Reasonable timeframe to sell a house in this market (BEFORE a price drop) (days on market, sale)

[vauser]

How long should we wait before we "do something" (give subsidies, drop price, etc) to make the house sell. Here is the plan we have in mind:

Day 1: List at $X (a price we think we would be more than HAPPY to pay for a similar house, and is inline with the comps for the most part).
Day 19: Drop about 1.5%.
Day 35: Drop another 2%.
Day 49: Drop another 2%.

Wait, till it sells (as that would be low enough from even a how-bad-the-market-currently-is standpoint).

Of course, we are novices so this plan might suck. Thoughts?

[tgbwc]

Are you planning on listing during this time of year. Soon?

[boyd888]

Where is the home located? Look at comps and price the home accordingly. If it is priced well it will sell without you having to do anything. There are enough people looking for homes that if it is a little on the low side you may even get multiple offers.

If a house is still on the market after 49 days it just means it has been overpriced for 49 days.

[vauser]

Yes, listing it now.

[vauser]

Originally Posted by boyd888

Where is the home located? Look at comps and price the home accordingly. If it is priced well it will sell without you having to do anything. There are enough people looking for homes that if it is a little on the low side you may even get multiple offers.

If a house is still on the market after 49 days it just means it has been overpriced for 49 days.

Pricing it "right" is the tricky part. Of course, if we sold it for HALF the market price, it would sell instantaneously but I am not sure if that makes it the "right" price. We are happy with the price even wearing the "buyer's hat". Of course, this might be true for every seller!

My question really is - "when do you decide to do a fire sale and almost give it away"? We are not rushed as we don't need the funds from the house in the near future but at the same time, I wouldn't want to pay an additional mortgage (which would slowly but steadily eat into the realized profits).

[CaliTerp07]

Are you hiring a realtor? It's their job to be knowledgeable about how/where to price a house.

[vauser]

Originally Posted by CaliTerp07

Are you hiring a realtor? It's their job to be knowledgeable about how/where to price a house.

Yes, we have one but am trying my best to help out rather than sit back and pretend to relax :-)

[Caladium]

Winter's a rough time to sell a house (at least so I've heard). If you can wait until spring, you'll probably get more interest.

[vauser]

Originally Posted by Caladium

Winter's a rough time to sell a house (at least so I've heard). If you can wait until spring, you'll probably get more interest.

That's a good point. We would rather get the transaction/sale complete now but if we have to wait a bit to get a better deal, we could. However, I am still trying to learn what the "Days on Market" statistic does to potential buyers.

I mean, if there is a perfectly nice home (perhaps, poorly timed in terms of the listing date) that has been sitting on the market for 6 months, is someone going to walk away from it for that sole reason? (Hopefully, not).

[ACWhite]

Many (most?) of us value our houses more than would other buyers (otherwise someone probably would have outbid us). If you watched Real Estate Intervention when it was on HGTV, you probably saw some extreme cases of this. So I would not use "what we would pay for the house" as a standard. If I were pricing our house today, I would rely strictly on comparables, with input from three Realtors who know the neighborhood.

I might underprice it slightly to ensure that we get interest; in this area, underpricing it doesn't mean you'll get less for the house, because bidding wars are and have been common for a long time. According to some Realtors, you will actually get less for the house if you start too high, than if you start too low. I don't know if they can back that up with good data, though. They usually just present evidence that the final selling price is lower as a % of original list for houses that sit a long time, but that is probably because the sellers set the original price above market. The selling price might have been the same in either case -- we don't know since only one original selling price can be chosen.

According to Realtors I've known, January is the beginning of the spring selling season for this area, unless the weather is really awful (e.g., snow that prevents buyers from getting out and looking). I think you've already bought a new house, right, so you can't defer putting it on the market anyway. Your timing may work out fine.