The pressures faced by estate agents about overvaluing.

Estate Agents find themselves too often between a rock and hard place in the need to secure listings on one hand & their ethical responisbility to correctly price properties on the other.

The competitive nature of the property market, with sellers often gravitating toward the highest valuation, creates a vicious cycle.

It rewards the agent for inflating freevals, knowing that without the instruction, they have no chance of earning their fee.

It's a flawed dynamic, but one that reflects the realities of a commission based system in which livelihood depends on winning business.

It's bad enough when the seller's perspective, as you've described it, compounds the problem. In pushing for inflated vals with the promise of adjusting the price later, they inadvertently set their properties up for failure.

Overpricing may have the twin impact of not only causing the properties to stick on the shelves but also something even worse,the buyers start to lose trust; hence, come price reductions after some time that could have been avoided in the first place if a realistic approach was instituted.

It creates a Catch22 for the agents: do they risk losing the instruction or gamble with an unrealistic price to win the vendor?

This tension does illustrate how the system leads to decisions that may not be in the best interest of either party.

Estate agents will be expected to steer a difficult course through it.

Education for sellers on the risks of overpricing and trust built through shared seller stories, transparency and evidence based valuations would probably ease these pressures and lead to better outcomes all round.

What say you?