Selling Tip #5: Setting the Price on Your Home

Now that you’ve decided to sell your home, what price are you going to advertise it for? The figure that the market will see when your home is on the internet and in the newspapers is far more important than you realise so you may be wondering, ‘What is the value of my house?’. You’ve got to get the price right.

So this is how it works: you and your agent need to get your heads together and figure out what the research tells you. What’s been selling in the area near your home (and of a similar size)? What is your expectation? What would you like to get for the home? See if you can reach some happy medium to get the price right.

Now, you need to understand this: your agent actually wants to get the best possible price for your home anyway. Why? Because when they get it, you’ll become their raving fan and that’s good for business, so remember that it is in their best interest to work as hard as possible on getting you a fantastic sale.

But here’s the problem: a seller wants the best price and a buyer wants to get the home for a rock bottom price. So give a lot of thought to the price tag you plan to display on your home.

If it’s too high, the home is sure to sit longer than it needs to. If it’s too low and sells in the first weekend, you’ll probably kick yourself, thinking you’ve given it away too cheaply (which is most likely the case) Talk about a tricky situation!

Imagine the home is sitting gathering dust while the weeks become months and it still hasn’t sold. Someone who has previously looked through your home sees it advertised online at a lower figure and their opinion that there was something wrong with your home is validated now that you’ve had to drop the price. The truth is: no. There wasn’t anything wrong with the home. It was the price that was wrong.

So please be careful. Buyers are more polite than you give them credit for. If the price is too high, they probably won’t even come and have a look. We think we can start high because there’s always the option to come down or that people can always make cheeky offers. However, the reality is that it’s damaging for your potential buyers to see that your property has had 3000 views but not sold yet.

Guess what? They’re going to swipe left. They’re going to move onto the next home because if 3000 people before them thought it wasn’t an appropriate home for them to buy, why should they bother looking at it?

We don’t want that happening to the homes we sell. We want them to sell within the average time period – under 2 months – and we want to sell for the best possible price. So give that some thought, get the price right and you have a campaign whereby the marketplace feels a bit of pain, they’ve paid top dollar for your home, the home hasn’t sat on the market for an inordinate amount of time and you haven’t had to worry about a price reduction.

The idea that we can start high and bring it down later is actually somewhat damaging in terms of getting the best outcome for your most valuable asset. So have a chat to your agent about this topic. They are sure to have some opinions and they will bounce their ideas off yours. Between you and them, you’ll get it right. Talk to you next week!