What brings you here today?
I’m thinking about selling
Impressive! Not many house sellers do the research you’re doing.
Here’s the best way to help yourself:
Step 1: Use our free PropCast tool to find out if you’re in a buyers’ or sellers’ market.
Step 2: Get the accompanying guide that shows you how to maximise your sale price.
I’m struggling to sell
We’re sorry to hear this. Few things are as frustrating as having the sale of your old home stand in the way of being able to get on, and fully enjoy the next chapter of your life.
Please don’t just go and blindly lower your price! Especially if that’s what your current estate agent is advising you to do.
Small changes to how your home sale is set up can make a big difference, and save you from unnecessarily tossing large chunks of equity down the drain.
Discover how to get your sale back on track without sacrificing price:
I need to sell very fast
If you need to turn your home into cash within 8 weeks, you’re going to need a cash house buying company.
The challenge you face is correctly identifying which ones are reputable and trustworthy.
That task is not as simple as it should be, and so we’re here to offer a helping hand.
Get FREE help – Having monitored the ‘Quick Sale’ industry (and the companies within it) since 2005, we can quickly point you towards the reliable firms, and tell you which ones will pay the best price for your home:
What other house sellers are saying
5 surprising property selling statistics
- 51.8% of all UK home sellers fail to sell within 10 months [source: Jefferies International Investment Bank]
- 30% of all sales collapse before exchange of contracts [source: ViewMyChain]
- £2,899 is the average amount a home mover will lose though having a transaction collapse [source: Which? Mortgage Advisors]
- 35% of all UK homes currently for sale are marked ‘price reduced’ [source: Zoopla]
- 35-40% of all sales are successful only after a change of estate agent [source: Rightmove]
Current house selling hot topic
Increased incidences of ‘down-valuing’ by mortgage valuers
Home sellers’ best defence against this is to sell with a local estate agent that has recently, and is currently, successfully selling the majority market share of properties in your price range.
This agent will be best equipped to present robust evidence of recent / current ‘comparable sales / transactions’ to the mortgage lenders’ surveyor to back up any agreed sale price.
It is one key area where using a national hybrid or online estate agent can backfire spectacularly as these types of estate agency services almost always have a tiny share of any single local market.
We explain the importance of an estate agent’s ‘applicant / buyer’ database (and how it differs between high street EAs vs. online / hybrid EAs) here:
Our mission
We created TheAdvisory to share our insider knowledge of how the property market really works, and to spread the following message:
Most people undersell and they don’t even know it. You deserve (and can have) better!
Small changes to the traditional way of doing things can have a hugely positive impact on the result you achieve.
Within this website you’ll find unique information that will help you beat the odds, and get the sale you need (first time without having to change agent or lower your price).
Some of the information you may find a little controversial. You may not agree with everything, and that’s fine.
Ultimately you have to make the tough decisions about how best to sell your home. Our wish is for you to be able to make these decisions with extreme confidence, having been informed about things others are not so lucky to know.
The dysfunctional relationship…
We want to be crystal clear on this – There are thousands of fantastic estate agents in the UK.
But there is also a dysfunctional relationship between the estate agency industry and the public that you need to be aware of.
Sadly, a large proportion of estate agents have been conditioned to believe ‘telling the truth’ will not win them new business.
Ask a bunch of estate agents round to give you a free valuation, and it’s almost guaranteed that one (if not all) will deliberately overvalue your home (to some degree) in an attempt to win your business.
As such, the conventional wisdom to get 3 agents round, and go with the middle valuation is not so wise.
In fact, ignore it completely because all that’s likely to happen is you end up going to market at the 2nd most over-inflated valuation.
‘Deliberate overvaluing to win the instruction’ is endemic in the UK
No home seller is immune from this because it happens in all markets, at all price points, and with all types of estate agent (high street, online, hybrid, family run independents, and large corporates).
What’s more, it’s so effective that some ethical estate agents have simply given up trying to tell the truth when it comes to the free valuation – They just can’t compete with the lies from their less ethical competitors.
There are of course some exceptional agents out there standing firm, but how long they can last (while losing business at a time of falling transaction levels) is anyone’s guess.
Here are some comments on the UK’s leading estate agency trade website that illustrate what’s really going on:
Key takeaway
Many estate agents are scared to tell the truth, just in case the truth is not what you want to hear.
We’ll show you how to improve relations with estate agents and foster a working relationship built on mutual trust.
This we hope will be to the benefit of all home sellers and the estate agency industry as a whole.
