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What a week!

Welcome to your weekly briefing on important things affecting the housing market.

As a subscriber, the facts hit your inbox first. BUT it is always worth tuning into the live stream, as there may be a couple of last-minute additions. Find the live stream here:

Remember: If you’ve recently rented, bought or sold a home, please report your price to the BestAgent Public House Price Index.

This week’s top 5 housing market facts:

1. Sellers still not learning that in this market buyers set the price and it’s not going up.

   https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/33e5171e7995ce17

2. Rise in rent repayment order enquiries sparked by Reeves rule breaking.

   https://www.landlordzone.co.uk/news/chancellors-licence-debacle-sparks-rise-in-rent-repayment-queries

3. Gap between median asking and selling prices closes by £9,500 suggesting sellers are starting to wake up to market realities

   https://x.com/moving_charlie/status/1986197316529725702?s=46

4. Bank of England doesn’t cut rates, by narrow 5-4 vote. Media clutches at hope that this means they’ll defo cut next time even though Bailey says inflation is sticky and they won’t cut until it’s heading back down to 2%.

   https://x.com/moving_charlie/status/1986465188007006597

5. UK Construction activity declines at fastest pace for over five years reports S&P Global

   https://www.pmi.spglobal.com/Public/Home/PressRelease/2efd8f9aa44a4bc98efadb8db66d9350

OPINION!

Reeves’ weird speech leaves everyone in fear of a brutal budget for everyone. If she raises taxes in breach of manifesto, she should resign. https://x.com/moving_charlie/status/1986208615724724540

Thought of the Week: An overvaluing revelation.

I’ve just spent the last 72 hours at events with estate agents in Manchester, Bristol and London, explaining the BestAgent ‘No Valuations’ process, and how it’s led to extraordinary results for the first agent who’s adopted it.

They’ve sold everything they’ve listed, in well under half the usual timeframe, with not one single fall through.

I talked the agents through the process, which is lengthy, but which begins with meeting sellers and telling them they don’t need a valuation, because it’s only ever a guess.

Instead, with this process, they will know the value of their home within 5 weeks when they have multiple offers, and so will know exactly what their onward purchase budget is far sooner than any other way.

Fine, say all the other agents, except for one thing: “If our job isn’t to advise sellers on price, what is it? Why have we spent years developing valuation skills, and does this process mean we have to just stop?”

On all 3 days, the same topic came up. “What’s our job, if it isn’t to value properties?”

There was a real sense of bewilderment at the notion that the thing they spend more time on than anything else, may actually be of no use whatsoever.

Observing the raised eyebrows, uncomfortable body language, and visible discomfort at this realisation made me understand something:

Decades of fighting other agents based on who can justify their valuation better than another agent has deeply conditioned them into genuinely believing, without question, that because sellers expect valuations, that’s what they must be able to do.

So, it twisted their brains to hear that Carringtons sellers are instructing them with no valuation at all. Not even a ball park figure.

One agent in London even said out loud “Well what’s our job then?”.

All of this led me to the realisation that overvaluing, by many good agents, is not done in bad faith. It’s an inescapable consequence of competing with bad faith agents who are deliberately, wilfully, excessive overvaluing.

In one meeting this week, one agency owner (with very good completion ratios) protested that she never overvalued. A moment later, we happened upon one of her instructions on Rightmove, with the propertylog extension showing that the price had been recently reduced, something that’s only necessary because it was overvalued in the first place.

She was visibly upset. She became defensive, as the reality dawned that she was actually a participant in the problem.

My point is always that, no matter how hard you try not to overvalue, when you’re up against rampant overvaluing from other agents, the subconscious need to win listings to keep your business going, leads to genuine self-delusion.

This is a real, pervasive problem. There are good-faith agents, with better than average results, who’s opinion of themselves is that they are the honest ones.

When having to consider adopting the BestAgent approach, it unavoidably involves a moment of painful personal reckoning.

Which means two things:

1. The widespread overvaluing problem is actually more deeply rooted than I feared, because there is a genuine, powerful level of denial of it’s existence by many agents, including good ones.

2. I now understand why so many agents think that their job is simply to list a property at what they think is the right price, and the rest will sort itself out.

In other words, these agents have completely lost sight of their real purpose: to create a market for each and every individual property.

This is good news and bad news.

It’s good news as I now know exactly what I needs to be done to fix this problem.

It’s bad news because that’s going to be harder than I thought at first. I’ve basically got to de-train the old ways out and retrain them as to the true nature of their job.

Sorry, this is a lot of dull detail, but it’s important and relevant to all movers, as it will help you to understand why things are so bad!

If you’re still reading, I’m impressed! Boring, but important. Sorry.

I’m excited. I’m a big step closer to fixing the housing market.

Have a great weekend.

Charlie

In case you missed anything this week…

The (not so) Evil Master Plan to Fix Housing

Ask Me Anything About the Housing Market

Most viewed post this week on X:

Most viewed video this week on TikTok:

@movinghomewithcharlie

Sellers waiting for the perfect market?

That’s all for this week!

Thank you so much for subscribing. Please do give me any feedback you have by replying to this email.

Have a great weekend, lots of love and luck to you all.

Charlie