Selling
Why Three Agents Give Three Different Asking Prices
Valuation appointments are also sales pitches, and the incentive to win an instruction pulls suggested prices upward in ways a seller can test rather than accept.
A seller who invites three agents to value a house frequently receives three materially different figures. The spread is not mainly a disagreement about the property.
The appointment has two purposes
The agent is assessing the property and simultaneously competing for the instruction. Those two purposes point in different directions when the seller is hoping for a high number.
An agent who quotes the most realistic figure risks losing the job to one who quotes more, and an agent with no instruction earns nothing at all.
This does not make anyone dishonest. It means the number presented is an opening position in a negotiation for the seller's business, not a neutral assessment.
What a valuation is built from
The underlying method is comparison: recent sale prices of similar properties nearby, adjusted for differences in size, condition, layout and position.
Achieved sale prices are more reliable evidence than asking prices, because an asking price only records what somebody hoped for. The gap between the two is the useful information.
Where genuinely comparable evidence is thin, as with unusual or converted properties, the range of defensible figures widens and judgement carries more weight than data.
How to test the number
Ask each agent which specific properties they used as comparisons, what those properties sold for, and how they adjusted for the differences.
An agent who can produce that evidence has done the work. One who cannot has produced a figure from instinct and from what they expect the seller wants to hear.
It is also worth asking what proportion of their listings sell at or near the initial asking price, and how often prices are reduced after launch.
Overpricing has a cost that is easy to miss
An overpriced property is most exposed during the period when it attracts the most attention, which is the first weeks after listing.
Buyers actively searching that area see it, dismiss it, and are unlikely to return when the price falls, because their attention has moved to properties still within their criteria.
The result is a longer marketing period and a price history that later buyers read as evidence of a problem, which is a worse position than starting realistically.
Choosing on more than the figure
The number an agent suggests is not the number a buyer pays, so selecting the highest quote selects for optimism rather than for competence.
The terms of the agreement, the length of any tie-in, the fee basis and who will actually conduct viewings all affect the outcome more than the opening price does.
A seller can also set the asking price themselves. The agent advises; the instruction to market at a figure comes from the owner.
Questions readers ask
Can two agents charge me for the same buyer?
It happens where a post-termination introduction clause applies. Get a written list of introduced buyers from the outgoing agent before instructing anyone else.
Does relisting reset how long a property has been for sale?
Partially and temporarily. New photographs and a new listing help, but the history is often still traceable, and buyers who saw it before still remember it.
