UPDATED 2019
If you are trying to sell your home, market time is not your friend. The longer your house stays on the market, the more the value goes down in the buyer's mind. If your list price is too high and does not match the perceived value, your house will linger, unsold and stale.
Sellers who price their homes way over where the comps have sold, or way over what their real estate professional has told them, are shooting themselves in the foot. It is a very expensive mistake that is difficult to rectify. Lowering the price is a good move, but often it's not enough to catch up to the market.
Here is something horrifying that I found today on our local Multiple Listing Service. It shows the days on market for a Winnetka home:
That shows 2,344 days on the market. What's worse, is that the time is actually longer since the listing was canceled and relisted several times. The real market time is 2,752 days - it's been for sale since 2007. Also, the seller had lowered the price substantially, then raised it again, causing havoc to the sales process.
Winnetka and North Shore home sellers are selling homes that have an average sales price that is well above the national average. Because of this, over pricing is common. Every home has a selling "range" and if you don't price it within the parameters your real estate professional suggests (having carefully considered the comps, the economy, the condition, the location and the motivation) your house could end up like this.
If your home is on the market for over 8 years, might you think it could be overpriced?
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Margaret Goss is a full-time real estate broker since 1998 working in the North Shore communities of Winnetka, Wilmette, Kenilworth, Glencoe, Northfield, Glenview, and Evanston.
She can be reached at:
Phone: 847-977-6024
Email: margaret.goss@bairdwarner.com
See her full BIOGRAPHY
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