Can you guess the answer?  I’ll give you a clue – it’s a three-word answer….  Price it right!  And the next three words are – from the start.  Price it right from the start!

Are marketing, advertising and signage important? Yes, and all of those elements come in to play when selling a home.  But it really comes down to one bottom-line factor – the price.

Pricing your home right from the start may be easier said than done, but it’s important to do if you want to sell your home quickly.  As a seller, you probably have certain ideas about what your home is worth and the price you “need” to get.  At my company, Pinnacle Residential Properties, we address this in our Comparative Marketing Analysis (CMA) and listing presentation.  The seller determines the asking price, but the market determines the selling price.  It all comes down to what the market will bear, or in other words, what a buyer is willing to pay for the home. 

And so, if you paid $600,000 for your home, and you put another $50,000 into renovating it, but the market is not as strong now as it was when you purchased the home, you may very likely lose money on the sale of your house (i.e., you may not get back your renovation costs and/or you may get less than what you originally paid for the house).  Unfortunately, this seems to be the current scenario with the real estate market, and I know it can be disheartening.  But as we know, the real estate market is cyclical, so thankfully, this too shall pass.

The good news is that the market usually tells you how your home is priced…if you have several first and second showings during the first week on the market, then you have priced the house appropriately, and your house should sell quickly.  If you have several first showings but don’t have any second showings, then you are priced a bit too high.  And if you don’t have any showings that first week, then you have missed the mark.  

This is the general rule of thumb, but sometimes there are exceptions to the rule.  For example, the high-end of a given market tends not to have as much activity mostly because the buyer pool is smaller at those high price points.  It may also depend on the time of the year – the holidays (starting right before Thanksgiving and going into the New Year) typically constitute the slowest times of the year.  And so if you put your house on the market in the middle of December, it could be slow just because of the timing.  But besides these few exceptions, the market generally tells you how you are priced right off the bat.  

There is an interesting phenomenon with regard to pricing…and that is – if you overprice your home when it first goes on the market, you usually get less for the house in the long run.  I know this seems almost counterintuitive, and it may not completely make sense, but it’s the truth.  People often want to leave “negotiating room” so they overprice their house so that they have a cushion.  Time and again, I see those sellers ultimately getting less for their homes than if they had just priced it right from the onset.

The other thing to keep in mind is that when you price your home correctly right out of the gate, a bidding war may ensue.  This is a win-win scenario for you as the seller because this kind of competitive situation usually results in the bidding up of the price of the house.  Good news for the seller!

So to sell your home in record time, here’s what you need to do – price your home based on the current market situation and the comparatives (the homes that have sold in the last six months) – your real estate agent will share all of this information with you in his/her Comparative Marketing Analysis and listing presentation.  Keep in mind that you do not determine what the selling price will be, the market does. And if you have indeed mispriced your home, make the price adjustment as quickly as you can.  The activity on a home new to the market is greatest during the first two-three weeks, and so that is the ideal time to capture your buyer!