Chris Gmyr

If you’re buying, you want to spend as little as possible while getting the house you need.  If you’re selling, you want the most money for the property you’re offering.  In a perfect world, everyone meets in the middle—a true compromise—and everyone’s happy.

But it’s not a perfect world.  Buyers get stingy.  Sellers get greedy.  The opportunity to make the perfect sale is easily lost.  So how do you make sure you do all you can to make it happen?  It starts when the seller considers what to initially list the property for.

Pricing a home correctly is critical.  More often than not, a home sells for its fair market value.  A properly priced home attracts the right type of buyer and increases the likelihood of a fast sale.  Another factor is the buyer’s home IQ.  Even if they’re not using the services of a qualified real estate agent, it doesn’t take long for anyone to realize what’s a fair price and what isn’t.  If you’re not in a reasonable realm price-wise, you’re not competitive.  Your home simply won’t sell.

A real danger of an overpriced home is staleness—it can sit too long on the market.  If a home doesn’t sell in 100 days, people start to assume something’s wrong with it.  Even clean, nice homes that are on the market for a long time rarely sell for a good price.  Fair market value is long gone.  The other potential problem is that a delay in the sale of your first home due to poor pricing can result in you owning two homes (costly and inconvenient).  Worse, you might lose the deal on the new home because you can’t afford it since your money is tied up in the old home.

Statistics show that the most activity in a home on the market occurs in the first six weeks.  Whether you work with a real estate agent or not, make sure you’ve got a good starting price to capitalize on that time.  Your property is only “new on the market” for a short while.  Don’t sabotage yourself with a momentary lapse into greediness.