HOW MUCH IS MY HOME WORTH?

You can easily get an answer to that question from a lot of people. Your neighbor may want you to list your home at an unacceptably high price in the hopes that if it does sell it will increase the value of their home.

Your friend, Bill who is in sales, says that he knows a lot about sales tricks and to list it at one price only to trick a buyer into buying it at another price. Not a good idea! Or, you may think that since you need to net a certain amount from the proceeds, just add all of the expenses to that figure, add some more for good measure, and list it at that price. It just doesn’t work that way.

You will require professional help in establishing the true Market Value of your home. It does not matter what your friends and neighbors think it should sell for. It really doesn’t matter what you think it should sell for. It doesn’t matter what you paid for the home, how much you have spent on home repairs, or how much you need to net from the proceeds of the sale.

What does matter is what the market says your home should sell for. How can you obtain a true market value for your home? Hire a professional REALTOR® who is trained to properly determine the correct price range. The agent will perform a thorough Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) to determine the approximate market value of your home. You and your agent should then develop a specific marketing plan for the sale of your home.

A CMA is a tool used by REALTORs® to analyze recent real estate activity in your specific area, comparing the data of similar homes currently listed for sale, those that have expired, and those recently sold. The current listings of homes for sale will be your competition. To be competitive, you must not let your emotions get the best of you to overprice your home. As evidence of this point, you may review the data for homes similar to yours that have expired. Normally, the biggest reason they did not sell is that they were overpriced.

The strongest indicator of the proper price range will be those homes that sold in a reasonable amount of time. The average Days-On-The-Market (DOM) for homes priced properly determines what constitutes a reasonable amount of time. The average DOM can easily be obtained from the local Real Estate Board. The reason that the sold data is the most important is that it gives you hard evidence of what sellers are willing to accept and what buyers are willing to pay for homes similar to yours.

Pricing is as important for a successful sale as anything else that you do. If you overprice, you will reduce the number of potential buyers, sell the competition, lose the momentum normally associated with a new listing being placed on the market, and impede your own plans. Pricing your home correctly will mean more money in less time with fewer hassles.