Pricing Your Home
Pricing
your Home is a balancing act
On
the one hand, you want to set a listing price that maximizes interest among
qualified, motivated buyers who will be willing to pay top dollar for your
property. Indeed, such buyers will ultimately determine your property’s top
market value.
On
the other hand, you do not want to set a listing price that attracts a lot of
buyer prospects, but sets the stage for negotiations that result in your
getting less than what your property is really worth.
Your
home’s actual market value
In
a perfect world, your home’s value would be everything you think and need it to
be. However, simply put, your home’s value is not determined by you, but by
what the market is willing to pay for it at a given time. These days, the
“market” increasingly refers to home buyers who have researched property values
over the internet for months, have already viewed a number of homes, and are
not under any undue pressure to buy.
You
can determine a value range for your home by looking at the recent sale prices
and current asking prices of homes similar to yours in your area. That is why
we’ve prepared a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) that includes a variety of
“comparable” homes drawn from the local Multiple Listing Service (MLS®).
The
Bottom Line: REALISTIC IS STRATEGIC!
On
average, serious buyers look at about fifteen properties before they make an
offer. Doing so gives them a basis for determining how competitively a property
is priced, both in terms of the market generally and what they are looking for
specifically.
If
you overprice your property you’ll usually lose serious buyers even if they
otherwise love your home. Experience shows that buyers usually do not make what
they consider to be realistic offers on overpriced properties because they
assume that doing so will just be a waste of time.