Selling a home can be very stressful and difficult,
but it does not have to be impossible. In fact, it can actually be fairly easy
if you avoid some very common mistakes. The most common mistake that is
made by home sellers is incorrectly pricing their home. The listing price
of a home normally determines whether a home will be sold quickly or if it
will sit on the market for long periods of time and become stale.
Quite simply, if a home is overpriced, it really won’t
matter if a seller hires the best real estate agent in the area, who also has
the best marketing plan, it just will not sell!
But, listing a home at the correct price will almost
guarantee that a buyer will write an offer in a short amount of time. Unfortunately,
determining the correct listing price is not as easy as it seems.
Here are a few mistakes to make sure you avoid:
Listing
high to leave room to negotiate!
A high number of home sellers believe that it is a
good idea to price their home higher because they think that most buyers will
offer significantly less than the listing price. In most cases, this is just
not true!
Buyers today are very savvy and knowledgeable; the
internet has made it extremely easy for them to obtain information. Plus they
are very likely working with a real estate professional who is looking out for
their best interests and will let them know if a property is overpriced.
So a home seller, who prices their home high to
leave room to negotiate, will not have anything to negotiate as buyers will not
even look at it.
Listing your home at market value and not listing it
high to leave room for negotiating, will more often than not, get you more
money in a shorter amount of time!
Listing your home with the real estate agent that tells you
the highest listing price!
In most local real estate markets there is anywhere
from several hundred to thousand’s of real estate agents.
For instance, the number of real estate agents in the
Marion County, FL area is around 1,800.
And much like any other industry there are professionals
who are very good at what they do, and some who are terrible at what they do.
In
every market there are the real estate agents who buy listings. They will
tell a seller their home is worth more than it really is, just to get the
listing.
And by doing this they are doing a huge disservice
to the seller and themselves!
A seller who interviews three or four real estate agents and selects the agent because
they said their home was worth much more than the other agents did, and doesn’t
have evidence of comparable sales to back it up, is making a huge mistake!
