The Price is Right, Or Is It?

Pricing your home is the most critical aspect of marketing your home. Developing the best price will result in selling your home quickly which results in top dollar for you. How do you determine the very best price?

When you are planning on selling your home and thinking price, it is natural to think of what you need to take home after selling your home. Unfortunately, the market does not think about your needs, the market does not care. When you are selling, you have to know the market not your needs.

Just because you need to make $50,000 when you sell your home, that is not going to help you determine where to list it. So what do you do to find this critical number. There are several options. You can hire a professional to help you determine value.

There are several terms real estate agents use when preparing the numbers for you. One of these is a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA). This is a study of homes that are active, pending or have recently sold. These homes are compared to your home in several ways.

The CMA is also a summary of where the market may be going, based on the current pending sales and the active listings. An experienced agent can interpret the market and help you look at these numbers and come up with a fair market value for your home.  

In my opinion, an agent should not provide a price without seeing your home. There are so many unknowns that can influence the price of a home. An agent needs to see the interior to make a good comparison.

When an agent compares your home to the sold or active listings, your home become the “subject property” and the other homes are called “comparables.” The most important tool an agent can use in pricing your home is square footage. This allows us to compare homes based on the price per square foot.

The second factor in determining price, is condition and updating.  Great condition and updating will have a strong influence over price. Condition means not just maintenance but cleanliness and updating to bring your home up to demands of the market in 2013.

There is also another important influence on your price. It is hard to put a dollar amount on. It is called the WOW factor. Homes with this, are the homes that command the highest price in the neighborhood. In the same vein, no WOW and you can end up at the low end in value, no matter what the size of your home.

There are a couple of other ways to price your home. One is to hire an appraiser. This is not a bad idea. They will give you a guideline. There is just one thing, they do not take into consideration, market changes, so their value can only be based on looking at the past.  If you have a unique property, an appraiser may be the best way to go.

There are also some real estate sites that give you an estimate of your home value. Be careful with this as they do not have the facts that your Realtor will have. They do not look at inventory and they do look for trends in the neighborhood. They have never seen your home and have no clue about condition or WOW !

Once you and your agent have determined a fair market value and you have put your home on the market, your agent will be keeping a close eye on showings.

A standard among many Realtors is that If you have 12 showings and no offers, your home is priced a little high. If there are no showings your home is priced way too high.  Make any pricing changes early so that you do not lose the critical first 45 days on the market. Your chance to get the highest and best offer will come during this time.

Pricing is not an exact science. If you are interviewing agents to market your home, remember you control the price. Pick an agent based on service and marketing and not necessarily the one who gives you the highest estimate of price. If you would like to see some homes that are priced to sell go to PeachtreeCorners.com

Homes New on the market in Peachtree Corners

4646 Southport Crossing listed at $375,000 Shown by appointment.