The
most important first step you can make in
selling a house is calculating an accurate
fair market value. Price
your home too low and you may lose thousands.
Price your home too high and you may price
yourself out of the market and never sell
your home.
A
home priced too high may sit on the market
for a long time making it hard to get a good
offer. If your real estate is for
sale for a long time (and buyers
and agents know how long your home has been
for sale), a potential buyer will think you
might be getting desperate, so they will make
low (and often insulting) offers. By overpricing
your home in the beginning, you could actually
end up settling for a lower price than you
would have normally received.
There
are several ways to determine your home's
value using the Internet—some are Free
and some are a minimal cost. I suggest using
a combination of the below.
FREE
- Get
Your Home's Value for Free at HomeGain.com.
Receive a free comparative market analysis
plus neighborhood comps! HomeGain will provide
you with a detailed list of all homes near
your home that have recently sold. You can
then take this data to calculate your own
home's estimated value using info such as
the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, square
footage, age, etc...
ACCURACY:
The house values listed in
HomeGain's results are accurate values of
homes sold.
FREE
- Use
Domania.com's
instant free estimate tool
to find out how much another property sold
for in your neighborhood, street, etc... See
a full history of how much a home sold for
throughout the years.
ACCURACY:The house values
listed in Domania's results are accurate values
of homes sold.
FREE
- Zillow.com
has a powerful online tool which instantly
calculates a "zestimate" value of
your home based on your square footage,
number of bedrooms and baths, homes sold recently
in your neighborhood and more. This amount
changes daily as info is updated into their
database.
ACCURACY:Zillow
claims to be within 10% accuracy of the value
of the home. We find that because of the mass
amount of data going into Zillow's calculations
everyday, the "zestimate" of your
home can vary by tens of thousands or more
each and everyday. (For example, a house we
looked at was $430,000 one day and only $360,000
on another day.)
CONCLUSION:
Zillow
never claims that one should use the "zestimate"
tool as a replacement for an appraisal. Zillow
encourages you to use the calculation as "a
good starting point" in researching the
value of your home.
#4
- Conduct your own research of Neighborhood
Homes
FREE
Collect
real estate flyer's of neighborhood homes
to compare to yours (FSBO's and Real Estate
Agent's)
Find out what kind of successes and failures
they've had.
Pick
up local real estate books and newspapers
to find properties for sale in your neighborhood
Attend
any "Open House" events of homes
in your neighborhood
FREE
- A CMA is an informal
estimate of your home's market value. A real
estate agent makes an analysis based primarily
on sales of comparable homes in the neighborhood.
If you are considering listing with an agent,
they will usually do a CMA for you at no charge.
This will also give you a good idea of what
your asking price should be. Get
Your Home's Value! Receive a free comparative
market analysis plus neighborhood comps!
$200.00
to $400.00
-
A certified appraiser will come to your home
to perform a physical valuation of your home
at a given point in time. This is usually
very affordable, ranging from $200 - $400.
An appraisal carries a lot of weight in justifying
your asking price with potential buyers. The
appraisal will give you a very good estimate
on a realistic listing price that is reasonable
and competitive.
The
appraisal takes into consideration such things
as:
Home's
square footage
Construction quality
Home design
Floor plan & layout
The
neighborhood
Convenience
to shopping, schools, and transportation
Additional
Costs
As you calculate your Asking Price, consider
those extra costs of selling your home (or
preparing your home to sell) such as improvements,
repairs and advertising. Include budget
in your selling incentives. For instance,
you
may want to offer a "cash back at closing
carpet allowance" if your carpet is
old or a non-neutral color. People love
to know they will get cash back at closing.
Test
the Waters It's
critical that your home be competitive in
price. Buyers do comparative shopping and
act fast on a good deal. A good priced home
will attract attention and generate activity
from home buyers and brokers. If you aren't
seeing any traffic from buyers, it is a
clear indication that the listing price
is not satisfying the marketplace test.
Leave
room for negotiation Buyers
like to know they are getting a good deal.
If you list your house for $250,000 and
refuse to negotiate an offer received of
$245,000, your potential Buyer may not feel
that you are a willing participate in this
"negotiation".
If
$250,000 is your goal for this sale, you
may want to set your price slightly higher
so there is room for negotiation... about
$260,000 to $265,000. But don't price it
too high or you won't get any phone calls.
If you receive an offer an offer and come
down to your desired price of $250,000 -
then your goal is met and the buyer is also
happy to have gotten a good deal.
(Misspelled
words: fsbp. fbso, fosb, fobs, estimat,
estamate, house valu, stimate, esimate,
etimate, vslue, house 4 sale, for sale buy
owner, fizbo, fisbo)
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