This short post is all about the numbers on the end of your asking price. Way back, twenty years ago, it was very common to put your house up for sale with lots of nines in the number. For example, you wouldn’t have £500,000, you’d have £499,999. Just like when you’re buying a new lawnmower from B&Q, and it’s £149,999.
In those days, it was thought it was a better strategy, due to something called the ‘psychological price point’.
The problem with ‘psychological price points’, is that Rightmove (and the other portals) doesn’t understand them. Rightmove just pays attention to the search banding you put into it, and then delivers results based on that search parameter.
So let’s say your home is on the market for £499,999. This means that your property will fall just within the Rightmove price banding that ends at £500,000. But this means that if a buyer starts their search at £500,000, perhaps £500,000 to £700,000 or beyond, is not going to see your property at all. It’s going to be completely invisible to them. Rightmove don’t have an intelligent search feature where they include all properties just under this banding. They will only show the properties in the exact search band they’ve been asked for.
Let me give you a real-world example:
I’ve just been to Rightmove and put in a search for the Lake District. I chose the search banding £500,000 to £550,000.
The result: 55 properties in my search banding.
Then I dropped my search to look for properties £475,000 to £500,000, to see how many properties appeared in my search that were £495,00 to £499,999/
The result: an extra 15 houses that had not shown up in my original search, and therefore would have been invisible to me, had I been only searching for properties £500,000 and above.
But something very interesting happens if you price your property at exactly one of the Rightmove search bandings:
You see, if you’re say, £500,000 exactly, your property will actually show up in searches that start at £500,000, but that also end at £500,000. Therefore, as you can see from the screenshot above, instead of your house being in a £25,000 search (£475,000 to £500,000) or a £50,000 search (£500,000 to £550,000), it will actually appear in a £75,000 search band, minimum (£475,000 to £550,000).
In other words, your house will show up in two search bandings, instead of one, potentially showing to twice or even three times more buyers.
If your home is currently on the market, look at your price with new, informed eyes. Is it at exactly one of the Rightmove bandings, or just below? If you’re unsure, or you’d just like a chat about your asking price and whether it’s optimised for Rightmove and the other portals, we’d love you to get in touch.
‘psychological price point’.
If you’d like to watch a super-quick video on this topic, click here
Sam and Phil
AshdownJones – Selling Unique Homes, Better.
