When it comes to you home, memories at priceless. Unfortunately, those good times are of no use when trying to come up with an objectively derived price for your home.
This is where an agent comes in. As your agent, I can provide you with an estimate of your home’s value, show you comparable sold properties and recommend a list price for your home.
Ultimately, though, you control the price of your house. Here are four tips for making sure your home doesn’t end up growing stale on the market:
1. Don’t overprice coming out of the gate.
This is probably the most common tendency when it comes to deciding on a price. It’s difficult not to think that your home is somehow superior. And, in some cases, you may actually have the nicest, most updated home on the block. The problem is, you still can’t overprice it for your market.
If your home is listed too high, you miss out on that first large wave of buyers when your home hits the market. It’s difficult to recover from that. The longer your house sits on the market, the less likely you are to get anything near full price because buyers will assume you’re willing to come down just to get it sold.
2. Don’t assume upgrades equate to a higher price.
This is one of the stark realities of putting your home on the market. So, you’ve watched all those shows on HGTV and a year or two ago, you did a complete kitchen renovation to perfectly match the style of the show you were hooked on. Unfortunately, that doesn’t necessarily equate to a higher selling price.
Buyers are not necessarily going to pay what you’ve spent on a renovated kitchen. For one thing, if you went too trendy, it simply may not match their taste, in which case they may actually see it as a drawback. While a more neutral upgrade is likely to appeal to more buyers, it still doesn’t mean they will pay a higher price. In fact, research shows you will likely only get back about 59 percent of what you spend on a full kitchen upgrade.
As your agent, I can help you realistically assess the true market value of your home, including any upgrades.
3. Don’t set a price based on what you need to clear.
It’s fine to crunch the numbers and figure out what you need to clear on the sale of your home. However, pricing your home based on your numbers isn’t going to get your home sold if the number you have in mind isn’t in line with current market conditions.
As your agent, I can explain how I came up with the price I am recommending. While you still may not be happy about the recommended list price, at least you will understand how it was derived.
If you’ve gone forward with pricing your home on the high side, don’t be afraid to heed your agent’s advice when it comes to doing a price correction. This will at least let buyers know you’re willing to be realistic and are motivated to sell.
4. Try to keep your heart out of it.
For most people, selling their home is an emotional process. That rings true whether you’ve been there three years or 30. While those emotions are going to surface, it’s important not to let them drive your pricing decision.
As your agent, I have all the market information at my fingertips. I don’t have the emotional attachment to your house that you do, so my assessment can truly be objective and based on the market. Pricing can’t be tied to emotions. It needs to be based on an informed market analysis. That’s why an outside perspective is important. Pricing your home has to be an exercise in putting head over heart.
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