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Selling home listen to real estate agent, enlist help to set price of home using comps data, seller too attached to house, homes listed too high, sellers overvalue their homes
LISTEN TO YOUR REALTOR when you are pricing your house!!!
Ok, this is my sob story about the "one that got away". Last May we had about 10 days to find a house. ( And remember so many people moving here only have a week or so... they are not going to wait around for you to price your house right!!) At the time a very lovely 40 year old house was on the market in one of the areas we were looking at. They dropped the price $25K right before our visit so it fell in our price range. I looked at the house and felt like it was still $25K over priced and the comparables proved my point. So my realtor asked the listing agent if the seller would consider an offer $25K less than the current price. It sounded like the listing agent thought our price was about what he would have recommended as a list price. I got the impression the owner set the price not the agent. So anyway, we weren't willing to over pay for a house. So we passed.
We found a newer house with more features at a low price. We love our cureent neighbors but the other house had more charm and a sooooo many trees!!! Well, the house we passed on is still on the market and is now $15K lower than what we were willing to offer!! ARGH!!!!
IF the seller had listened to their agent and followed the neighborhood comps then they would have sold the darn thing a year ago and I would have TREES and a basement!!!
It looks like the seller probably had lived in the house for many years, and raised children there etc. So I understand that sellers get emotionally attached to a house and it's worth so much more to the seller. (I've been there... it killed me to sell house #1 where my children were babies.) BUT I listened to my realtor about the price and she was right!!
LISTEN to your realtor!!! It will make us all happier in the end. BTW, I am in no way related to or will gain financially from promoting realtors. Just irked when sellers make dumb mistakes that cost all of us!!
There is a house in our neighborhood that has been for sale for exactly a year. It started out at $400K and now is down to around $365K, which puts it in line with comps for the neighborhood. I wonder how fast that house would have sold if it started at $365K
And from the "Don't you pay attention?" file. . . . . Another house just went up for sale in our neighborhood. All of the houses are appraised from the low $300K to low $400K range. This house is listed at $540K. Yes. . . that's a "5".
LISTEN TO YOUR REALTOR when you are pricing your house!!!
Ok, this is my sob story about the "one that got away". Last May we had about 10 days to find a house. ( And remember so many people moving here only have a week or so... they are not going to wait around for you to price your house right!!) At the time a very lovely 40 year old house was on the market in one of the areas we were looking at. They dropped the price $25K right before our visit so it fell in our price range. I looked at the house and felt like it was still $25K over priced and the comparables proved my point. So my realtor asked the listing agent if the seller would consider an offer $25K less than the current price. It sounded like the listing agent thought our price was about what he would have recommended as a list price. I got the impression the owner set the price not the agent. So anyway, we weren't willing to over pay for a house. So we passed.
We found a newer house with more features at a low price. We love our cureent neighbors but the other house had more charm and a sooooo many trees!!! Well, the house we passed on is still on the market and is now $15K lower than what we were willing to offer!! ARGH!!!!
IF the seller had listened to their agent and followed the neighborhood comps then they would have sold the darn thing a year ago and I would have TREES and a basement!!!
It looks like the seller probably had lived in the house for many years, and raised children there etc. So I understand that sellers get emotionally attached to a house and it's worth so much more to the seller. (I've been there... it killed me to sell house #1 where my children were babies.) BUT I listened to my realtor about the price and she was right!!
LISTEN to your realtor!!! It will make us all happier in the end. BTW, I am in no way related to or will gain financially from promoting realtors. Just irked when sellers make dumb mistakes that cost all of us!!
I've sold two homes in my lifetime and both times I was convinced there was more money to be had if only I waited just a little bit longer for the higher offer.
Fortunately my wife is just a little bit smarter than me and both times insisted I trust our Realtor. I mean, we picked her because we trusted her and her abilities and believed she wanted to help us achieve our goal. As it turned out my wife and our Realtor were both very much right.
The last sale was particularly painful because the property had appraised for 15% more in 2006 than what it sold for in 2007. But our Realtor sat me down and set me straight. Her advice during the selling process from marketing, to contract through to the close were invaluable and she proved herself a true professional and an even truer friend throughout.
The only advice I would offer beyond PDXmom's is to be sure to select the right Realtor and then "Listen to your Realtor!"
There are a lot of situations like the one you describe, but sometimes it is the agent's fault and not the homeowner's.
I know of one house that was initially priced $75K above what any comp would support. It would NEVER have appraised. The listing agent lived in the neighborhood and said "I have a feeling about this neighborhood, and that's why the home is priced where it is". The house is now 120 days on the market and has been reduced $30K-it's still too expensive.
I sold my home last summer. At one point there were 5 homes with the same floorplan for sale. I had a figure in mind, but the same house was on the market on my street for $111,000 more than I really felt I could get for it, the only difference being a finished attic and bath in the other home. I priced mine $56K below the other one-I didn't think I'd EVER get that kind of money for it but I simply could not chance leaving $50K on the table.
