6 Things to Consider When Choosing Your Listing Price

Choosing Your Listing Price on your home when you are ready to sell it extremely important. Homes that start out overpriced when they hit the market will often take a longer time to sell and will end up selling for less than the their correctly priced competition. Buyers will not even look at homes they think are above their price range, so some of those overpriced homes never get seen. Overpriced homes will sit on the market and become stigmatized, especially in a hot market they will wonder why hasn’t anyone else bought this home, what’s wrong with it? Sellers will then start to lower the price but it may be too late and they start chasing the market down.
There are several things that can cloud your judgement when choosing your listing price. Here are a few things to keep in mind when pricing your home. These tips may be different from market to market and by price point.

1. There are some improvements that sellers make for their own livability and enjoyment that may not increase a home’s value and may even decrease it. Swimming pools are area dependent, here in the northwest not a great investment, sport courts, home theaters, wine cellars, wet-bars and smart-home technology.

2. Upgrades that may have increased your homes’s value at some point in time may not any longer as they become more common and even expected. Things like granite counter tops & stainless appliances, high-end cabinets, home theaters. If all the competing listings have these features, yours will be expected to have them as well. Your upgrades need to be much better than the competition’s in order to stand out.

3. Appraisals are very important if the buyer is financing it! Lenders want to be sure that the homes they are loaning money to buy are properly valued so that their investment is protected. Don’t price it so high that it won’t appraise.

4. What are today’s hot items for buyers. It is worth the investment to update the appliances, freshen the paint and, replace the carpet or refinish the floors, how about adding granite countertops. What about upgrades to light fixtures, as well as kitchen and bathroom sinks and or faucets. Clean up your landscaping and paint opf replace the front door. Will some shrubbery or a fence hide the unsightly neighbors yard?

5. How much attention should you pay to auto-value websites like Zillow, epraisal, or now Redfin? Are they even close to your price, does it matter to you? Yes and no. You can make sure that the details of your home are correct on some of these sites like Zillow, by claiming your home and entering details they may have left out or are incorrect. These sites only take into account county data and historical sales. They don’t know the condition of your home, if it has a view, if it’s been remodled, neighborhood information. Buyers will be checking these sitesk, but don’t let in influence your descission to price your home. Zillow had the zestimate for the price of their CEO’s home off by hundreds of thousand dollars.

Probably the best thing to do would be to get an appraisal, most sellers don’t want to spend the large amount of money that would cost, net best is to get the help of a good realtor who will do a Comparative Market Analysis, to help uyou come up with a price based on the current market value.

Pricing a home part art, part science and knowing what the market is like and what is important to buyers. Resist ‘testing the market’ to see if you can get that higher price for your home, price it right from the start and it will sell quickly and for a fair price.