Price sensibly if you want sale
A Staffordshire estate agency has renewed its call on homeowners to remain realistic about asking prices amid fears that some agents are telling sellers what they want to hear in a desperate bid to win scarce instructions.
Heywoods Property, which operates from its office in Newcastle-under-Lyme, said that recent media hype about the upturn in the housing market had left many homeowners with raised expectations about the selling prices of their homes.
But with the severe shortage of houses on the market, it is believed that some estate agents have been prepared to go along with these perceptions in order to secure instructions and maintain a sizeable portfolio of properties to offer potential buyers.
However, Heywoods warned that such an approach was potentially damaging to the housing market and to the reputation of estate agents in general, as disappointed homeowners find out that they are unable to sell.
It said that the massive price increases over the last decade were down to a period of sustained economic growth. But the economic reality was now totally different and anything more than the current steady recovery in the housing market would be become unsustainable.
Heywoods made the comments after latest figures from Rightmove showed a rise of 3.2% in asking prices in the four weeks to 6 February, with London and the South East seeing the biggest increases.