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Pricing your home and Strategies

By
Real Estate Broker/Owner with CENTURY 21 Professional Group, Inc.

Over time, the way homes have been listed and sold has changed quite a bit.  Ask 10 people their opinion about real estate sales and you will likely get 10 different answers.  Truth be told, everyone likes to talk about the subject it seems! 

One particular topic I have strong opinions about is pricing.  I see bad pricing daily and often find myself slapping my head in disbelief!  A lot of people seem to be stuck in the past when it comes to effective pricing.  They don’t understand that a majority of people now search online instead of in print.  They believe that the old way of pricing such as “$299,900” instead of $300,000 is better and will attract more buyers.  That used to have some merit (in print) but now it works against you!  If you have ever searched online, you probably have noticed that the pricing search criteria in many cases is in increments of 25K, meaning, you can only search on what I call the even money.  Using the example above, a buyer looking online would see the home listed at 299K if they were doing a search from 250K to 300K, but what about the people looking 300K to 350K? Because the home was priced improperly, the home gets missed by the search engine by $100.  NOT GOOD!  Now we all know that a buyer is not going to say no over $100.  Truth is, if you are priced wrong, they will never know what they are missing.  The same goes in the opposite direction.  I would never price a home at 301K.  It just doesn’t make sense. 

 

My other opinion about pricing is listening to the seller and what they need from the sale. I can't tell you how many times I have gone into an appointment where the agent before me has deliberately under priced the home.  This is done to try and effect a quick sale and then move onto the next. I’m sorry but that’s bad business.  It’s bad for the seller and bad for the community.  This may sound corny, but I live nearby to many of the areas I list in.  I do care about property values as they effect the value of my home as well.  I also am proud to say that have never under valued a home for a quick sale.  I am fortunate enough to do a steady flow of business that I can take the time to sell a home properly instead of as fast as I can.  I take the time to research the area and also maximize my sellers bottom line.  Sometimes my pricing my be a little higher than others and sometimes the seller and I don't agree on price, but I always give the seller the opportunity to try things out before reducing the price on a home, because as a homeowner myself, I know how important the sale is to the owner.  So ask yourself, who do you want listing your home?  Someone in it for you, or someone looking out for themselves?  Time to get off my soap box! 

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