Most vendors want to sell their home as quickly as possible. The longer the selling process drags on, the more the uncertainty is stressful and the more sick of inspections vendors become.

All the same, many think that selling early in the marketing program is inevitably selling cheap. Is this good thinking?

Many inexperienced vendors don’t realise that a property attracts a real ‘buzz’ when it is first presented on the market and that all the purchasers that have been looking for their ideal home for weeks and months converge eagerly on a new listing. Even if they do realise this, they don’t always understand the effect of this ‘buzz’ on the price.

That’s why most agents say that the hardest sale to make is the one that comes along in the first days of marketing, especially if the vendors are inexperienced. While agents know from experience that an early offer means that the property is competitively priced, many vendors think they will get more if they wait.

When presented with an early offer on their property, many vendors reason that if Purchaser One is prepared to pay $x in the first week of marketing, then Purchaser Two will pay $x+ next week. They say things like If the first ad brings in this sort of response, what will the second one bring? - as if price increases with time and exposure.

New listings attract numbers and numbers mean competition. Competition creates the climate that generates the highest offers. It creates a sense of urgency in any purchaser who has fallen in love with a property and makes them act quickly in the fear that someone else will snap it up before they do. The longer a property is on the market at a given price, the more the sense of competition or ‘buzz’ fizzles out, and the more likely subsequent purchasers are to feel they have plenty of time to make up their minds – and make lower offers.