Having researched the difficulties in housing market transactions taking place over successive booms, I’ve come up with a better way for agents to handle offers received from prospective purchasers. In my opinion, it should be made a requirement for agents to adopt this new method for dealing with all offers, in an effort to stabilise the housing market, and thus bring increased growth and prosperity to the country. Coalition Government please take note.

Instead of taking instructions from their client to accept an offer, which implicitly includes withdrawing the property from the market, agents should do the following.

The vendor should be advised to say “We accept your offer, but instead of taking the property off the market,” say “but until you are ready to actually exchange a contract to purchase, we need to carry on advertising the house as being still available; though we are happy to mark it ‘currently under offer‘.”

Since HIPs were abandoned, the estate agent should be saying (on behalf of the vendor):
“You should aim to exchange contracts as soon as you are able to complete your legal work, including getting a survey right away, if at all possible (and if required), in order to satisfy yourself that you are happy with the condition of the house.”

“Once you have exchanged contracts the house will be removed from the market or alternatively marked as ‘Sold (subject to contract)’.
On completion of the sale, the house will be described as having been sold.”

“Whilst accepting the offer, the vendor agrees to arrange for their solicitor to send the contract for sale to the prospective purchaser but on the understanding that the purchaser undertakes to return this to them, should they at any time up until exchange decide to request this.”

The effect of this new method would be that the acceptance of an offer means the prospective buyers are being accepted by the vendor as the preferred buyers and that they are only ones the vendor’s solicitors will deal with at the present time. In effect, the prospective purchaser would have the option to exchange contracts to purchase the property, right up until the point when the vendor decides to discontinue and requests the return of the contract.

Firstly, this would not be gazanging, because it would not be withdrawing as a result of a change of heart about selling. The vendor would normally only do this if a higher offer was made and preferred, subsequently.

Secondly, this new method should also substantially reduce gazundering in falling market conditions by encouraging buyers to progress to exchange more quickly than tends to happen currently. A problem frequently seen in these conditions is that buyers may put in offers on multiple properties whilst intending to proceed with only one of them. This, together with the time bought by getting each house taken off the market, is what usually drives the gazundering strategy of some buyers. This needs to be eliminated from the sales transaction process, and these new proposals would help to accomplish this.

Thirdly, the new strategy works to reduce the likelihood of gazumping as the onus would be with the prospective buyer to get on and purchase. Should they fail to move towards being ready to exchange contracts, of course, the vendor ought to be perfectly entitled to discuss better prospects and receive such better offers as there may be in the market. If ultimately, the vendor should decide to accept another higher offer, this would clearly be as a result of a rising market but the first buyer would usually still have the option of buying, assuming they could do so in the quickest timescale.

For the above reasons, the idea that a purchaser ought to insist that the house is taken off the market as a condition of the offer, is just a poor attempt at placing an anti-gazumping safeguard in place by that purchaser and an attempt to gain more time to effect the purchase. In fact this should be discouraged because it actually encourages gazundering, for the reasons explained earlier.

In all these examples however, it’s the agents responsibility to check the ability of the buyer to secure the required funds to conclude the purchase, as well as do the legally required money laundering checks, well in advance of the agent recommending any offer to their client for actual acceptance. Sadly, this is not always done by them currently.

Better alternative ideas to be submitted please, in the interests of ‘democracy’ itself!

Definitions by Phil Spencer (requiring updating please):
gazumping, gazundering and gazanging:
For more info, see also: in-deed conveyancing. “We make the legal side simple”.
We have invited them to comment on this new idea of ours and are happy to update readers about their views about this.

See also: The Correct Way To Craft Asking Prices.
Posted by: Peter Hendry, Consultant in Housing Valuation at Property Match (UK).

Possibly the worst position estate agents could ever find themselves in, is having to do accurate house valuations instantly – on the hoof, having just viewed the house themselves (for a quarter of an hour or so) – and without getting paid anything until the house might be sold by them!

Well guess what; that’s exactly the position that estate agents have got themselves into, simply by trying to out-compete with other agents to win the sales instructions needed for their individual businesses to keep on growing.

Owing to this problem, the present method of doing market appraisals by estate agents has resulted in the majority of houses not being ‘valued’ accurately enough. This has resulted in there being no clear ‘tone’ of value across current asking prices these days. In other words, asking prices are all over the place. The effect of this is that both buyers and sellers have become confused and apprehensive.

