvalued by several agents last year (falling London market) so I'm being super cautious. This time most have said £310-325k.

KiKi

To be fair, every single estate agent I've seen for my house recently has said the same thing about Rightmove: don't price your house in the middle of a band. Which is annoying for me, because £400k is too cheap, and £450k is overpriced.

All of them said that the data for views per property shows clearly that people don't scroll through pages of properties - they look at the first x number, or the last x number if it's sorted the other way, and don't really pay attention in between, so the 'in between' priced properties have far fewer views.

That seems like a reasonable conclusion to me - I'm clearly in the minority, though, as I always scroll all the way through!!!

specialhat

chunkytfg wrote: »

You're massively overthinking things. the biggest thing for you at your price will be First time buyers trying to get it for less than 300k to save them stamp duty

Yes, but I had a bad experience last year I had it valued by several agents at £375-£425k and had to reduce it again and again. I ended up with four offers: three at £300k and one at £290k. I accepted three (not all at the same time) and all three pulled out.

I have since extended my lease and redecorated and am keen on getting the price much closer to a realistic one this time.

getmore4less

Do a more like this count going up through the brackets and distances.

If there is a big sample set of forsale/SSTC in the upto 325 that are competitive/better no point trying to capture those over with 350 to spend if no one else has.

If you are competitive with the SSTC in the 325-350 your research would have shown that.