Over-pricing your property ‘can add around two months to time it takes to sell’

Over-priced properties can languish on the market for around two months longer than homes which have been given a more realistic price tag from the outset, research suggests.

Zoopla used its own listing data and final sale prices across England and Wales from the Land Registry to make the findings.

Homes were considered over-priced where their original asking price had been reduced at least once – and the average time to sell was compared with homes where sellers had not needed to chop down their asking price.

Across England and Wales, over-priced homes took 77 days to sell on average – 58 days longer than the average of 19 days for accurately priced homes.

Homes in the North East of England are the slowest to shift if sellers are too ambitious with their pricing, adding 68 days typically to the time to sell compared with an accurately priced property, Zoopla found.

In Wales, the difference was 66 days.

The shortest difference was found in the Midlands.

In the West Midlands, the difference between over-priced and accurately priced homes selling was 49 days – and in the East Midlands it was 53 days.

Pricing a home accurately from the outset can help to generate an initial flurry of excitement around a property and may result in several buyers putting in competing offers.

But if a property sits on the market for a while because it has initially been priced too highly it can appear “stale”.

Potential buyers may assume a property has been listed for sale for a while because there are problems with it, even if this is not the case.

Laura Howard, a spokeswoman for Zoopla, said: “Our analysis only goes to prove what every good agent already tells us – that pricing your home realistically results in a better chance of a quicker sale.

“Entering the market fresh with a price that’s too high is not just a gamble that might not pay off, it can actually be detrimental to the selling process.”

Here are the average selling prices achieved, times to sell if a home is accurately priced, time to sell if it is over-priced and the difference in selling time in days, according to Zoopla:

1 North East, £123,000, 22, 90, 68
2. Wales, £145,000, 17, 83, 66
3. North West, £145,000, 21, 85, 64
4. London, £445,000, 24, 84, 60
5. Yorkshire and the Humber, £149,000, 18, 76, 58
6. South East, £308,000, 21, 78, 57
=7. East of England, £270,000, 19, 73, 54
=7. South West, £233,500, 16, 70, 54
9. East Midlands, £172,500, 16, 69, 53
10. West Midlands, £173,000, 17, 66, 49