It’s long been known that asking the wrong price can actually put viewers off a house, from the very start. Testing the market with a hefty price at the beginning of a marketing campaign is therefore the worst possible thing that anyone could be advised to do but unfortunately, too many people are being advised (or think it might be ok) to do exactly this.

Even mortgage valuers, who are required to corroborate the resulting prices, agreed subject to mortgage, are generally able to reflect a little, and do some specific research in the office, before deciding whether the figure agreed upon is within ‘the range’ – or not.

It’s ‘range’ rather than price because there is no ‘exact’ figure which can be applied to any particular house. Instead there is only a range of prices within which a house should attract buyers in the current market, without the need for grossly excessive borrowing in order for buyers to be able to do so.

To sell efficiently, a house needs to be priced within the range-of-prices that currently apply to it. My view is that this isn’t happening in far too many cases. It is this that is largely responsible for the decline in the volume of completed sales and not the downturn in the economy per se. People still want to move house, even in a downturn. It’s just the confusing and varied levels of asking prices that are hampering them from achieving this.

It’s generally accepted that the most important aspects that affect the market price of a house are location, type, size of property and condition or quality of build.

Well I don’t know of any surveyor who could reliably assess all four of these criteria within a quarter of an hour’s visit – and do this correctly every time. There is therefore little or no chance that an estate agent could do this either.

Don’t forget, they also have to take into account all the arguments being put forward by the owner as to how much the house should be sold for, and they must appease the owner to get the instruction to begin with! It’s now obvious that we’re asking too much of our agents these days. For anyone to to try and argue that there’s nothing going wrong in the housing market, would clearly be to shoot oneself in the proverbial foot.

No; the problem is purely agent-created as explained above and what’s worse, there’s no-one actually doing anything to help them resolve the matter either.
[First published 11 Jan 2012 on EstateAgentToday. See article and comments. Not released here until 14th Jan 12.]

The damage that is being done to the UK’s national economy as a direct result of this deficiency is, unfortunately, both massive and increasing. The problem ought therefore, to be taken up by our government as a matter of the highest priority.

At Property Match (UK), we are taking a fresh look at how houses are priced and marketed by allowing individual owners to have more input about this. We strongly believe that they are just as capable of doing this as estate agents, many of whom do not know the area as well, nor the prices that have actually been achieved in the vicinity. No estate agent can know a house as well as the owner must after just a short, often cursory, inspection. Therefore, to better the housing economy, it’s just a case of helping an owner to describe and market their house at least as effectively as the average estate agent could do so.

Peter says “The government has been too ‘hands-off’ when it comes to monitoring how well estate agents progress house sales in the past, and this has resulted in the severe price imbalances that we now see.”

Peter is therefore urging ministers to review their approach and take a stronger leadership role, to get the housing market ‘motoring‘, once again.

The coalition government should take note of this and take swift action to help restore balance in the floundering UK housing economy. For example, it would be no good simply running a national TV advertising campaign, advising people what to do if they fail to be able to move house owing to the current housing market imbalances. Instead, a pro-active approach needs to be taken to get things moving again and to achieve this, appropriate measures need to be put into place swiftly.

Peter Hendry is the current Web Site Manager of Property Match (UK). He has practiced as a surveyor for over 30 years and worked for some years in estate agency himself but has since retired from 9-5 work, as such.

Property Match (UK) is able to list houses online for sale and to let by both agents and by owners direct.  Peter does not consider himself ‘anti-agent’ but, at the same time, is passionate about seeking new ways to improve the stagnating housing market itself.

Posted by: The Correct Way To Craft Asking Prices: Peter Hendry, Consultant in Housing Valuation

That’s the conclusion by one of the old guard amongst surveyors who used to do these in the days when you could just tell it like it was.

There are problems nowadays. One, is the requirement to pepper all reports with copious quantities of disclaimers, caveats and suggestions to get further tests and more specialist reports. The result of all of this is often that most ordinary buyers will simply not understand the relative seriousness and insignificance of what are often minor matters and will take fright, often deciding against buying the house at all!

A second problem is that surveyors are discouraged from saying what’s good about any particular house (incase they might make a mistake). Not exactly helpful!

Surely even-handedness is what’s really hoped for by both buyers and vendors, not the expensive fence-sitting verbiage and the arse-protecting garbage that we get in survey reports nowadays.

