Asking price: $2,800,000
Sold for: $3,108,000
Result: $308,000 above asking

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5 bed · 4 bath · 2,240 sq ft · Freehold · Victorian terrace

The vendors came to me after 9 weeks with another agent and zero offers.

That's not unusual. What was unusual was why. The property wasn't overpriced. It wasn't in poor condition. It wasn't in the wrong location. It had been marketed as though it were an average Notting Hill terrace — because the agent treating it hadn't understood what made it genuinely exceptional.

The rear garden is 54 feet deep and completely private. The kitchen had been extended into a full-width glass pavilion in 2019 by a credible architect. The primary bedroom had a ceiling height of 3.4 metres — rare in this type of Victorian build. None of these things were in the listing. The photography showed a pleasant house. It didn't show a remarkable one.

We started again.

New photography — a full-day shoot with a specialist architectural photographer. New floor plans with room dimensions that made the scale legible at a glance. A new description that led with what was genuinely distinctive. And a new pricing strategy: we held the asking price firm and moved the launch to a Thursday, which meant the first weekend of viewings landed when buyer energy peaks.

We had 6 viewings in the first four days. By day 8, we had 4 written offers. By day 12, contracts were exchanged at $3,108,000 — $308,000 above the price the previous agent had been sitting on for nine weeks.

The vendors' words when we exchanged: "We wish we'd called you in September."