What Shopping Can Teach Us About Selling Your Home This Autumn

For reasons I can’t quite explain, I seem to have had shopping on the brain this week. On Sunday, I found myself talking about buying jeans. By Wednesday, I had moved on to clothes shops, end-of-season stock and even TK Maxx.

Perhaps I need to get out more.

Or perhaps, with everyone going back to school this week, some of those economics lessons I sat through at school many more years ago than I care to remember have finally decided to become useful.

Because underneath both slightly strange shopping analogies sits something very simple: supply, demand and buyer behaviour.

And that actually explains quite a lot about the property market at the moment.

The pair of jeans you nearly bought

Imagine you need a new pair of jeans. When money feels fairly comfortable, you walk into a shop, see a pair you like, try them on and think: They’ll do. I’ll take them.

But when things are a little tighter, your behaviour changes. You still want the jeans. You may still intend to buy them. But instead of buying the first acceptable pair you see, you start looking around. Is there another pair that fits slightly better? Is there something similar somewhere else? Are they cheaper online? Is there a sale coming? Could I get more for my money?

You haven’t disappeared from the market. You’ve simply become more discerning.

That, in a very simple way, is what we are seeing from property buyers.

There are actually 8.9% more buyers around than this time last year, so the problem isn't necessarily a lack of people wanting to move. But buyers have around 9% less money in their mortgage pocket than they did at the beginning of the year.

And when your spending power is squeezed, you shop differently. You compare more properties. You take longer. You question value. And unless something feels absolutely right — or particularly good value — you keep looking.

Which brings me to Wednesday's shopping analogy.

What happens when the new collection arrives?

Think about a clothes shop at the end of one season and the beginning of another. Suddenly all the new stock arrives. It goes in the window. It gets the prominent displays. It feels fresh and interesting. But what happens to the clothes that have already been hanging around for a while?

They tend to get pushed towards the back of the shop, forgotten about or reduced in order to persuade somebody to buy them. Eventually, some of them may end up somewhere like TK Maxx.

I am not, incidentally, suggesting you reduce the price of your home by 30% or 50%. But the principle is worth thinking about.

September traditionally brings more properties to the market, and we're entering that period with 5% more homes already for sale than at the same point last year.

So if your property has been on the market for some time without selling, simply continuing to do exactly what you have been doing while lots of shiny new competition arrives probably isn't going to improve your chances.

In fact, it's likely to do the opposite.

Buyers haven't gone away. They have more choice.

This is perhaps the most important point. It is very easy when a property hasn't sold to conclude that there aren't any buyers. That isn't necessarily true. The buyers are there.

But they have more properties to choose from and less money with which to buy them. That combination changes the market completely.

The first house they see no longer necessarily gets the offer, just as the first pair of jeans they try on doesn't necessarily reach the checkout. They keep looking. And every new property that comes onto Rightmove gives them another reason to do so.

So an unsold seller has to ask a slightly uncomfortable but very important question:

Why should somebody choose my home rather than one of the new properties coming onto the market?

If there isn't an obvious answer, something probably needs to change.

Doing something doesn't automatically mean dropping the price

Price is obviously part of the equation, and sometimes the market is simply telling us that the asking price isn't working. But it isn't the only thing worth reviewing.

It could be the presentation. The photography. The first photograph buyers see online. The description. How the rooms are presented. The way viewings are being conducted. The marketing beyond the property portals. Or perhaps the property simply needs to be relaunched and given a fresh reason for buyers who have already scrolled past it to take another look.

The important thing is not to allow a property to become part of the furniture.

Because buyers very quickly become familiar with what is available. A house they have seen repeatedly for weeks or months can almost become invisible — just like that jacket hanging quietly on the sale rail while everybody heads towards the new autumn collection.

Back to economics class

So, after all those years, perhaps I did remember slightly more from school economics than I thought. Supply has increased. Buyers still exist, but their purchasing power has reduced. They therefore have more choice, shop around more and expect greater value.

That's supply and demand in its simplest form. And, apparently, the best way I can explain it is through jeans and TK Maxx. The lesson for sellers, though, is rather more serious.

If your home is already on the market and isn't selling, September isn't the month to sit back and hope that doing exactly the same thing will suddenly produce a different result.

Take another look at it through a buyer's eyes. Because there are buyers out there.

The question is whether, when faced with all that choice, they choose yours.

Adrian Jones