What a valuation is actually for
The highest number wins the instruction and loses the sale. Here's what an honest valuation looks like, and what we do in the hour we spend at your house.
There is a trick as old as estate agency: three agents come round, and the one who says the biggest number wins. It is a trick because the number that wins the instruction is not the number that sells the house. It is the number that gets you a board in the garden and, six weeks later, a conversation about a price reduction.
The highest figure is a cost, not a favour
A house that lists too high sits. Buyers who could afford it filter past it; buyers who look at it use the staleness to negotiate. By the time the price is right, the listing is tired and the offers come in under where an honest price would have started.
What we do in the hour
We look at the house, and then we look at what has actually sold nearby — completed prices, not the hopeful ones still sitting on the portals. We factor in the things that genuinely move a price here: aspect, the state of the roof, the running costs an EPC implies, whether the garden gets the evening sun.
A written figure within two working days, the comparable sales it rests on, and a plain account of what would move it up or down. No obligation to instruct us, and no withdrawal fee if you do and change your mind.
What it’s for
A valuation is for pricing the house to sell inside a normal window to a real buyer — not for flattering you into signing. If our figure is lower than the one down the road, ask both of us to show our workings. Ours will be sitting on completed sales you can look up.
Ready to find out what it's worth?
An hour at the house, a written figure in two working days, no obligation. That’s the whole of it.