At 90 days, having watched the market rapidly deteriorate in our price range, I reduced my home to $5000 above my initial target price. It then sold slightly below my first target and closed less than 60 days later.
In the meantime the house down the street, having sat vacant for over 400 days, was pulled off the market. Their last price was only $10K above my last asking price, but by that time the house was damaged goods.
Another house in my old neighborhood is now on the market for the 3rd time in 18 months at the same (inflated) price it was listed at twice before. That is nothing but an exercise in futility IMO.
I actually have an opposite experience... it was back in May 2006 in NJ when it was still a seller's market...but our realtor admitted to listing too low a price for our house!
We were in no rush for our house to sell and our realtor put it on the MLS a week earlier than we would start showing the house. Well, within that week's timeframe, we had people, on their own, without realtors, ringing our doorbell almost every hour to see the house even though we told them they would have to wait a week! So, DH and I looked at each other and thought, well, maybe we are listed too LOW??!!! Although we were happy with the original listing price, we spoke to our realtor and told her about the traffic we were already gettting and she admitted that she may have been a bit too conservative and raised the price another $30K!!! Now, I started to worry, but our house sold in 6 days!! Then, of course we thought, "Hmmm, should we have listed even higher??!!! LOL!
This is not typical of course and the market was vastly different then. The people who rang our bell a week earlier were not happy to see the price go up the following week either!
LISTEN to your realtor!!! It will make us all happier in the end. BTW, I am in no way related to or will gain financially from promoting realtors. Just irked when sellers make dumb mistakes that cost all of us!!
Just to play devils advocate, while the house was obviously over priced at the time you were looking, you can't necessarily use today's figures to compare with those from a year ago and guess how much it was overpriced. The housing market has changed a lot over the span of a year. $25k less than asking might have been too much of a discount at the time, but seemingly looks like a good deal for the seller now since things got a little stagnant.
It is also possible the house was taken off the market and then listed again. I've seen a few houses on the MLS lately that were up last fall and disappeared as the market got slower into winter. It might not have been on the market an entire year.
Not all realtors are great at pricing houses, so pick a good realtor and then listen to him. When we sold our house in Richmond three years ago our realtor wanted to price our house $30k under what we priced it at and it sold to the first couple that looked at it, so realtors aren't always right (and our realtor actually was a very good realtor with a lot of experience). Also, there was a family on my street in Richmond that over priced their home by about $75k and when it didn't sell they took it off the market. They sold it the next year for less than they originally wanted, but probably $25-$50k more than they could have sold it for when it was originally listed (obviously only possible in an appreciating market). Our home is currently under contract and our realtor did a great job pricing our home. I originally was disappointed with the number she gave us (not even close to being able to break even after two years, even with a full price offer which we knew we wouldn't get), but I knew that she knew what she was talking about so we went with her number, got tons of activity, needed one small price drop and we're under contract while the other listings in my neighborhood have been taken off the market, changed realtors, done big price reductions (while sitting empty).
Just to play devils advocate, while the house was obviously over priced at the time you were looking, you can't necessarily use today's figures to compare with those from a year ago and guess how much it was overpriced. The housing market has changed a lot over the span of a year.
I didn't use today's figures. I looked at the house May 07 and at that time I looked at current comps. Based on the May 07 comps I came up with a price that the comps supported at that time. My comp supported price was $50K below original and $25K below where they listed in May 07. In May 08 the house is $15K below what we would have offered (our comp supported May 07 price). I don't know what the comps in the last year look like. But I'm only looking at May 07, when my price was supported by comps and their May 07 price obviously was not. It may have been taken off the market in the last year and relisted. But my point is if they had based their price on neighborhood comps they would have sold it last May.
The house is near Hope Valley but not in Hope Valley proper. It seems they were using Hope Valley pricing for their house but none of the houses in their neighborhood had sold for Hope Valley prices. Price your house based on your neighborhood, not the tonier one down the street.
A realtors recommendation on selling price and a realtors expertise WILL NOT sell your home quicker and for more money.
A GOOD realtors recommendation on selling price and a GOOD realtors expertise WILL sell your home quicker and for more money.
You really need to do your homework when it comes to a realtor. ANYONE can become a realtor. It is not difficult. What is difficult is to become good at what you do. Many realtors have high sales numbers, simply because the market was so good for so many years. They could stick a sign in the ground and sell the house. I found this out the hard way. I picked a realtor that sold a TON of houses in my area. Once we signed the paperwork, I never ever saw her again. I had to drive to her office to do anything. She would not call or stop at my house. She NEVER brought a buyer to the house. The house did eventually sell, but it was because of another realtor. I had to demand different marketing ideas be used. It was a nightmare.
On another home, I had a fantastic realtor who worked his butt off and sold my home for more per square foot than anyone had ever sold for in the town. He was very responsive and had a great marketing plan.
One needs to spend a lot of time picking the RIGHT realtor and THEN listen to the realtor. The right realtor does not have to mean the realtor with the highest amount of sales.
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Excellent advice!
