The most important factor to sell your house fast and at the best price is to price your home realistically right from the start. The first few weeks that your home is on the market are critical. A newly listed home has the greatest chance of attracting attention from buyers that are currently shopping for a house. Make sure you consider the current housing market and pick an optimal time to sell your home. This will get you off to a great start.
Price Your Home Realistically
By pricing your Connecticut home realistically right from the start, you will capture all the pent up demand that exists in the market for a home with your features and price point. This, in turn, will increase the chance you will receive multiple offers and sell your home at its highest price.
There are several problems when you price a home too high.
- An overpriced home will never appear on your buyer’s list of homes for sale.
- Buyers will only look at homes within their price range and will not consider looking at your house if it falls above their price range.
- Your house will pale in comparison to correctly priced homes that are larger, offer more amenities, and have a more desirable location. The likelihood is that most buyers won’t even want to see your house.
As the days on the market increases your home desirability decreases. A home that is on the market for a long time becomes stale. It loses the interest of potential buyers. Even worse, when a house is on the market for a long time, buyers and real estate agents think there may be something inherently wrong with your house. Once this happens, you may have to make a significant price reduction, even dropping the price below market value, to sell your home.
Don’t Price Your Home Based on Your Needs
It is tempting to price your home based on the amount of money you need to purchase a new home or pay off bills. You must be as objective as possible. Ask a real estate agent to prepare a Comparative Market Analyze for you and carefully analyze the data. Remember that a buyer will only pay you what the home is worth in today’s market, regardless of how much money you may need.
If You Want to Sell Your Home Fast, Don’t Price it Based on Your Neighbor’s Listing Price
Many home sellers make the mistake of pricing their home based on the neighbor’s asking price. You see, a “for sale” sign go up on a neighbor’s house and call to find out the price. This approach can lead you to overprice your home. For all you know, your neighbor may be asking for a price that is totally unrealistic. Even if your neighbor’s house sells, it could be because your neighbor lowered the price and eventually accepted a lower offer.
Don’t Price it Based on the Sales Price Your Neighbor Tells you They Have Received
Since neighbors don’t want to be perceived as showing a socio-economic inferiority, it is common they will exaggerate the sales price of their home. Before using a
neighbor’s sale as a reference, verify it by having a real estate agent confirm the sales price. They can do that by looking up the data in the Multiple Listing System. The Multiple Listing System, more commonly known as the MLS, is a database of historic and current real estate listings in a local area created, maintained by members of the National Association of Realtors. The MLS will give you an idea of the sales price of homes that have sold that are similar to yours as well as the condition and any concessions that were offered to prospective buyers. Seller’s concessions decrease the final amount that a seller receives. This masks the true sales price of a home.
Don’t Price Your Home Based on What You Invested in the Home
Sometimes homeowners invest in improvements that only have real value to them. They may customize a home with an oversized Jacuzzi, professional grade kitchen or top of the line ceramic flooring. Unless these improvements are in line with other homes in the neighborhood, it is unlikely a homeowner will recover their investment. Unfortunately, not many people realize that there are some home improvements that do not add value.
Price Your Home on the Current Market Value
Our experienced Agents at Venture One Realty can help you figure out your home’s market value by preparing a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA). A Comparative Market Analysis helps you come up with a home’s value based on the sales on comparable homes in your area.
Among other factors, a CMA takes into account the home-style, lot size, square footage, age, condition and location of your home and compares your home to similar homes that have sold within the past six months. The subject house is compared to a minimum of three sold comparables. If a comparable offers more amenities than the subject property, a dollar amount is deducted from the home’s final sales price. Conversely, if a comparable is inferior in some respect to the subject property, a dollar amount is added to the inferior comparable sales price. By adding or subtracting a dollar value to each comparable sales price, an agent can level off the differences that the comparables may have to the subject property. In the end, you will have three adjusted sales prices that should give you an accurate sign of your home’s market value.
With this data, you will have enough information to accurately price your home according to its market value.
Venture One Realty has recognized that Connecticut Homeowners need and want a way to keep more of their hard earned equity when selling their home. Our Clients save Thousands of Dollars without sacrificing the services that are critical to maximizing the sale price of their home. We offer all the same MLS exposure, marketing tools, technology, quality of service, expertise, and personal attention as the Other Realty Companies but without the costly Real Estate Commission. You pay only 1%.
We are a full-service Real Estate Agency that will manage the entire home selling process from listing to closing. You get everything you would expect from a traditional Real Estate Agent but with the added benefit of working with a technology-enabled and customer-focused team of Agents. Our results speak for themselves.
Venture One Realty has recognized that Connecticut Homeowners need and want a way to keep more of their hard earned equity when selling their home. Our Clients save Thousands of Dollars without sacrificing the services that are critical to maximizing the sale price of their home. We offer all the same MLS exposure, marketing tools, technology, quality of service, expertise, and personal attention as the Other Realty Companies but without the costly Real Estate Commission. You pay only 1%. We are a full-service Real Estate Agency that will manage the entire home selling process from listing to closing. You get everything you would expect from a traditional Real Estate Agent but with the added benefit of working with a technology-enabled and customer-focused team of Agents. Our results speak for themselves.
