An agent has said that selling the most expensive homes off-market is proving far more successful than listing them publicly, including on portals. It gets a better price and sells them in less than a third of the time.

Black Brick is a London buying agent specialising in high-end properties, but does also have a sales service.

Going back 18 months to January 2018, it says that the average time to find a buyer when the property was sold off-market was ten weeks, compared to 37 weeks when sold on the open market.

In addition, when the property was sold off-market, Black Brick achieved an average of 96% of the asking price, compared with 92% when the property was sold on the open market.

The data follows a recent report from home-buying service PropertySolvers, which stated that it takes an average of 16 weeks to sell a home across England and Wales*.

In addition recent data from Rightmove, Britain’s biggest property portal, shows that 28% of sales listings have lingered there for more than six months and 8% of properties have been stuck on the market for over a year.

Rightmove says that 26% of its listings in 2018 had been up for sale longer than six months; in 2017 this figure was 27%.

Camilla Dell, managing partner at Black Brick, said: “There is certainly a case to be made for sellers opting to go down a discreet sales route, particularly for special properties.

“Putting a property on to a web portal is not always the right choice for these types of prime and super prime properties.”

She said: “Online selling can be detrimental in the current climate as the property runs the risk of becoming overexposed and would-be buyers can get the wrong impression if it sits on the market for a long time, believing there could be something wrong with the property. By keeping a property off-market, it retains its value, exclusivity and desirability.”

She said that in some London locations, most of the homes that are for sale are being marketed discreetly.

In Belgravia Square, six properties are currently for sale, all off-market. In nearby Chester Square, 19 homes are on the market of which six are on Rightmove and 13 are being sold off-market.

Yesterday on Rightmove, Black Brick was listing just four properties for sale – the highest priced at a gulp-inducing £26.5m. It has been on the market since last November.