The thing is, everything has gone pear-shaped in the housing market with far too many houses for sale and not enough sales being completed. Even Phil Spencer, working flat out to close sales, is not going to be enough to plug this sized gap.
The most significant difficulty causing the market to fail is undoubtedly the problem that asking prices are being ill-conceived.
Clearly, people need to be ‘educated’ about what current prices are. Equally clearly this ‘education’ needs to come from estate agents to their clients; and it’s not.
On reason why it isn’t happening is that even estate agents don’t seem to have much of a clue about valuing houses (or appraising them to se their opt-outish phrase).
This ought, quite simply, to be totally unacceptable.
It’s GOT to be sorted out, for the sake of all those selling, or wanting to sell, but also so that buyers in the market can have the ‘confidence’ to know what market values currently are, for what they are thinking of buying.
For example, if a vendor is offering (through estate agents, as their appointed agent) a house at say £200,000 and the best interest the agent can get for their clients is a succession of offers at £170,000, then any seller should be made to understand that the current price of what they are selling cannot be £200,000. Also the estate agent needs to understand that all genuine offers are material when valuing the house in the current market. These, together with actual evidence of recently completed sales, should specifically be used to re-calculate the house’s present value.
The really important bit though is: – if the same logic could be applied to any house that the seller wanted to buy, then that same seller would realise they could be much more relaxed about the level of price they needed to attain on the house they were selling; as the buy price would (and should) also be similarly affected in a downturn.
Unless and until both these things can happen, chaos must continue across the whole housing market! It really is that simple and it also is really that simple to find the way to get the whole housing market working again; chiming in unison, flowing like a well established river of trade! When this happens, people would be able to move from one house to another relatively easily, which is one of the main reasons for wanting to be owner-occupiers in the first place – isn’t it?
Estate agents need to take the lead here because they ARE the lead players in the task of finding new buyers for houses in this country, currently.
We sincerely hope they will soon accept this and act accordingly, though we are also firmly of the belief that if they do not, other businesses will spring up and do this in place of them.
The most obvious way for this to happen would of course be via the Internet. But the revolution would have to be from sites that take appropriate responsibility to get the houses advertised, marked up at prices which are within the correct ‘valuation range’ – and not simply quoted piecemeal, as seems to be happening at present.
This is the challenge.
The gauntlet has been laid down by the recent collapse of the housing market – without a shadow of a doubt.
The estate agents that survive will be the ones who take action, quickly to embrace the above vital changes to the old methodologies, without waiting until it’s been done (by others).
Best of luck for the future, everyone!
Posted by: Property Match (UK): The modern way to market houses
With the economic situation still heading south, it is absolutely essential to know correct valuation range for any house being seriously marketed.
Those estate agents (or owner-occupiers not employing any) who fail to understand this are courting disaster if they want to move before Christmas.