Market Review – Central London Property

Looking forward to 2010

By William Hughes-Ward, Senior Sales Manager

As we approach the end of the first quarter of 2010, the Chelsea market is starting to get a head of steam with progressively more property coming onto the market and a level of new buyers to match. As a company, we have registered nearly 4,000 new buyers already this year, many of them looking in the Royal Borough. The much-debated issue with the market last year was stock and as we know only too well, if the residents of our area don’t want or need to sell, they simply sit tight and wait. As a point of interest, sales in the Royal Borough were down from a 15 year average of 3,048 to 1,409 in 2009 (see graph).

The value of experience

By Liza-Jane Kelly, Sales Director

I think that it’s fair to say that this is the toughest property market that anyone has seen for a very long time. There are not too many property professionals in the business now who were around in the early 70’s when I am told it was just as tough and none of those that are still in the industry had senior, managerial roles at the time. The key is how to react.

Some agents have evidently decided that it is important to be extremely downbeat with buyers and sellers alike and to tell all who will listen that it is a terrible time to buy or sell and that they would do better to come back next year (they don’t use exactly these words however their attitude, demeanour and body language shout it). Others have decided that all is rosy in the garden and are still tempting their poor, unsuspecting clients with last year’s prices and then working the price down to a more acceptable level in a few months.

At Marsh & Parsons we try to find a happy medium between these two stances. Our mission remains to achieve the highest possible price for our clients. However we do, as gently as possible, try and bring our clients expectations in line with the realities of the current market. I think we have the balance just right and our professional, well trained staff (even more crucial in the current market) are able to tread the line between being too afraid of giving pertinent feedback and advice and too impatient to just ‘get the property sold’. It is one of the great skills of the job and good agents should be adept at it.