Reading the gap

On a well-prepared sale in prime central London, the gap between guide and achieved sits within a few percent either way. A guide set well under the comparables usually signals a seller chasing competition; one set well above signals a seller who has not yet accepted the market.

The useful question is never whether the guide is right. It is what the seller needs, when they need it, and what else the buyer pool has to choose from that month.

Where the number comes from

Three things set a guide. The first is evidence: what genuinely comparable properties achieved, not what they were marketed at. The second is the seller's position, which is rarely visible from the particulars but shapes everything. The third is the agent's judgement about how many buyers exist for this specific house at this specific moment.

Only the first of those is public. That is why two agents can look at the same house in the same week and propose numbers eight per cent apart, and both be defensible.

Three patterns worth recognising

A guide pitched deliberately low is a competitive strategy. It works when the property is genuinely scarce and the market is active, and it fails badly when it is not: the seller ends up publicly rejecting offers at their own asking price, which reads as confusion.

A guide pitched high is usually a seller who has not finished deciding whether to sell. These properties sit, gather days on market, and are eventually reduced. The reduction, not the original number, becomes the story buyers respond to.

A guide pitched at the evidence is the least dramatic and the most common route to a clean sale. It attracts fewer viewings and a higher proportion of buyers who are actually able to proceed.

What to do with the number

Treat the guide as the opening line of a conversation rather than a fact about the building. The questions that move you forward are practical ones.

• What have genuinely comparable properties achieved in the last six months?

• How long has this one been available, and has the guide moved?

• How many viewings has it had, and how many second viewings?

• Is the seller's onward position agreed, or still theoretical?

Second viewings are the most honest number in that list. Viewings measure the photographs and the price. Second viewings measure the house.

On offering below

An offer under the guide is not an insult, and it is not automatically a negotiation either. It lands well when it comes with a reason and a position: a survey concern, a chain that is already agreed, a completion date the seller needs. It lands badly when it arrives as a round number with nothing behind it.

We tell buyers the same thing we tell sellers. The number matters less than what it is attached to. A slightly lower offer from someone who can exchange in four weeks frequently beats a higher one that depends on a flat in another postcode selling first.