Hitting the sweet spot when it comes to pricing your home can be the difference between making a quick sale and having to stage your home over and over again because you couldn’t find interested buyers.
Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to pricing, because the “right price” is highly dependent on several variables, such as the age and condition of the house, the market you’re in, and the condition of the overall real estate market.
What you can do, however, is avoid the most common mistakes sellers make when pricing their home.
You’re Trusting Your Judgment Over Market Conditions
Self-help books and social media posts telling you to “value yourself” if you want to increase your worth may be a good thing if you’re struggling with self-esteem issues, but they don’t necessarily apply to the task of pricing your home.
No matter how much you tell yourself that your home is worth more than its fair market value, no amount of self-affirmation will persuade your buyer to cough up more cash than they feel they need to.
To be safe, get a professional home appraisal to get objective pricing based on competitive market analysis.
You Hire an Agent Who Promises the Highest List Price
Many home sellers make the mistake of hiring listing agents who give them the highest quote of their house—often an unrealistically high price.
This is an unethical strategy used by some agents looking to “buy” your listing. But what often happens is that your home sits on the market with no interested buyers because of its absurdly high price. This then forces you to lower its price just to get noticed. In the end, you waste your time and the opportunity to sell your home at its fair market value.
Pricing High Because You Can Wait for a Willing Buyer
Many sellers are willing to take a chance and sell their home at a high price because they’re not in any hurry and want to get the most money out of the property. And this strategy makes sense. So what if you have to wait 6 months if you can sell your home for $200,000 instead of its fair market value of $175,00?
But houses that sit for months in the market tend to raise a number of questions such as: “Is there something wrong with the house?” or worse, “There must be something wrong with this neighborhood if no one’s interested to buy.
And if you let a buyer know that you priced your home too high, you’re giving them the leverage of bargaining for a lower price than the market value because they know you’re beginning to get desperate. Bottom line? Get your price right the first time around to avoid this situation.
If you have a home that you need to sell to a buyer right away but don’t have the time or resources to get a competitive market analysis or hire a listing agent, you can still sell it as is to an investor like Blue Hen Homebuyers. At Blue Hen, we buy all kinds of houses, no matter their condition. Call our offices today at 910-802-2222 to learn more about how our services can help you.