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How to market and sell my house Part 1

By Marc Oster

Real Estate Agent with Y & M Real Estate LLC

April 21, 2009 02:45 PM

There is quite a bit to talk about when planning to sell a home. Some questions I get are. What time of year should I sell? Should I do any improvements to my home to get a higher price? And so on.

For part 1 of how to market and sell your home I'm only going to discuss the most important thing to consider when selling a home. This is the number one thing that will either get the buyers to make an offer or do drive them away shaking their heads.

What am I talking about? I'm talking about the price you plan on asking for your property. In my market that mainly consists of the Greeley, Colorado and central Weld County areas property values have been shrinking for the most part. This makes it hard for a lot of sellers to sell. As most people that have bought a home in the last few years don't have much equity in their homes. Most folks will either end up not selling their homes, getting foreclosed on if they can't afford their payments, do a short sale (more on this in another blog later) or bring cash to closing. Then there are those people that are fortunate to have equity in their homes. It's these people I'm going to address the most.

What happens if I price the home to high? Well you will most likely not get potential buyers to look at your home. Most buyers these days have a wealth of information available to them through the internet and their own Realtors. For the most part they know what the market is. If you do get buyers to look at your home and have it listed to high they probably will not make an offer.

Another thing that I've seen happening more and more lately even if a home isn't listed to high for the market. It might not appraise for the amount a buyer might offer. That means the buyer might not be able to buy the home even if they still want it because they can't get a loan due to the appraisal being to low. Especially if they aren't putting much money down. The appraisal used to never hardly be an issue. Property values where going up, lenders were telling appraisers what numbers to come in with, appraisers wanted more jobs. This is kind of what got us into this real estate mess to begin with in my opinion. But lately appraisers and lenders are getting more and more cautious. Even if there is no need to be.

So what can I do to determine my asking price?

Being a real estate agent I of course recommend calling a Realtor to help you with setting a sales price for your home. But if you don't want to involve a Realtor there are other methods to figuring out how to price your home, which I will discuss.

A good real estate agent will search the multiple listing service, public records for properties that have sold ideally within the last 6 months that are similar to your property. Then they will compile a report that will show you the average price sellers have gotten for a property like yours and how long it took to sell. If your property is unique some adjustments will be made for that. A good hint here is the lower the price the quicker it will sell.

If you don't want to visit with a real estate agent you can look at the public records yourself, use websites like zillow or trulia or get an appraisal. The appraisal will cost you, but it will give you a good idea. One thing to remember about appraisors is that they are giving you a value of your property. Not a value that will get it sold according to your goals.

If you do decide to use a Realtor's services make sure you discuss with them your goals of selling. Your motivations, your time frame, Your expectations. This will give them an idea of how to price your home. Remember most Realtor's are looking at you also to decide if they even want to work with you. Are you being realistic about your price? Are your expectiations impossible?

This is an discussion I've had with a couple of home sellers. I want to list my house for $180,000. People will make an offer if they want it. I'll look at any offer. Even if I will sell it for $150,000 I want to still put it up for sale for $180,000. There is a large problem with this strategy. Maybe it used to work, but these days it does not. When most people decide to look for a house to buy they go get approved for a loan or have an idea for what they want to spend. Say they decide they want to buy a house for $150,000. They will look online or have their Realtor look for homes up to possibly $160,000 or even $165,000. They will miss that house that is listed for $180,000. Even though that seller would sell for $150,000. My advice is to list it for close to what you would sell it for. Why waste the time? Of course this depends on your goals and motivations.

Don't let your emotions get the best of you in deciding to price your home. Treat it as a business transaction as best you can. Try and forget the value you put on that special color you spent months chosing for the kitchen. Or the type of carpet. That might not mean anything to a potential buyer.

These are just some basic things to think about when pricing a property you want to sell. If your are thinking about selling try to figure out your bottomline before even considering putting your home on the market.