02 May, 2014
One of the first things a buyer should ask a seller or their estate agent is how long the property has been for sale.
The Days On Marker figure is crucial to deciding what property you may want to view and of course and what to offer.
The days on market figure is essential in helping you get a picture of the property as seller as well as the market at large in the area.
Try to find out the average for your location by speaking to estate agents and researching property portals, all of which have this information somewhere on their site.
A high Days On Market figure may mean one of a few things, either the property is overpriced and receiving little interest or that the owner is not particularly flexible on moving dates, price or some other key matter, but it could also mean that the owner is now very keen to sell and will be flexible on the sale price.
Homes can hang around on the property market for the following reasons:
This is a big factor but of course it can be overcome if the price is right. Anything will sell at the right price.
Sometimes agents deliberately over value in order to get an instruction onto their books, a board up and something new to advertise. Owners are also sometimes responsible for overpricing using the agents’ eagerness to obtain the instruction to push the price up in the hope of finding the right buyer willing to pay highly.
Sometimes sellers are simply testing the market by pricing high to see if somebody bites.
A seller may be willing and financially able to wait until the market improves in order to get their price.
Sometimes owners work nights, so properties can’t be viewed during the day or there is a tenant in residence who may be a bit unhelpful so buyers get put off.
This applies to properties that are untidy, halfway through the renovation or in some way unpleasant. All of which may put off a potential buyer.
Sometimes owners put their property on to the market with an agent that they are friendly with even if they do not specialise in the style of property or the area that the house is in. This is less of a problem now that most searches take place online and so the locational suitability of an agent does not have such a bearing – but it is still a factor.
Set yourself up for Rightmove property alerts which are emailed to you every time a new instruction in your category is taken on to the market by an estate agent.
You can then refer back to this if you store your old emails to check at a later date exactly when the agent was instructed.
This gets you around the problem of the agent fudging the days on market figure when you ask them or as some agents will do, withdrawing the property from the market for 5 minutes which resets many of the internet statistics.
The property is then listed as a new instruction and the days on market figure is reset to zero. Another tip is to ask the agent when you enquire and double check with the seller when you view. Many people are very open and honest about such things and you can get some good information this way.
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