Priced to Sell!!!!

Price your home to sell!

Written By: Chelsy Vaughn Martin

When it comes to real estate, most people believe that the three most important things are location, location and location. But here's the truth, when you're selling your home, the location you are at, is the location it will sell at. You can't change that. Maybe when you bought your home, it was on a quiet country road just outside of town. Now that area has developed more than you could have ever imagined and your home sits across from a busy shopping center. It's not the ideal location that it once was, but not to worry, we only need one buyer and that's the right buyer. So how do we make sure to find that buyer?

At The Vaughn Group, we believe that the most important factor in selling your home is pricing it right. I've heard people say, "I'm going to have you and two other agents come look at my home and whoever says they'll sell it for the most, is who I'm going to work with." That's fine, but just because they say they'll list it higher than the other agents, doesn't mean that they have any control over the offers you get. A home that is over priced will likely fail to get showings. Even if your home gets showings, if it is priced incorrectly, people typically won't want to make an offer.

So how do we know what price to list your home at? Do we just guess? Do we look at what it has been appraised at? Do we look at what the tax records say the home is worth? Do we let our clients tell us where to price their home?

It's easy! We don't guess. We don't go by the appraisal. We don't go by the tax records. We do let our clients determine what they want to list their home at, but we don't let them do it blindly.

The way that we determine the best price to list your home at is by using a comparative market analysis. We look at other homes in your neighborhood, or near where you live that are currently on the market or have sold recently. Of these homes, we choose several that have similar features such as number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, square footage etc. From this, we can easily determine where to price your home. Of those homes still on the market, how long have they been on the market? If they have been for sale for a while, how does the price compare to those that have sold recently? Of those that sold, what was the price per square foot? From this information, we can determine what the market says your home should sell for. 

As an example, lets take a look at a sample home. Our seller would like to list her home for around $105,000. The seller purchased the home in 2008 for $75,000. They have done several updates over the last 5 years, but the home still needs a little work.

Of the 12 properties we are going to compare, the 5 that are currently active have a list price at an average of $62.59 per square foot. Of the 7 that have sold in the past 10 months, the average sale price was $60.88 per square foot. All homes have 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and an attached 2 car garage like our sample home. All the homes that are active have been on the market between 88 and 351 days. The homes that sold recently were on the market for between 0 and 178 days. So we're going to take the average sold for price per square foot and multiply that by the square footage of our sample house. This brings us to $95,000. 

However, there were a few homes that sold above that price with around the same square footage. One even sold for $111,000. There are always going to be homes that sold above average and below average. This is were 3 more factors come into play. Presentation, Condition and Location. If our seller would replace her windows, paint and repair her fence and replace the carpet in her home, an investment that would cost around $3000-5000, we believe her home would most likely sell for over $100,000. After all things considered, our seller decided to do the repairs and list her home at $104,900.

I believe that it is important for our clients to know that when we say what we believe the house will sell for, it isn't just a gut feeling. A seasoned agent will help determine what pricing and presentation are best for your home, based on their past experience and their knowledge of the marketplace. Having a seasoned agent who is willing to communicate with you well and you can trust is there for you and your best interest, is one of the best tools in selling your home. We show each one of our clients all of the information available, like the information I used in my example above. We cannot stress enough the importance of pricing your home to sell. When we sit down to list your home, we will look at the facts together and allow you to make a well informed decision about where to price your home.