The Property perfectionist

What the Numbers Mean to You

In the first part of this investigation, I looked at what is actually happening across BR1, BR2, BR3, BR4, BR5, BR6 and BR7 and it was data rich.

The headline was pretty clear. There are more homes coming to market, buyers have more choice and, in several postcode areas, properties are taking longer to find a buyer.

But statistics on their own are not much use if you are trying to move. What matters is what you do with them.

And this is where I am going to be straight with you. If you are selling your home, you do not need an agent to tell you what you want to hear.

You need somebody to tell you what you need to hear. That is quite often where sellers get into trouble.

A property launches too high because the valuation sounded flattering. The first few weeks disappear. Viewings slow down. Then comes the conversation about reducing the price.

By that point the property is no longer new to the market and the best opportunity may already have passed.

Sometimes the problem is the market. Sometimes it is the price. Sometimes it is the presentation. Sometimes it is simply that buyers can purchase something better for the same money.

The important thing is working out which one it is. So, postcode by postcode, here is what I would be thinking about if I were selling a home in Bromley right now.

BR1

BR1 is actually holding up reasonably well.

That matters, because if your home is not selling here, blaming the wider market is not always going to stack up.

Terraced houses and homes below around £750,000 are still finding buyers at a decent rate.

The market becomes much harder once you move into detached houses and higher value property, particularly above £1 million.

So if you are selling a £500,000 or £600,000 house, I would not automatically assume you need to price aggressively low. There are buyers in this part of the market.

What you do need is to make sure your house compares well with the other homes they are looking at. Condition matters. Photography matters. The garden matters. Parking matters. And obviously the price matters.

If three similar houses are available at £625,000 and yours is the least impressive but you are asking £650,000, buyers are unlikely to politely overlook that.

They will simply click on the next one. At the higher end of BR1, I would be much more cautious.

There is more competition among detached and £1 million plus homes, and buyers have time to compare.

If you are selling in this bracket, I would want to know exactly what else a buyer can purchase for the same money before deciding where to launch.

Not what sold two years ago. Not what the neighbour thinks theirs is worth.

What can a buyer buy today? That is the competition.

If you have already been on the market for two or three months without a buyer, I would also resist the temptation to keep shaving £10,000 off every few weeks.

That often just tells buyers you are negotiable without giving them a compelling reason to reconsider the house.

If you are unsure where your BR1 home genuinely sits in the market, get in touch. I am happy to look at the competing properties with you and tell you where I believe buyers will see the value.

BR2

BR2 needs a very different conversation. This is the postcode where the market has become noticeably harder.

There is substantially more stock, properties are taking longer to sell and the percentage finding a buyer in the first month has fallen sharply.

That means one thing above everything else. You cannot afford to be ordinary.

If you are selling between £500,000 and £750,000, there is still a market, but buyers have far more choice than they did.

Your home needs to compete. That might mean a better launch price. It might mean better photography. It might mean sorting out the tired front garden or finally painting the room you have been meaning to paint since 2019. Sometimes it is the small things.

The harder part of BR2 is above £1 million. This is where I would be particularly wary of optimistic valuations.

If an agent tells you your house is worth £1.25 million, the next question should not be, “Great, when can we go live?”

It should be: “What evidence shows buyers are actually paying that?”

And then: “What else can they buy for £1.25 million?”

At the very top end the buyer pool gets thinner again, so being ten or fifteen percent ahead of the market is not giving yourself negotiating room.

It is giving buyers a reason not to book a viewing. If your BR2 property has been sitting for 60 or 90 days, I would want to go back to the beginning and ask whether the original advice was right.

Sometimes sellers have not failed. They have simply followed advice that was too optimistic.

That may not be what you wanted to hear when the house was first valued, but good advice should help you move, not just help an agent win the instruction.

If you are not sure what your BR2 home is genuinely worth in today’s market, send me the address. I will happily look at what buyers can purchase around you and give you a straight answer.

BR3

BR3 is probably the nicest conversation to have at the moment. It is the strongest performing postcode in the study.

That does not mean every house will sell at any price. It means there are buyers and, when a property is priced and presented sensibly, the market is still working.

The £500,000 to £750,000 market is particularly healthy.

So if you are selling in that bracket, I would not panic. I would make sure the launch is strong, the house looks its best and the price is supported by the competition.

Then let the market work. There is also decent activity higher up the price range.

That is important because it suggests BR3 sellers have a little more breathing room than someone selling in BR2 or BR6.

But there is a catch. Because BR3 is performing relatively well, a property that sits unsold for months stands out more.

If similar homes are finding buyers and yours is not, eventually you have to stop blaming the market. Something is different. It might be the asking price. It might be presentation. It might be a poor listing. It might be that another house two streets away simply offers buyers more for the money.

That is when you need someone to look at the evidence without trying to protect the original valuation.

If your BR3 home has been on the market for a while and you cannot understand why it has not sold, get in touch. In a reasonably healthy market, the clues are often easier to find.

BR4

BR4 is slightly different again. The numbers suggest buyers are taking longer to make decisions, but quite a few sellers are still finding buyers by the time they reach the 60 to 90 day point.

That means I would not overreact after two quiet weeks. There is a difference between a property taking a little longer and a campaign that is clearly not working.

In BR4, I would pay very close attention to the quality of the interest. Are people viewing? Are they coming back? Are you receiving sensible feedback? Are buyers mentioning another house they prefer?

If you are getting activity, I would be more patient here than I would in BR2. If you are getting almost nothing, that is different. Silence is feedback too.

Most BR4 activity sits around the £500,000 to £1 million range, and that is where buyers are making very direct comparisons between family homes. A house can be £25,000 more expensive and still win if it is better. But it has to look better.

