How do sellers decide what to charge for the shack on the hill versus the identical house it looks down on?
View properties are worth more, sure, but there's no hard-and-fast rule for calculating how much more.
Guess too high and a beautiful home can sit and sit and sit, ignored by buyers in even the hottest market. Too low and you've just handed the next owner thousands of dollars, perhaps much more.
It's the job of appraisers, market analysts and brokers to identify the market's sweet spot -- the least a seller will accept and the most a buyer will pay -- for each piece of property at a given time. Long experience has taught them the features that attract the eye, but pricing them is more of an intriguing art than a science.
Is the view from the right rooms? Will it go away with the change of seasons or an ill-considered building permit? Is the focus on mountains in the distance or on city lights a block away?
The experts weigh each of these factors and more, but in the end, they're putting a dollar value on the human need for privacy and status.
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