It’s not a secret that home sellers in today’s real estate market are looking for every possible marketing advantage they can get.

Photo by Solo, with others
 

It is true for most parts of the country including the Princeton real estate market. We, as real estate agents, are actually looking for the same thing for our clients. It's at a time like this, when marketing gurus and advisers come out with “new” ideas for the eager audiences. 

One of the critical aspects of getting a home sold is pricing it right from the start. I wrote before about the tips for selling the house ,why houses are not selling, and mistakes that should be avoided at all cost.

To make sure I don’t miss something that can be of value to my clients, I read a lot, and am always on a lookout for new ideas on the subject of pricing and home marketing. This is the advice for helping sellers set the prices I read today in the WSJ.

"You should list higher than you're willing to accept” a marketing professor is quoted. "If you ask a high price, people use that as information in setting their reference price. But there's also evidence that, if you set a price that is implausibly high, the impact will be less than if you

set a price that's more reasonable." – the quote continues.

With all due respect, duh ? Is this the break through in the science of price setting? I don’t give up easy, so I read two more ideas from another marketing professor.

Don’t set the price as a precise number. For example, the $600,000 price is perceived as luxury, while $621,000 – is perceived as a bargain. According to this scientist “We associate precise numbers with lower-priced goods.”

When dropping the price – make it an easy number to calculate. For example, if you drop the price from $678, 385 to $637,878, it is difficult to calculate and can be perceived as not a significant drop. "If you use digits that make computation difficult, it will lead to a perception of a small difference." Suggestion: drop the price to: $670,385.

The news is not very good for many home sellers, who need real marketing help and advice more then any time before. The S&P Case-Shiller national home price index fell 8.9% for the fourth quarter from previous year -the largest decline in its 20 years of data. I don't have a reason to doubt that the advice above is based on some research done by the academics. But would it really help the sellers now? I don't think so.

Do you think these ideas are important for selling houses now? Do you think that national media and press are doing disservice by offering superficial advice to today’s sellers?

To learn more about the condition of the local Princeton area and national real estate market, please read:

How is the Princeton Market? - real estate statistics and analysis for January 2008 

Princeton real estate -local or global ? - review of the differences and similarities in the local and national real estate markets

Princeton real estate statistics -2007 summary 

Princeton area real estate housing prices - review of prices for the period of 2004-2007  for Princeton, Hopewell, Pennington, West Windsor, and Montgomery Township.

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