Inspiration

The £10 pricing technique

The RAT (Rawlings Agency Tip)

When it comes to securing an instruction at the right price, here’s a tip I have always found effective in the field. When the vendor says they want X amount, (which is inevitably far too much for their miserable excuse for a residence) why not put their request in the context of something much more tangible - a £10 note! Hold up a £10 note and ask what they think it is worth. Clearly they’ll say £10. It’s easy to value accurately as it has the price printed on it.

Then ask them to agree with you that if you tried to sell the £10 note for £11, there would simply be no interest whatsoever. So far so good.

Then ask the vendor if they think that people would be interested in buying the £10 note at its correct value - £10. Chances are that they would not. Why would they? What’s the benefit in buying a £10 note for £10?

So even at its correct market price, the £10 note is not necessarily readily saleable. The only way of securing a sale for anything near the correct figure would be to quote £9 for it. There would be so many buyers lining up for the deal that this in itself would have the effect of pushing up the price to the correct value - £10. But you had to quote the more attractive figure initially in order to cause the sale to happen. Hopefully the penny will drop.

Remember, our job is to create a sale. We do this by stimulating buyers into action. And in today’s market, we need to quote tomorrow’s prices if our stock is to be more saleable than competing properties, even when they are priced at the “correct” level.

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© Richard Rawlings 2010
Richard Rawlings is the founding director of Estate Agency Insight, which specialises in helping estate agencies harness opportunity through innovative method, marketing, publicity, and training. He can be contacted at or on 0845 838 1354.

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