The Price Is Right!

It has never been easy to price a home. These days it is more difficult than ever before. Buyers see everything on the market as being over priced and no one offers full price any more.

If a home is priced at or slightly under market value it will attract buyers and have showings but offers on it will be for less than the asking price, sometimes for as much as 10% below the asking price. It isn't a good strategy to price the home at over the market value to help sellers get their bottom line. Homes that are over priced by any amount do not getas many if any showings at all. Without any showings there are no offers and the home sits on the market month after month. The marketing expertise and work style of your Realtor is more important than ever to get your home exposed to the maximum number of prospective buyers. It's a bit of a numbers game. The more people that see the home, the more likely you are to find the buyer that's right for it. However, even the best marketing and the savviest Realtor won't compensate for overpricing.

Market times are longer than they used to be but homes are being sold every day. The homes that sell are those that are properly priced. It works the best to set a price that is slightly below market value. It will get showings and offers but usually those initial offers will come in low. The good news is that once an offer comes in it can be negotiated up. Buyers seldom make their very best offer on the first round and they will negotiate. I like to think of low ball offers as opportunities. Again, the skill of your Realtor is critical here; good negotiating skills and providing good guidance to the seller is of the utmost importance. One thing that I am strongly recommending to my sellers in today's market is always to counter an offer, and only to reject if they're truly absurd.

The true value of a house is what a buyer will pay for it and it is buyers, or the market as we say that dictates the value of real estate, not the seller. Sellers have to be ready to play the pricing game and Realtors have to be willing to go that extra mile to recommend a price that is low enough so that buyers will see the home, but high enough so that when an offer does come in it is possible to negotiate it up to an acceptable amount.

Sellers need to understand that no matter what price they set buyers will offer less unless the price is so low that the home gets multiple offers and buyers raise the price by outbidding each other.