The RICS ought to sit up and take notice, if it wants its professional standing in the property sector to be retained.

For as long as these problems are unresolved, we advise potential purchasers to get an experienced local builder to go round the house with them instead.

Who agrees or alternatively, would anyone prefer to defend the RICS?
We’re interested in hearing about readers’ particular experiences during the past year or so.

Posted by: Property Match (UK): The modern way to market houses

We’ve had personal experience of this currently when we found it impossible to move from Nottingham to Cornwall in a chain, owing to unrealistically high asking prices in Cornwall, combined with most houses failing to sell there for many months. This coupled with a lack of genuine offers in Nottingham caused by confusion about what houses should fetch there, resulted in complete chain failure caused primarily by inconsistent asking prices. This is what’s causing market stagnation. If anyone suggests to us that ‘the market’ can sort things out for itself, we answer: “You must be kidding!”

We expect a howl of dissent from various quarters now that the Government has indicated that it’s primary response is to assist first-time buyers wishing to buy new built units. They’re completely missing the underlying cause of the problem, in our view and a notable number of dissenters (over 1,200) have commented about it on the BBC web page:
A BBC page on the Government’s approach. This strongly suggests that many people are unhappy with the action they’ve come up with so far.

It’s no good simply building new ‘affordable’ houses (which will take years to build and with substantial numbers only able be built at a comparatively slow trickle anyway, compared with the number of new houses currently needed).

Instead we need to get the market back into gear, right now – and the economy helped in the process of doing that.

This can only be done by changing the way in which houses are currently sold by estate agents. That’s what’s urgently needed. Who, if anyone else out there, can see that?

Why won’t our Coalition Government grasp the nettle, as a team, for everyone’s benefit and without further delay?

What is needed is restored market fluidity and more stability in house prices – as well as an increased pace of new build. More about how to do all this can be found on:
Property Match (UK)/Full Reasoning, or provided by the author upon request.

The Government was been approached on this earlier but hasn’t even seen fit to invite discussions about it. We suggest this is utterly unacceptable to the majority of thinking voters.

Posted by: Property Match (UK)/Full Reasoning: Peter Hendry, Consultant in Housing Valuation

Unlike James Murdoch, Chairman of News International and the hacking scandal perhaps, we are actively wishing to rid the world of another scourge of our society; that of bad estate agency. It’s because of bad and unethical practices that people are experiencing poor performance and the inability to be able to move house when they need to. We’re saying, someone needs to sit up and take notice of this.

Property Match (UK), has developed a new strategy for getting the housing market back up and running as well as for keeping it active, by stopping the recurrent house price booms and busts from being influenced, to quite such an extent, by big fluctuations in the main economy, like the one that we’ve recently witnessed.

Peter Hendry, a Consultant in Housing Valuation, working at Property Match (UK) based in Nottingham says “My theories are not rocket science but are based on the valuable experience I have gained from having worked in the property sector for more than thirty years, and from carefully observing the issues involved”.

Change is the only way forward in everything. No-one can dispute that. Change for the better is what is desperately overdue – to improve the way the UK housing market operates.

It’s now important, for the politicians making our laws and running our country, to realise that they need to intervene to resolve the financial crisis impacting the housing market. That is their proper function. By doing so, they should help to resolve the economic and trading imbalances which would help the housing market as part of our national economy. In fact the housing market is the perfect place to begin the whole process of economic recovery.

We say, like the people braving the cold and sleeping in tents in towns squares and other prominent places, this change is overdue, that they are right.

Like them, we are asking the same sort of questions: For example, “Why is nothing being done to confront bad practices, of the kind that are crippling our nation’s housing market?”

It’s essentially a question of those who see no evil, being myopic (or exhibiting short-sightedness) when it comes to seeing the need to change things for the better. That is what is so sad about our country, at present.

If estate agents themselves don’t sort the mess out, someone else should instead, sort out the estate agents themselves, and that ’someone’, would ideally need to be our Government.

Unfortunately, as nothing effective is being done by Government, then exactly like the protesters camping and campaigning against many other issues ranging from inequality to corporate greed, those wishing to sell and move house need to protest, by acting for themselves, and selling direct.

