Paula Henry

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Help! My Home Didn’t Sell - Part 4 - Price

September 16th, 2008 categories: Indianapolis Real Estate News, Indy Expired Home Help, Indy Home Sellers

Price is the subject most homeowners approach with trepidition. Almost everyone I meet with wants to try to price a little high so they have room to negotiate. I can not stress enough the dangers of pricing high and holding.

Price is the number one reason homes expire without selling.The longer a home is on the market, it becomes “old news” and buyers believe there must be something wrong with the home, or the seller is desperate, which results in lower offers and more seller concessions.

I have written about this subject before, so won’t bore you with the same old news about pricing. Here’s a few places you can find info about pricing your home:

Pricing Your Home to Sell, Part 1

Pricing Your Home to Sell, Part 2

Instead of repeating the same information, I would like to illustrate the difference with graphs from a few recent listed and sold homes from my inventory. These graphs chart the number of online views the homes have had during the period of time they were listed.

This first graph is the online views of a home where the seller would not budge on “their” price. In this graph, you can tell when the price was lowered. With each price reduction the online views increased, but were far less than when the home first went on the market.

MaketGraph1

The otehr graphs are homeoweners who wanted to start a bit higher than I suggested and were willing to drop their price when we suggested. That’s why their graphs aren’t as long

Market Graph 3

There’s not much to this graph, the home went on the market the end of June, we reduced the price the end of July and the views increased. The home closed the end of August.

Online HOme Views

This home went on the market in March, with a price reduction in May and sold in June. The total price reduction was less than 5%

Listing Online View

This home went on the market in February – The price reduction in late April sold the home in May. The price reduction and final sales price was 5.2% less than the original asking price.

Many people believe if the home sales too quickly, it must have been priced too low. The truth is, if you get activity, as in buyers coming through your home, the home is priced correctly and months on the market is actually money lost. When there is no activity and all other factors are in line, we have to look at the price.

There are other factors which affect price, such as the amount of foreclosures, bank owned and short sale properties within the neighborhood. I have seen several neighborhoods where the only sales are distressed sales.

I willingly show both my defeats and my wins, but my goal is to win for my clients. A large part of my expertise is determining market value, so a home listed does not lanquish on the market. Admittedly, sometimes, there are not enough comps to determine an exact price range. It is then, we must make an intelligent decision to reduce the price in a timely manner.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 8:10 pm and is filed under Indianapolis Real Estate News, Indy Expired Home Help, Indy Home Sellers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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