The most important factor in selling your home is the price. It’s what people search for, what people look see first, and how they decide if they’re interested in your property.
The worst thing you can do is overprice the property, as you’ll kill off interest before you even get the chance to let people see it. After a few weeks, all interest will disappear.
If you price to too low, there’s no need to worry about it - you’ll receive multiple offers which will drive up your asking price. No two people will estimate the property’s price, as it’s a mix of comparables and personal estimates.
How to find the right price for your property? Read on…
Find Comparable and Recent Sales Listings
On sell-my-house-quick.com, you can do all the research you require on your local market, via our ‘Search Houses’ page. Find all the houses that are listed in your area, and find ones that are similar to your own. There will be variations, but once you have collected a few, you will begin to understand what the market value of your property is. This is what professional appraisers do - find comparable and and see how your property stands up to the features and quality of other properties.
Important factors come into play with regards to social dividing lines too - certain streets and areas are more desirable, and therefore more expensive than other. You’ll be aware of the different areas in your city, and how the pricing varies between them. It can be a simple as a road through a town - if you’re on the wrong side of the tracks, your property can worth a lot less.
You should be looking at houses that are no more than a mile from your property. This will keep your margin of error on estimating your property’s worth to a minimum.
Also be aware of the square footage of a property, and how this affects the price. You’ll see similar properties out there, but the ones with larger sizes will be priced higher accordingly. The more you look at, the more familiar you’ll become with the pricing valuations of properties.
Remember to find comparables from the same period. Homes that were made in the 50’s will differ in price from those from the 90’s - even though the structures and size are the same.
Pending Sales
These are sale that are in motion - the seller has advertised, and there has been an offer accepted by the seller. They are in the process of exchanging contracts. You can find out how much the house has been sold for if you call up the agents involved. Some may be reluctant to tell you, and some will. These are invaluable figures to come by, as they are live sales and properties that will give you an accurate idea of what is selling on the market.
Live Listings
You can have a look at what being listed right now, and act as if you were a buyer. Become as objective as possible, and put aside all your prejudices and go looking for a home to by. What is standing out? What looks good? Why do you like it? What isn’t working? What photographs look good? More importantly, which properties look better than yours, and why? You can pick up tips just from looking around - check out your competition.
Appraisals and Valuations
We have mentioned in previous blogs that getting your home appraised before selling is a good idea. When you agree a deal with a buyer, their lender will want to get an appraisal for the property, to make sure that the deal between the buyer and seller is for a reasonable amount, as they see it. When appraising your property, square footage is a major factor for the professionals. When making comparables, they work to no more than 10% variations on that size. If your property is 3000 square feet, they will then work within a comparable range between 2700 and 3300 ft, and find properties within that range to gauge a value for your property.
This doesn’t unfortunately mean that you cand find a large property in your area, work out the price per square footage, and use this for your property. The larger the home, the more value each square foot is worth - so stick to properties of similar size for your calculations!
Different Market Conditions
You’ve had a look at your local market, and there seems to be a few similar houses - but they’re all at different prices. How so? There’s a variety of reasons. Rarely do appraiser’s arrive at exactly the same figure for a property - that would be unoriginal - and the seller could have worked it out for themselves! It may be that the properties were put onto the market at different times during a changing market and the seller has stubbornly held out for the original asking price, only to be left on the shelf.
In a buyer’s market, you’ll need to price your house competitively and be aware of the most recent comparable sale. Let’s say the most recent comparable you have found that sold went for 160,000. It would be a good bet to price your property at 159,000, and settle for 155,000. It’s a buyer’s market (as it is right now across most countries) and you have to be prepared to sell agressively if you need to. You don’t want to hang around for the price that a property on the same street sold for 6 months ago.
In a seller’s market, with the same property (160,000) you can afford to ask for more - I would say as much as 10%. If after you’ve carried out your market research, and found that inventory in the area is low, you can ask for more. If you are bringing to the market a modern, desirable property of which there are few the listed, you can be more confident of asking for a higher price.
The market will always let you know what you property is worth anyway, so don’t expend to much worry about that. If you put your property on the market for a very low price, you will be flooded with enquiries! If you put it on for to high a price, your phone won’t ring. Pay close attention to who is interested, and find out from feedback what you’re doing right, and what you could be doing better.
To start your market research with our search page, Click Here.