Fortunately, instead of everyone having to camp out in town, what we need to do, driven on by the enthusiasm of these intrepid demonstrators, is simply ask ourselves the question ‘What DO estate agents do, that we can’t?‘

The answer is essentially what Phil Spencer explains in his ‘Secret Agent‘ series recently broadcast on Channel 4. Selling a house, is really just about knowing what price to ask and secondly knowing how to present the house for sale, in an effective way.

However, rather like cooking a sumptuous meal for a close friend, it’s best to have a bit of knowledge and practice if you want to be sure to get it right.
If you don’t have all the experience you’ll need, it’s best to get this advice from people who have. “That is exactly what we’re offering,” says Peter Hendry.

“Instead of using an estate agent to provide this advice, it’s now OK to use the Internet direct. After all, that’s what the Internet was originally devised for.”

“The web site, Property Match (UK), is designed not only to enable people to sell or let houses direct, it also provides all the necessary advice and expertise that they would need to do this.

Understandably however, such advice cannot be free. In order to provide such objective advice, people using our new service need to value it enough to pay a small sum to use it. Unlike the notion of providing free services for all (which often tend to be poor services) we wish to revert to the old maxim “Anything that’s worth something has a value”.

Good advice is, and always has been, worth paying for. It’s paying too much for too little (or ending up paying for no advice at all) that has been the main problem. For this reason everyone should stop using estate agents, who charge excessive amounts for poor advice.

Secondly, free house advertising web sites need to be avoided – because they have no intrinsic value. If they did, people would pay something for what they have to offer. It’s communistic to bring in the notion of being able to have useful services free of charge! For that reason these sites actually need to go. It’s obvious if you think about it.

Why? Because a lot of property advertised on free to advertise web sites is overpriced, poorly presented and inadequately marketed – just like many of the houses sold by estate agents! Do you really want your property to be in amongst all of that? Property Match (UK) says, hopefully not!

People need the Internet but they also need a little help, to get everything right in order to maximise their marketing potential. Property Match (UK) is online to provide such advice, not only by assisting vendors to set the correct asking price in the current market using our informative online advice, but also to enable them to show their property in a way that demonstrates that they are serious about selling to genuine online viewers.

It’s time to stand up and make the changes needed to straighten-up our stumbling housing market, and thus help the rest of our economy in the process.
If our Government won’t do it for us, we should be doing it for ourselves?
The World would become a better place, if many of us were to start doing that.

Posted by: Property Match (UK): The modern way to market houses

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 (or appraising) houses.

This is quite simply, 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 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 these offers are material when valuing the house in the current market. These, together with actual evidence of recently completed sales, should 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, that same seller would realise they could be more relaxed about the level of price they needed to attain; 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! 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?

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.
I really hope they will soon accept this and act accordingly, but am 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 happens at present.

This is the challenge.

The gauntlet has been laid down by the recent collapse of the housing market – without any shadow of a doubt.

The winners will be those who take action to embrace these vital changes to the old methodologies, without waiting until it’s already been done (by others).

Best of luck for the future, everyone!

Posted by: Property Match (UK): The modern way to market houses

To my mind, first of all, unless houses are priced within the valuation range, and well-presented, why would they ever sell – except by some kind of fluke!

For my money, it’s the estate agent’s ‘job’ to make sure that each house they are selling is firstly priced within that current range and secondly well-presented, by advising their clients appropriately and convincingly. Budding estate agents need to possess sufficient ‘charisma’ to enable them to succeed here.

But before all that, they do need to be able to measure (or know how to measure) the valuation range correctly, before opening their mouths and offering advice about house values. That requires both good training and sufficient experience.

The lack of these things are the twin problems currently besetting many estate agents.

Unfortunately owing to financial pressures these days, most agents just end up in a headlong rush to retain the greatest number of houses on their books, instead of dealing with these shortcomings. They need to take stock of this.

Things need to change for the better if the housing market is ever to improve.

One way would be to force all of the overpriced houses onto the private or free-listing web sites!
That would free-up estate agents to offer a more professional service and get on with the work of moving people who are genuinely ready to accept good professional advice and thus move house more quickly.

It would be a master stroke, in our view.

Posted by: Property Match (UK)/Asking_Prices: Peter Hendry, Consultant in Housing Valuation

Our stance is to embrace ‘valuation techniques’ to a greater extent than estate agents do and thus help people to price houses more accurately in the marketplace.

The purpose of using valuations and the main purpose of anyone doing them should be to act between parties (i.e. any vendors and purchasers), in determining the right price for any particular house to be sold at.

