National house price indices make for good headlines and poor decisions. They describe an average that nobody actually lives in. What matters when you are selling a four bedroom semi on Hadham Road is what four bedroom semis on Hadham Road are doing.

Across our own instructions this autumn, three things stand out.

Correctly priced homes are still going quickly

Property that comes to market at a sensible figure is agreeing a sale inside three weeks. That has not changed much in two years. What has changed is the penalty for getting it wrong at the start: an over-priced launch now sits, and the reduction that follows rarely recovers the momentum lost in those first two weekends.

Buyers are better informed and slower to move

Almost every viewer arrives having already looked at the EPC, the flood map, the planning history and what the house sold for in 2016. That is a good thing. It does mean the ones who book a second viewing are serious, and the ones who do not were never going to be.

Chains are the constraint, not demand

Most of the fall-throughs we have dealt with this year came from three or four links further down a chain, not from the sale itself. If you are selling, the single most useful thing you can do is be in a position to move — sold subject to contract, mortgage agreed in principle, solicitor instructed before you need one.

What that means if you are thinking of selling

Price it properly, prepare the legal pack early, and do not take a national average as a guide to your own street. If you want a view on what your home would actually achieve, we will give you an honest figure rather than the highest one.

Thinking of moving?

Find out what your home is worth