Are you pricing your home to stay?
One of the issues that people selling their homes take too lightly is correctly pricing their home to sell. Inevitably, there are two issues that come up at a listing appointment. 1) What's my home worth? 2) How much do you charge to list my home? For this post I plan on focusing on the first issue presented. If you want more information on the second issue, post your comments below. When a real estate professional is giving you their numbers relating to the market value of your home, take some time to seriously consider what they are presenting to you. I know that it can be tough, but try to separate what you know and just listen to what they are saying. The correct pricing of you home is even more magnified when the market gets a little tighter. I'm going to give you a couple of examples of homes that I have dealt with and let you decide which scenario you would rather have for your transaction.
Example #1 - I inherited a listing from another colleague who moved out of the area. I'm not really sure how they came to their original price, but when I first met the clients I informed them that they were over $10K over priced in their current asking price. Due to their selling motivation, they finally budged and came down to my price. An offer arrived shortly thereafter that was about $4K less than their new asking price. They opted to not take the offer because they were still reeling from the change as compared to the original price and felt like they were getting robbed. I hate to say it, but they are now priced $5K less than that offer was when they received it in the Spring. Moral of the story... price your home correctly and take every offer seriously. If you don't take the offer presented to you, it means that you would rather stay in the house than sell it for that price. Is that you intention, to stay at your current place?
Example #2 - I had some real savvy home owners that were in a development with three other properties for listed for sale. The other properties were the exact same as my client's home. They wanted to ensure that they sold within their given time frame and decided to stay $5K under the lowest priced home no matter what happened. We listed the property and shortly thereafter two of the properties dropped to our price. My sellers proceeded to lower their price again to stay true to their original game plan. Sure enough one of the other properties followed suit. The second price reduction to get us to our target price was the one that put us over the top and we received an offer three days later. Moral of the story... the best priced home always sells first.
Can you guess the outcome of this scenario? Two identical homes are listed to sell with the only difference being that one home is priced $5K less than the other home. Which one sells first? Utilize your real estate professional's expertise about the current market conditions to create a price that will sell your home. This is the same in St Cloud, MN as it is in Joe, Montana. This post is for anyone that is considering listing their home for sale. If you have any questions, comments or concerns please post them below.
Jason Tangen
www.StCloudEdina.com/blog - REAL ANSWERS for REAL ESTATE in St Cloud, MN