In comparison, the mandate for estate agents (as is generally stated) is to try and get the ‘best’ price that they can for their client, an individual vendor, in the current market conditions (but usually without settling upon a specific time by which this needs to be achieved). The difficulty is, this does
not involve the need to do a proper valuation of the house to be sold at all.

Instead it works by the agent simply gauging the level of vendor desperation and than fixing the asking price as high as possible whilst loosely taking into account both the market conditions and the extent to which the client might take a lower offer in order to get the house sold!

Those clients who have no wish to take below market offers at all, are often taken on by the agent anyway, at whatever price the owner thinks they ought to get – irrespective of true current value. This is because in the present circumstances, no-one actually does a proper valuation to find out what that is! The result is that large numbers of houses on estate agents’ books are frequently over priced. The effect of this is to cause unwanted confusion in the marketplace about what market values are actually running at. Unfortunately this tends to drive buyers away, which in turn is the primary cause of the next price slump, or to be more precise the next correction in prices (because the prices being asked were never achievable in the first place).

Instead of this, IF everyone placing houses up for sale in the market used proper valuations to determine asking prices, the market would flow, continually, in all economic conditions. This achievement would be of immense benefit to the wider economy as well as to individuals wishing to move house at any particular time.

One of the main benefits of being a house owner in the first place is to be able to be mobile enough to sell and buy elsewhere simultaneously. If that opportunity should no longer be available as a result of a de-stabilised private housing market, in exactly the way we are currently seeing, fewer people are likely to be interested in becoming home owners. This itself could become a threat to the whole idea of (and indeed the intrinsic value of) home ownership.

WE, at property-match, are aiming to help the market by offering a better way in which to buy and sell houses by trying to ensure that houses placed online with us, have been properly valued beforehand.

We are taking the lead on this because we know that estate agents are failing to carry out proper house valuations, as is clearly shown by the Land Registry statistics on completed house sales and their differentials with average house asking prices. The whole housing market has suffered as a direct result of this failure.

Vendors: – if you would like to join us in improving the way houses are bought and sold here in the UK, we welcome your business on this basis. We look forward to not only advertising your property online for you, but also to liaising with you in person about anything which you may be unsure about when you are in the process of selling your house.

Obviously we would first encourage you to obtain a valuation of your house, based on Land Registry data. We can help you to order one of these before you actually start the whole marketing process. Estate agents generally do not offer their clients this at all and our research indicates that many of them are actually opposed to considering doing so.

Intervention by Government, whilst deciding and implementing ‘public policy’, is always a prerequisite to bringing any necessary improvements to the way in which the housing market (or any other market for that matter) functions; especially when a market is hijacked by the poorly considered actions of its main players and negotiators.

Posted by: Peter Hendry, Consultant in Housing Valuation Property Match (UK)/Asking_Prices

The PM said on The Marr show last Sunday “Democracy is government by explanation“. Well I have some unanswered questions for him.

How can you square this government’s policy to cut the deficit as a matter of primary importance (and urgency) whilst at the same time expecting individuals to borrow more from banks and banks to lend them more for buying houses at unrealistic, unjustified, and frankly completely unsustainable prices?  To put it another way; are you strongly encouraging the public to borrow more e.g. buy houses at unsustainable prices etc., at the very same time as telling our own exchequer to cut the Nation’s deficit as a matter of extreme urgency?  If so, which policy is, in fact, the one you would advise ordinary people living in the community to pursue, those who are loosing their jobs or otherwise struggling as a result of the government’s chosen policies?

Assuming the debt crisis is exacerbating the slowdown in the housing market, you would expect (would you not) that house prices would self-moderate enough to adjust for this. I think we should agree, in a perfect market, prices would moderate to reflect market conditions. The question is, why is our housing market NOT functioning in this way? Once this is properly realised, the question of exactly what should be done to improve the way it functions needs to be addressed? To date it has simply been ignored by successive governments.

Just helping buyers to borrow more and builders to do likewise (which is the government’s current suggested policy) is not the answer. What is required instead, is first helping industry, the engine of our economy, to achieve a growth in exports in order to create new wealth. This will eventually result in those needing housing, acquiring the ability to purchase some and hence house prices would stop falling, once again.

