David Hearn wrote:

Yes, we got a leaflet through our door from Foxtons saying that they, on
average, get 98% of the asking price - showing it as a good reason to go
with them.

That's a pretty meaningless statistic if there's a corresponding
tendency to recommend lower asking prices than rival agents who
recommend a higher price and achieve, on average, a lower fraction
of it.

After all, if the seller overrides the agent's recommended asking
price by increasing it by 10%, they're not going to be as likely
to achieve 98% of 110%, are they?

On the other hand, it's a useful statistic for buyers. They know
that if they offer 2% under the asking price of a property marketed
by Foxtons, they're likely to get it without much haggling.

We have similar wishy-washy guidelines in Scotland, and the skill
of buyers' solicitors is to know how sellers' solicitors think in
terms of the fiddle factors they recommend. For example, the selling
solicitor (equivalent to English estate agent - estate agents as
such, who are not also solicitors, are few and far between here)
will visit a prospective vendor and between them they'll come up
with a figure of how much they're *likely to get* for the place.
Then it will be downrated by some magic fiddle factor pulled out
of a hat. A property expected to fetch £170k might well be marketed
at "offers over £140k". Some firms have reputations for setting
these asking prices lower than others, the idea being to attract
more interest by advertising the same property for as little as
offers over £125k, say. So you know you will probably need to offer
130% of a property marketed by W (not naming any names) but only
120% of a similar property marketed by most others, for an equal
chance of acceptance. Not very helpful if you're not in the know,
but it must work or they wouldn't do it.

Of course both practices are susceptible to the "must have" buyer
phenomenon, where pre-emptive offers too good to refuse come in.