Why I Won't Give You a Number Just To Win Your Business

She went with the bigger number. 

Three weeks later she had two viewings and zero applications. 

I don't blame her for choosing it. If I were sitting across from two appraisals and one was clearly higher, I'd want to believe it too. But an appraisal isn't a wish. It's meant to be a prediction, built on evidence, that the market will actually validate. Too many agencies treat it as a sales pitch instead. 

An Appraisal Should Be a Prediction You Can Prove 

Every appraisal I give is built off recent comparable lettings in that suburb, current stock levels, and how quickly similar properties have moved in the last four to six weeks. Not what a landlord wants to hear. Not what wins the listing against a competitor. What the data says a tenant will actually pay, this week, for this property. 

Pro Tip: If two agencies appraise your rental and the gap is more than $20 to $30 a week, ask both for the three most recent comparable lettings they used to get there. If one can't produce them, you already have your answer. 

An inflated appraisal doesn't just cost you a listing fee somewhere else. It costs you weeks of vacancy while the market quietly tells you the number was wrong, and by then you're often dropping the price anyway, just later and with a worse mortgage buffer. 

Three Weeks of Viewings That Never Turned Into Applications 

That's exactly what happened here. The property sat with the other agency for three weeks. Two viewings. Zero applications. The standard next move at that point is predictable: drop the price. That was the advice she was given. 

Instead, she rang us back. 

I went out to see her within the day, not the week. We didn't touch the price. Our original figure was already right, the market just hadn't been given a reason to say yes yet. What had gone wrong wasn't the number, it was everything around it. The listing photos were flat, dim, phone-shot. No urgency in the ad copy. No real push behind it. 

We Fixed It In a Day, Not a Fortnight 

We replaced the photos with professional advertising images and had the property back on the market within a day of that first phone call. Three days later, her property manager Lisa ran a single open home. More than eight groups came through. 

The property was rented almost instantly, at the price we'd appraised it at from the start. 

Here's how she put it afterwards, in her own words: after wasting three weeks with the other agency and getting only two viewings, she came back to WRE, and Michelle organised new photos and had the property back on the market within a day. Three days later Lisa held a viewing with more than eight groups, and the house was rented almost instantly. She's heading overseas soon, and says she feels completely confident leaving her home in Lisa's hands. 

That's the part that matters most to me, more than the turnaround time. She's about to be on the other side of the world. The property she owns here needs to be managed by people she trusts without needing to check in on them. 

The Number Was Never the Problem 

The lesson in this one isn't complicated, but it's uncomfortable for anyone who's ever picked an agency because they liked the bigger figure on the appraisal. The number was right the first time. What was missing was the execution behind it, decent photos, a property manager who moves fast, and pricing that respects what the data is actually telling you instead of what you'd prefer it to say. 

We manage everything under one all-inclusive 8.25% + GST fee, no markup, no hidden extras tacked on later, plus a letting fee of one week's rent + GST when we place a tenant. No surprises stacked into the number after you've signed. 

An honest appraisal that gets acted on properly will always beat a flattering one that sits on the market gathering dust. 

Ready for an appraisal built on real data, not a number designed to win your business? Get in touch with the WRE team today.