Discover the most elegant way to handle a price reduction of your premium home.

After the initial excitement of styling the rooms, having the video and photoshoot, and seeing your beautiful property launch to the market for sale, it can feel anticlimactic if you don't immediately have a stampede of viewings.

 

And if you've already found a new property that ticks all the boxes, you're caught between desire and frustration. You can't move on with your plans, and you're stuck. You want to sell quickly, but no buyers are coming to view. What can you do?

 

The obvious answer, and perhaps the one you are trying to avoid the most, is to reduce the price of your property. But you don't want to give it away, sell yourself short, do you?

 

Reducing the price of your property is an excellent way to boost interest from potential buyers and encourage viewings, which is one step closer to selling your home. But, there is a fine art to ensuring you get it right.

 

Of course, you could slash the price, market stall style, with huge reduction stickers on the website listing. Shout it from the rooftops that your house is now a bargain, and any buyer would be crazy to miss this chance. That might work at the lower end of the market, attempting to lure investors out of the woodwork, but there are more sophisticated strategies for a premium home. There is a more elegant way to handle the process that will garner the same results.

 

A buyer at this level in the market will not easily part with their hard-earned cash and won't overpay if they don't have to. It isn't a question of whether or not they can afford it - when spending at these levels, they are almost certainly not coppering up to reach the figure - these buyers will undoubtedly have more available cash than you are asking for. So, it's a case of showing value for the price. You don't simply drop thousands from the figure each month until someone bites. The premium property market is more nuanced; therefore, more care and consideration is needed.

 

1.   Firstly, consider the interest your property has had so far. Have you had a steady stream of viewers, or was there an initial flurry that soon fizzled out?

2.   Reassess how your property is priced in the market today. Do you compare well with other properties in the price range? The market may have changed since your launch, and you could now be completely adrift.

3.   Pay particular attention to the properties on the market when you launched and the properties you used as comparable evidence. Have these sold? The likelihood is that a buyer will see all of the properties on the market at one time, and someone may choose others instead of yours. With an open mind, look at why that could have been. There may be a particular element of the property that one specific buyer wanted more than anything else, but this is rare. The buyer likely thought the other property was better value for money.

4.   Consider your timescale. Are you in a desperate hurry? Are you at risk of losing out on the property of your dreams if you don't find a buyer soon? Or do you have time? Suppose you are considering reducing the price because you want to sell, but nothing forces your hand. In that case, your price reduction is entirely market-led, and your sense of urgency, or lack thereof, will not affect it. However, if you have other pressure factors, your price reduction may need to be more dramatic to get the desired response.

5.   Consider the strategy going forward. Cutting the price is one thing, but relaunching the property to the market is quite another. A strategic pricing structure, a plan to generate interest, and a reorganisation of the marketing images and video footage to capture the attention of buyers who might not have seen the property before at the previous price will generate more interest and excitement about your property than a simple price slashing.

 

Another thing to consider is the online price brackets for a property search. Suppose you are marketing the property with the age-old strategy of £XXX,999. In that case, you will miss out on every potential buyer who searches with your price as their bottom bracket. For example, your property is on the market for £999,999, but Mr Smith starts his search for a new home from £1m. He will not see your property online, but he has the budget. He could well be interested in your property. You will double your chances of coming up in a search if you opt for marketing prices that sit squarely on the brackets in an online search.

 

Within the property websites, a mail-out function emails all potential buyers registered every 3 days with news of new properties and reduced prices that meet their requirements. To be included in this mass mail-out, your reduction needs to be significant enough to be picked up by this algorithm and mass mailed out to potential buyers. That magic number is 2% of the asking price. If you reduce by 1%, no one will be informed of the reduction other than the efforts made by your estate agent. To have the mail out from the portal websites, you must ensure a reduction picked up by their software.

 

If you are trying to sell your home and are not having much luck, contact By Design. We have many different marketing options that do not rely only on Rightmove, meaning that your property price is not dictated by marketing other similar properties and the algorithm that automatically mails out to buyers. We sell premium homes by harnessing AI technology and an invaluable connected network of the top independent estate agents in the country. Get in touch to learn more.