Property owners can get quite obsessed with the value of their homes, so it can be frustrating to realise that a row of properties in the same street built with identical specifications can fetch wildly differing prices.

Many factors cause this. Even the number of the property. A Zoopla study revealed that odd-numbered houses generally fetched several hundred pounds more than even-numbered equivalents. Superstition dictates that homes numbered 13 realise a lower price – notice that there’s no 13 Downing Street. Rude names devalue a home: live on Lancashire’s Slag Lane or Bell End in the West Midlands and you can expect your property valuation to go southwards.

An attractive view like a park or canal, proximity to water, seclusion, a mature garden and selling in the warmer months can all boost selling. Marketing around Christmas or the school summer holidays, being under a flightpath, or near a nightclub or an ugly view like an electricity pylon, substation, industrial estate or tip instead hinder a sale.

Two seemingly very similar properties can have very different values if upon closer inspection one home is in a much better state of repair and has been well looked after, has extra features such as a loft conversion, and has a wow factor such as having been interior designed.

The choice of estate agent can make a sizeable difference. A more confident one with a big contacts list, healthy advertising budget and more sales tools at their disposal may feel that they can sell for a higher price. Some agents may put a house on at a less ambitious price in the hope that they will sell faster and reduce the risk of being dis-instructed if they do not manage to sell.

A well-maintained home painted in bright, welcoming neutral colours will inspire buyers more strongly than clashing strong colour schemes – unless skillfully interior designed. Dated kitchens and the likes of 1970s avocado bathroom suites won’t help sway a sale either. Conversely, removing interior walls to make small, cramped rooms into fewer more spacious, lighter ones can be particularly attractive to buyers – if thought out well.

The more period features an older home can boast, the better. If you replace Victorian sash windows with brash new aluminium ones or tack to the side of the house an off-the-shelf conservatory that is out of keeping with the rest of the building this may deter buyers too. 

Neighbours can affect prices: one survey found, unsurprisingly, squatters to affect house prices negatively, while students came second in the unpopularity stakes, with their likelihood of being noisy and disruptive and less likely to maintain the property well. 

Whilst good transport connections are prized, when too close – such as a railway line or trunk road at the end of your garden – the price will invariably lower.

Being within the catchment area of a good school has long been a factor increasing prices. While at first glance the premium can appear costly, for many families this can be a more cost effective option in the longer term than paying expensive private school fees. Properties within popular catchment areas will always be in demand and homeowners can be confident they will see their money returned when they eventually come to sell.

Nearby premium retailers like Waitrose and Marks and Spencer Food Stores help bump up the price of your property. A renowned gastropub can boost prices as much as a noisy, disruptive, scruffy pub can deflate them. 

First impressions really do count: a shambolic front garden, a teenager’s room that resembles a bomb site or a menagerie of intimidating, smelly animals running wild (a well-looked after cat or dog in tidy surroundings is no problem) can influence values by several thousand pounds alone.

Receipts proving that the property has recently been rewired, has a new central heating system and damp-proof guarantees is clearly going to fetch a higher price than a property with open gas fires in every room, ill-matching wallpapers, a kitchen installed in 1965 and seldom cleaned since then, and everything  badly maintained, from the peeling paint on the window frames to the dripping drainpipes, 

Vendors are often surprised to find that dropping the price of their property is often not as effective as they’d expect. Properties newly on the market usually command far more attention from prospecive buyers, who often consider a home to be on sale for some months to be tarnished. And an owner significantly dropping the price for a quick sale can trigger price drops elsewhere too.

There is little more discouraging to buyers than looking in an estate agent’s window at a sea of properties basking in the sunshine – with one lonely photograph of a building covered in snow, a pathetic remnant of the previous winter.

Obtaining an accurate valuation can itself be a considerable hurdle. The value of a typical terraced or semi-detached house should not be too difficult to assess because there will be others to refer to. But factors like added extensions and modern kitchen can substantially affect the final valuation.

Some agents quote an excessively high figure to flatter the owner into giving them the business, only to suggest dropping the price to a realistic livel a few weeks later, when the property has attracted even less interest than a re-released Bucks Fizz CD. It is important to invite several agents to value your home and compare the suggested asking prices. They can vary greatly. Ask them to justrify the price they give.

You want an agent who can demonstrate that they know the local market well. The more property the agent has sold in the street in question, the better. A good agent will combine a mixture of assessing what has been selling recently, trying to see where the market is now, and reading into how the market will be in the future.

A vendor must be rational about their property’s value if they are to agree with an agent on a realistic price at which to enter the market. Most homeowners look upon their properties more affectionally than a hard-nosed buyer, who may have traipsed through several similar properties the same day and who may not share the vendors’ affection for his algae-ridden decorative plastic pond covering rather too much of the back garden. 

Therefore, a vendor should try to look at their home from a stranger’s point of view, examining its flaws – and price accordingly.