How To Price To Sell

Getting the most money in your pocket from the sale of your property starts with the magic combination of:

·        Pricing Strategically

·        Epic Marketing

This blog will give a framework for pricing any property, and a later video will dive into an example with numbers.

 

First off, if an agent does not refer to the market when they begin a discussion on pricing, that should be a red flag. They are basing recommendations on what they think, their subjective ‘expert’ opinion, as opposed to the concrete objective information coming from the market. Either the agent doesn’t know how to analyze the market, doesn’t want to take the time to do it, or both. There is a role for expert opinion, but only after a through discussion of the market.

Every property is a unicorn in some sense. No matter how unique or different the property is, the discussion always needs to start with objective information

 

Another red flag: if you are interviewing agents for selling your property, ask them if they would list at the price you want. This will tell you if they are just trying to get a listing to add to their inventory and draw in buyer leads. Agents acting in your best interest will let you know where the home could sell for based on the market, aka the collection of qualified buyers looking for that type of property.

 

My main job as a listing agent is not to get you what you want for your property. My job is to help you walk away with the most money in your pocket that you could possibly get from the sale, and pricing the property strategically is the most important step in accomplishing that.

 

There are three ways to price a property:

 

List Price Above Fair Market Value

 

If the list price is in the clouds, there will be some showings and no offers.

 

If the list price is in the stars, there will be no showings.

 

Buyers will not set foot on a property if they don’t like the price. The MLS is full of expired listings where the listing agreement ran out because the property was overpriced.

 

List Price At Fair Market Value

 

There will be showings and then 1, maybe 2 offers. Either the seller will counter the first one and settle, or have a mini bidding war. The sale price will likely be below fair market value and the seller will not get the best price and terms they could for the property.

 

List Price Below Fair Market Value

 

There will be many showings. Once sellers set foot on the property, they become emotionally involved. They imagine what it would be like to live in that house, or where they would put their house on the property. This leads to multiple offers and a bidding war, which drives the price to at and many times above Fair Market Value. This applies to ANY property: residential, land, <$100k or multimillion, etc.

 

SO the big question here is: what is the fair market value? I’m sorry to say, but there is no silver bullet, no Zestimate that will tell us the maximum price the ideal qualified buyer would be willing to pay for your property. Rather, there are a collection of strategies that give insight into a range that the fair market value could fall in. In a future post I’ll review these strategies and dive into an example with numbers.

 

Give me a call at 828-793-0464 if you’d like to know the Fair Market Value for your property. Hope to cross paths soon!