If you are asking a premium, buyers need to be able to see why. If you reach 60 days with weak activity, that is the moment to review what is happening rather than just carrying on and hoping.

BR4 appears to give sellers a second chance. I would not waste it.

If you are unsure whether your BR4 price is sensible or whether you should give the market more time, I can look at the competing homes with you. Sometimes the right advice is to change something. Sometimes it is simply to hold your nerve.

BR5

BR5 is another area where the price of your home makes a big difference.

Below £500,000, the market is still relatively active.

If you are selling at this level, the challenge is less about finding any buyer at all and more about standing out against the other homes in their search.

Price sensibly. Present properly. Make it easy for them to choose yours.

Once you move above £500,000, particularly between £500,000 and £750,000, things become more difficult.

This is a big family house market and buyers have more options.

Detached homes have also become noticeably harder to sell.

So if you are sitting at £675,000 thinking, “Well, mine is nicer than the one that sold for £650,000,” make sure buyers agree with you. They are the only judges who matter.

And this is one of the areas where I think sellers can easily be caught out by a valuation based too heavily on old sold prices.

The buyer standing in front of you today does not care what somebody paid eighteen months ago if they can buy a better house around the corner now.

That sounds obvious when you say it out loud. But a surprising amount of property pricing ignores it.

If you are already listed in BR5 and have reached 60 days without much activity, particularly above £500,000, I would review the price now rather than wait another couple of months and end up competing as stale stock.

And if you are unsure what your BR5 home should genuinely be asking, get in touch. I can compare it with what buyers have available today and tell you where I would position it.

BR6

BR6 is the postcode where I would be most careful about the launch.

The numbers here are difficult to ignore. There are a lot of homes for sale.

More than half the current stock in the data has already reduced. More than half has been on the market for more than 90 days.

And a significant number have been sitting there for more than six months. That means the risk is not getting onto the market.

Any agent can do that. The risk is becoming another house buyers have already seen twenty times online.

For normal family houses, this matters just as much as it does for expensive detached homes.

Semis have slowed. Terraces have slowed.

So if you are selling at £500,000, £650,000 or £750,000, do not assume this is only somebody else’s problem.

My approach here would be simple. Launch at a price that gives buyers a reason to view now. Not eventually. Not after the first reduction. Now.

Because if half the competition has already reduced, reducing later does not automatically make you attractive.

You are simply joining a very large club. And it is not a club I would be rushing to become a member of.

Above £1.5 million, I would be even more careful. The buyer pool is thin. At that level, every part of the proposition needs to work.

Price. Presentation. Photography. Floorplan. Video. Storytelling. Marketing reach. Everything.

If you launch an expensive BR6 home at an optimistic number and spend three months discovering the market disagrees with you, recovering from that can be difficult.

That is exactly why I would rather tell a seller what they need to hear at the beginning than what they wanted to hear.

It is a much nicer conversation than explaining four months later why we now need to reduce the price.

If you are selling in BR6 and want a second opinion on where your property genuinely sits, get in touch. With this much competition, understanding exactly what buyers can choose instead is more important than ever.

BR7

BR7 is probably the clearest example of why one piece of advice cannot fit an entire postcode.

Below about £750,000, the market is reasonably healthy.

If you are selling at £550,000 or £650,000, there are still buyers and properties are still moving.

You need to be sensible, but you do not need to behave as if the sky is falling in.

As values rise, the picture changes.

Between £750,000 and £1 million, buyers become more selective.

Above £1 million, more selective again.

And once you reach £1.5 million and £2 million plus, you are dealing with a much smaller buyer pool with considerably more choice.

This is where I would be very wary of adding a premium simply because the house is large or on a good road. Buyers at this level tend to do their sums.

They see the dated kitchen. They price the bathrooms. They look at the windows. They work out what the extension will cost. They mentally spend your money before they have even offered you theirs.

So a £1.75 million house that needs £200,000 of work may be compared with a finished house at £1.9 million.

That comparison matters.

The data also shows larger reductions at the upper end of BR7. That tells us sellers are having to move further to meet the buyer.

My preference would always be to have that conversation before launch.

If the evidence says £1.6 million, I would rather explain why than tell you £1.8 million because it sounds nicer.

One gets you a buyer. The other gets me an instruction. There is a difference.

If you own a higher value BR7 home and are genuinely unsure where it sits, I am happy to analyse it with you. At this level, a £100,000 mistake in positioning can cost far more than just £100,000 once the property has been sitting on the market for months.

So what should sellers take from all this? The market is not dead. There are still thousands of buyers and thousands of sales happening.

But the market has changed. There is more choice. Buyers are comparing harder. They are less forgiving of optimistic asking prices.

And in several postcode areas, the homes that do not capture interest early are finding it harder to recover later.

That does not mean the answer is always to reduce your price.

Sometimes the answer is better presentation. Sometimes it is better photography. Sometimes it is better marketing. Sometimes the agent needs to explain the property better. Sometimes you are simply positioned against the wrong competition.

And yes, sometimes the price is wrong. The job is to find out which one.

That is where I believe sellers need better advice. Not a valuation designed to flatter you.

Not “let’s try it and see”. Not three months of telling you the market is quiet before suggesting the price was wrong all along.

Proper evidence. What has sold. What has not. What buyers are choosing. What they are rejecting. And why.

Because the best time to understand those things is before you launch. The second best time is now.

If your home is currently on the market and the results are not what you expected, feel free to get in touch.

I will look at the property, the competition and the evidence and tell you what I would do.

It may be what you were hoping to hear. It may not. But I would rather help you make the right decision than tell you the comfortable one.

Clarity. Not optimism. Not guesswork. Just evidence.