As the seller, you control three things when it comes to your home on the market: Price, Its condition and access. What you don’t control are the existing market conditions, how many sellers you are competing against or value, which are determined by the buyer. Once your home is on the market, the clock starts ticking. Whether you’re transitioning to expand your family or relocating out of state, no one wants their home on the market for a long time. Pricing right the first time is the most important element in marketing your home and getting it sold. While you may have the idea in mind to price high to have room for negotiating, pricing high does not equal pricing right. How your home is priced gets determined by what we call comparables (or simply referred to as ‘comps’). Comparables are what has recently sold in your neighborhood, what is currently on the market and what is currently under contract. Other factors in right pricing are upgrades made to your home (upgrading appliances, increasing square footage, flooring, etc.) and whatever findings are calculated should you have a pre-appraisal. In order for me to assure that your home is in fact being “right priced”; let me lay out an example of the process and how this shouldn’t work:
Let’s say the range in prices for homes in your neighborhood is between $749,000 and 750,000. Most of the homes do in fact have upgrades and may have even been fully renovated. Your home in the same neighborhood, with maybe a few small modifications (some new carpeting and wall paper) and upgrades that add value, will not fare well priced at $850,000. Even though right now there are buyers seeking homes in that very price range, they are not going to pay top dollar for your home in your neighborhood when there are several other homes on the market on your block priced significantly lower and properly. Given the initial timetable of the first few weeks, we are more than likely going to have to have a conversation about aggressively playing “catch up” and lowering the price…not only in those first few weeks did you not receive an offer on your home, but two or three of the homes in your same neighborhood that were priced right are now under contract. That’s two or three opportunities your home missed a possible offer. This brings us back to the buyers and their influence/control on value. They have something working VERY well in their favor…BUYERS’ AGENTS! Right pricing wholly determines whether or not an agent will bring a buyer.
Selling your home yourself?
You are in a whole other competition pool. Where you would normally think that the less competition the better, such is not the case when comparing the small FSBO pool and the larger ‘listed by an agent’ pool. If you’re not in the right competitive pool, (in this case the larger one) the visibility and agressiveness are probably not lining up with what is going on around you in order to yield the result you want, which is to sell your home in the quickest amount of time and hopefully maximize your return. Even if you did the VERY same things an agent did to sell your home (which you’re not doing when you sell on your own), question yourself about what it cost you to do so…
It’s all about the “A.M.A”…contact me to find out what it is!!
Comments(0)