The first reason is the price, but not in the way sellers expect. An apartment listed ten per cent above the market does not sell ten per cent slower — it disappears from the search results of everyone whose budget ends just below it, and those are exactly the buyers who would have paid the market price.
The second is the photographs. Four vertical phone pictures taken at midday with the lights off tell a buyer nothing about the ceiling height, the aspect or the plan. We have re-listed properties with nothing changed except measured drawings and photographs taken in the right light, and watched enquiry volume triple.
The third is the plan itself, or rather the absence of one. A surprising number of listings for a 130-square-metre apartment cannot tell you how those metres are arranged. Buyers who cannot picture the layout do not book a viewing; they scroll.
The fourth is the agent. A property listed with five agencies is a property nobody is responsible for. Each agent assumes another will do the work, none of them knows the building, and the seller hears nothing for weeks.
None of this is exotic. A measured plan, honest photographs, a defensible price and one person answerable for the outcome will move almost anything in this city within a season. What will not move it is another portal.
