Setting the selling price of a property is a delicate exercise, and the temptation to aim high is almost universal. Each owner has their own conviction about what their apartment or house is worth: the work done, the years of life, the memories. The market does not take any of these elements into account. Olivier Francfort has been a real estate agent for 13 years at the Laforêt agency in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, and has seen many sellers come up against the same obstacle: the price is too high from the start.
“If selling customers insist on a high price, we test. If after three weeks there were plenty of visits and a great offer, we were right to test, he explains. But if nothing much happens in fifteen days or three weeks, we need to lower the price immediately. » The window of reactivity is therefore short. A property recently put on the market naturally attracts the attention of buyers who are actively monitoring it. If this first wave does not convert, the sign is clear. A reduction of 5%, or lowering a threshold (from 210,000 to 199,000 for example), is often enough to attract a new group of buyers who had not previously seen the property within their budget range.
Do not “burn” your property
The classic mistake is to let it drag on. “If the property stays too long, a month, two months, it gives a bad image. The buyer says to himself: no one wants it, I don’t see why I should be the one to buy it”warns the real estate agent. This is the effect “well grilled” : by stagnating on the portals, the ad loses its desirability, and buyers become even more demanding on the price. “You have to be proactive and react quickly”he summarizes. A second reduction then often becomes necessary, where a single reduction, carried out earlier, would have sufficed.
Some sellers prefer to wait, confident that a buyer will eventually accept their price. A strategy that may pay off… or not. “If you really want to sell at a high price, if you don’t accept the market estimate, then you have to have time. Maybe one day someone will buy it, but we don’t know when: 3 months, 6 months… or never”warns Olivier Frankfurt. It all depends on the urgency of the project behind the sale: purchase of a new property, inheritance, divorce, professional transfer, etc.
The phantom offer, the trap that paralyzes the seller
There is also a psychological trap which pushes the seller to cling for too long to a price that has become unrealistic: the seller who received a high offer which did not materialize, and who remains convinced that his property is worth this price. “It happens: we put a property at an optimistic price, someone positions themselves very high, and after three, four, five days, he retracted when he noticed that it was too expensive »says Olivier Frankfurt. “But the seller has been convinced since that moment that this is the true price, even if there was not a euro in his pocket and even if we try to reason with him. »
The danger is therefore to anchor ourselves on this phantom offer: “If we give him another cheaper offer, he won’t listen to reason. It’s very difficult to make him understand that it’s an offer that didn’t go through, that we know we’ll never get it again, and that it’ll never come back.”regrets the agent.
DPE F or G, the discount is no longer negotiable
Another source of price reduction, and increasingly structural: the energy label. Since January 1, 2025, G-rated accommodation can no longer be rented. The F will follow on January 1, 2028, in less than two years. “In rental investment, the importance is enormous. When the DPE is in F or G, they no longer want it. Or if they want it, they go as low as possible”observes Olivier Frankfurt. For an investor, a property with a poor DPE has become something to avoid or negotiate hard. If your property is poorly rated energetically, you will need to take this into account from the start, so as not to lose precious weeks.
