- 19 daysLot 05, printed guide, to agreed
- 102.4%Of the guide we printed for it
- 41Enquiries on the lot with no figure
The claim“Guide on application” protects the price.
Every season an owner asks us to leave the figure off. The reasoning is always the same and it is never unreasonable: a number invites a negotiation, and the house is worth what the right buyer will pay for it. We have printed a guide on every public entry since 2012 anyway, and this note is the arithmetic behind that.
The first thing a missing figure does is change who writes to you. A registered buyer with a budget cannot tell whether your house is at the bottom of their range or a million dollars above it, so they either ask, or they move on. Asking costs them an email and a day; moving on costs them nothing. In a season where the median house takes forty-one days to agree, the buyers who move on are the whole market.
What we didThree lots, one season, two of them without a printed figure.
We did not set out to run a test. Two owners this spring asked for no figure and one asked for a guide that was frankly high, so we had three lots to watch. Lot 05 carried its guide from the first day. Lot 02 went out on application. Lot 09 went out eleven per cent above the evidence, with a figure printed, because the owner wanted to see what happened.
What happened to each of the three
- Lot 05 Guide printed on day one 19 days 102.4% of guide
- Lot 02 Guide on application 78 days Under our printed figure
- Lot 09 Printed 11% above the evidence 176 days Cut in week seven, sold in November
Lot 02 collected forty-one enquiries in three weeks. Nine became viewings, and two of those nine were buyers who could transact at the level the house needed.
Forty-one enquiries is not interest. It is forty-one people asking you a question you could have answered on the page.
The other costThe viewings you accompany for nothing.
There is a second bill that nobody puts in the column. Every one of those nine viewings on Lot 02 was accompanied by a partner, took most of an afternoon, and was arranged around the owner’s week. Seven of them were never going to end in an offer. The owner paid for that in inconvenience, we paid for it in time, and the house paid for it by being seen by the wrong people first.
A printed figure does the filtering before anyone knocks. It is the least glamorous part of the particular and it is the part that saves the most.
The exceptionThe private list, where nothing is printed at all.
There is one place we do write “guide on application”, and it is the private list. Those five houses are not advertised, are not photographed, and are described only to buyers we have already registered and spoken to. The figure is given in the first conversation, by a partner, to someone whose funds we have seen. That is a different thing from hiding a number from a market: nothing is being hidden, it is simply not being printed.
If your house belongs on that list, we will say so at the valuation. If it belongs in the catalogue, it will carry a figure, and we will defend that figure to every buyer who asks us to.