In business, I have always tried to live by the following principles – be honest, be straight, be professional and be fair.  For those of you reading this article who have contacted me, I am sure you will agree that I have clearly demonstrated these qualities.

Being a chartered surveyor, and therefore a member of the most highly respected organisation of property advisers in the world, has bound me to a moral, ethical and professional code of conduct.  Furthermore, I am very passionate about my business and profession and take every transaction I am involved in very seriously.  Therefore, it pains me to see when certain commercial property advisers are failing in their duties to provide their clients with good quality advice.

I am seeing an increasing number of cases where property owners, who are placing their properties with estate agents, business transfer agents, commercial agents and surveyors, are bewildered as to why their properties are not selling.  In the vast majority of cases, the reason is plain and simple – they are asking too much money!  Now, this is not always their fault, as they are simply taking advice from so called experts, who at times are more interested in getting as many properties onto their books as possible than they are at giving honest and accurate advice.  After all, you will more than likely give your property to an agent to sell if they tell you that they can easily find you a buyer and that they can get you a very high price.

When advisers over promise in terms of the price they can achieve for a property, the demand they can generate and the time-frame in which they can achieve a sell, they are sailing in dangerous and turbulent seas.  The property owner, floating high in the sky with high expectations, soon comes crashing to the ground when their agent doesn’t deliver.  When they soon realize that there is little if any interest in their property, alarm bells start to ring and one of the first things they do is contact us.  

What is apparent within minutes of speaking with these people is that they have been given incorrect advice.  When we mention that their aspirations of price are unrealistic, we always detect scepticism as after all, they as sellers have approached us as buyers and so we will obviously want to pay as little as possible.  However, we never fail to pre-empt this concern and address it by saying that we may not be able to pay them the highest price but we have cash available to buy property and can do so quickly.  We also tell them that if they are simply looking for the highest price, then we are more than happy to refer them to well established and professional firms of chartered surveyors and auctioneers who can assist them in selling and who will give them honest and accurate advice.  The majority of callers who we have referred have sold their properties and have been delighted with the outcomes.  Examples of referrals we have made include a £1.8m pub in the West Midlands let to Punch Taverns, a £1.2m office in London, a £600,000 restaurant in Sussex, a £400,000 guest house in Avon, a £200,000 shop in Liverpool and a £120,000 florist in Kent.  Virtually all of our referrals have resulted in our callers selling their properties for less than they were first told they were worth by the agents who they originally engaged before they contacted us.  This proves that the callers were misinformed by the original agents and that the opinions on value that we gave when we first spoke to the callers were correct.

There is no advantage whatsoever in an agent over-valuing a property when all that will happen will be the agent will fail to sell the property, the owner will feel disappointed and will have wasted valuable time and the owner will find it hard to trust any other agents and come to terms with the true value of their property as they will have an unrealistic price fixed in their mind which was put there by the original agent.  This substandard and unacceptable approach, which I would like to think will not be adopted by too many agents, creates a stagnant market where over-priced property doesn’t sell, people become disgruntled with commercial agents and people stand to lose a great deal of money if banks repossess where owners run out of time in trying to sell their properties which they never stood any chance of selling as they were seeking unrealistic prices as a result of poor advice.          

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