Jun
3
Selling a home in today’s market
Posted by under For Sellers, General Information
this article says it best about the “reality check” of selling in today’s market.
This was actually a comment left by a reader about home values. I thought it was a great comment about the reality of selling anything.
Jeffrey, it does not “take months to sell a house” unless you just don’t know how to do it, though I concede that does describe most homeowners.
Any house can be sold in any market in a week if you’re willing to take the market value. The problem is that most homeowners think the house they live in and love so much is so special that certainly someone will come along and pay some fantasy value sooner or later. They figure that even if their price is unrealistic, people will at least make offers that are reasonable (which they hope they can negotiate upwards toward their fantasy values.) And they worry that if they price too low, they’ll leave money on the table. Not surprisingly, a lot of realtors take advantage of that, telling homeowners what they want to hear, just to get the listing.
The result is that the house sits on the market for months, gets completely stale and the only showings are accompanied by comments from the realtor like, “Okay, that house was $500,000, just to give you a sense of the market. Now let me show you a fantastic buy at that same price.” No one makes any offers at all because no wants to “insult” the homeowner by offering 30% below asking (or whatever it would take so that the midpoint between the bid and ask, where most negotiations settle, would be anywhere near the market value) and because they don’t want to deal with what appears to be certain rejection. Eventually, the homeowner just gives up and takes the home off the market or rents it out “till the market improves.” Or he succumbs to some low-ball offer because he’s lost all hope (or gotten squeezed financially) and expects this the only offer he will ever get.
If you want to sell a house, it’s all about price. You absolutely, positively have to be priced within about 2% of the actual market value. It means taking a really hard-nosed, unemotional look at your property compared to all the others that have sold recently and answering the question, which ones were more attractive and which ones were less attractive. Think about everything a potential buyer might care about in evaluating your property: location, layout, style, condition, curb appeal, blah, blah, blah and figure out what people are paying for that right now.
It turns out there’s very little risk you’ll leave money on the table if you’re too pessimistic and price too low because RE is a very efficient market. At any given time in any market there is always a pool of buyers looking at every new property to hit the market. They’ve already seen everything else and they know exactly what they’d be willing to pay for something they want. If they want your house but it’s priced below market, you’ll get multiple bids and sell over asking.
If you can’t price right, you will not sell. Period. But if you can get the price right, you’ll sell in a week. You can do that with any house in any market.
We are committed to helping you sell your home. Contact us at michaeljensen@remax.net
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