Tag: what percentage of houses sell?

I’ve been asked recently “What percentage of houses sell?” No one really knows how many houses sell as a percentage of those that are listed. The reason is that estate agents don’t ‘show their wares’ or disclose how many properties they have sold. It’s sort of a trade secret, for some reason.

It’s different in other countries, where house sales are often associated with an estate agent, and so you can see who are the best agents at selling and who aren’t so good – something we could probably do with here in the UK, but not something I can see happening any time soon!

If agents did show their stats and figures, then perhaps the customer would be able to make a more informed decision as to which agent they use to sell their own property.

There are various data companies out there who claim to monitor property sales, but none are 100% accurate. There are situations quite often where the owner will take their house off the market and then put it back on a few weeks or months later. A movement like this will count against the agent as an unsold property, when in actual fact they may well sell it when the owner puts it back on the market, but they just had challenging circumstances the first time round.

Similarly, a house may sell and then fall through and then sell again. We’re not 100% sure how these data companies calculate their data, but in this situation, if they are counting that listing as 1 listing, but 2 sales, then they are crediting the agent with 2 sales and 1 listing, which is frankly an impossibility!

As a general guide, from nothing more than experience of working within the industry for many years, agents tend to agree sales (note the term ‘agree sales’ and not ‘sell’) on around 65%-70% of properties, with around 20%-25% of these sales falling through. If you do the maths on that, it means they actually sell around 55% of the properties they put on the market. 

Of course, it all depends on market conditions. In 2008-2009, only around 35% of properties were selling, but during Covid times, it was more like 90%! If you’d like to have a chat about current market conditions and see if I can help you just use this link to book a call at a time that suits you https://calendly.com/craigthompsonbespoke/30min or click here for an in person valuation appointment https://craigthompson.exp.uk.com/contact-us/