Until this is achieved, how can any government turn a blind eye to what is, in the words of your Housing Minister Grant Shapps, speaking on Radio 4 on 4th October, ” A very extreme housing crisis”. How can they not deal with the problem of excessive house asking prices, when hardly anyone is earning enough to pay such artificially conceived prices and when the rate of completed sales is stagnating unacceptably and unnecessarily?

What is needed are proper valuations, which are fully reasoned and provided in writing by all estate agents, whom should be made to provide these by law. This is the KEY to getting the housing market back on its feet and moving, once again. To quote from an age-old saying “If the price is right, each individual house will sell, in any market conditions”.

Surely therefore all estate agents should be required to provide proper valuations, as part of the service that they offer, whenever pitching to take on new properties to sell? They certainly do not do this at present.

Secondly, the idea that first-time buyers are in some way essential to provide support to the prices of houses further up the chain, has NO factual basis whatsoever.
This is like saying that small investors, buying shares on the stock market, will have ‘a measurable’ affect on the quoted price of those shares. The effect would be as insignificant as someone trying to fill a swimming pool using a teaspoon filled from a dripping tap!

Thirdly it’s a myth to suggest that building more houses (whether affordable or not) will have a material effect by reducing the prices of the majority of existing UK houses.

All that is needed instead is better information about the current sales prices being achieved, so that this feeds into agents’ asking prices more effectively.

This, is what could bring much needed business back to the housing market. It would also help grow the whole economy. David Orr, the economist, speaking on the same phone-in program as Grant Shapps said, that a successful housing market is very very important to the whole UK economy. I totally agree with him.

Finally, after publicising his reservations in newspapers, Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, managed to get George Osborne to agree that he would make it easier for small businesses to take on new workers. A success surely.

Maybe Andrew Tyrie, if asked, might be prepared to ’second’ some of these questions for more detailed consideration by government?

If there are no answers available from David Cameron (or from his Housing Minister) might Mr Tyrie be prepared to offer some further comment on some of these points instead?

Posted by: Property Match (UK)/Asking_Prices: Peter Hendry, Consultant in Housing Valuation

This is causing extreme pain for those who have diligently saved throughout their lives, for their old age.

The other effect that continuing low interest rates is having – in the face of rising inflation is, it is putting the housing market into utter turmoil with wildly varying asking prices and such confusion that sales are floundering, just when we all need stability, in this particular marketplace.

What can be done? If low interest rates must continue, the way houses are appraised for sale needs urgently to be tightened up, so that buyers are no longer continually misled by wrong asking prices.

This problem is further compounded by a widening regional discrepancy in asking prices. The increasing gap in actual completed sales prices also seems to be widening across different regions. This obviously causes difficulty for those attempting to move from one area to another.

The author, a retired property valuer, has been aware of these problems in the private housing sector for a considerable time, and it is abundantly clear that very little is being done to resolve them.

The large discrepancies between asking prices of similar types of property, even in the same area must stop. This is resulting in differing sale prices eventually being achieved for such properties, due to market confusion.

If instead, prices quoted on sales particulars more closely matched actual achievable prices for the houses in question, people would be able to see what they could afford to buy and what they could not. More transactions would be achieved as a direct result.

This is the true goal and would get the housing market working smoothly, and remaining stable, in all external economic situations.

This is precisely where the Government should be more proactive. To create a future stable housing market, with a steady number of sales and purchases proceeding to completions, should be its ultimate goal.

It would be perfectly possible to arrange this by changing the way houses are currently evaluated by estate agents.

The outcome may involve a slightly greater fluctuation in actual sold prices depending upon the present economic conditions, but because all the asking prices would be more closely related to one another, less damage to individuals’ budgets would occur.

Moving house, even in difficult economic circumstances, would become possible. This is the holy grail, both for individuals investing their earnings in their houses, and for the increased electoral opportunities for any government offering this.

It would not be difficult to re-train estate agents to do this, instead of perpetually trying to lift prices for their selling clients, whatever the market conditions. (It appears this is all they currently know how to do in order to keep winning new instructions.)

What they should, instead, be doing is providing best advice to their clients on how much to sell their existing properties for; in the the current market conditions. To achieve this they would need to face up to having to charge an upfront fee for providing full advice. Market appraisals would then become proper market appraisals, not just instruction-winning tools.

Everyone would be winners.

Posted by: Property Match (UK)/Asking_Prices: Peter Hendry, Consultant in Housing Valuation