Over valuing is where an estate agent will over inflate the suggested asking price to secure the listing, meaning the home will take longer to sell (and a lot of the time, never sell)
Not every estate agent overvalues - yet many do

I was chatting the High Priest of Property Data at TwentyEA, the amazing Stuart Ducker a few months ago about overvaluing and between us, we came up this question ...

Does the length of time it takes to sell a house have any effect on whether the house will eventually exchange and complete?

So, Stuart came back with these stats

A UK home that takes over 100 days to sell (ie more than 100 days between coming on the market and agreeing a sale) has only just over in 1 in 2 chance of then subsequently exchanging and completing (56% to be precise), with the remaining 44% sales falling thru.

Yet if the property has its sale agreed in under 25 days, the chance of exchanging and completing rises to a nearly 19 out 20 times (94% to be precise)... with the remaining 6% of sales falling thru.

If this isn’t a clear sign that overvaluing is ruining Estate Agency - I dont know what is

Thank you to Stuart for this exceptional data.

Christopher