There is no way around it, the most important aspect of selling your house is pricing,

you can sell anything at the right price but getting the right price for what you’re selling is what you as a seller really care about.

Every house that sells, sells for what’s called fair market value, the amount that a willing buyer and seller agree on. This range of prices is actually quite small, about 10% on either side. That means that no matter how bad a job you do or how great an agent you get you aren’t going to double the price and you’re not going to get taken for half what it’s worth either.

So why hire a great agent like me? Because you want to maximize that 10%, you want to be at the top not the bottom. If you are buying some pasta sauce it doesn’t make a big difference if you get it for $3.75 or $4.25, but when you sell your house the difference between $375,000 and $425,000 is huge! So how do I price your home to get that extra little bit and get it sold fast, let me tell you and even if you don’t hire me you can use these tips yourself.

The first week: It’s true that if your trying to sell your house yourself or are using another agent that eventually you will be able to find the right price, so what does it really matter if it’s priced right to begin with? It matters a lot, first of all you may need to get your house sold quickly for a number of reasons, but even if you don’t your house will get 7 times as many people looking at the listing the first week than it will any other week, even after a price change. That means it will take another 2 and a half months to generate the kind of interest you get in the first week. And the more buyers you have, the greater the demand, the better chance of someone who actually wants it seeing and this all leads to a higher price and a quicker sale.

The right price: So how do you get people looking at your house in the first week? You price it competitively. There is just no way around it, people will ignore a house that is not priced for the market, they will just ignore it. You may think we’ll start out high and then get some lower offers and work from there, but you’ll never get those offers because your buyers will never see your house. The buyers that actually are in your market will never look for a house priced that high and the people in that market will ignore it because it’s not what they are looking for.

The ebay principle: Many people think that if they price it low to start they will end up selling it low, this is actually not the case. Pricing your home competitively will do two things, first it will bring in buyers and second it will cause upward momentum in price. Think of it like ebay, you have two sellers trying to sell their old phone, the average selling price is $500. The first seller starts at $490, the second at $1.00. Well what happens after 7 days, everyone ignores the $490 phone until the very end and someone buys it for $490, $10 less than the average, but something interesting happens with the $1.00 phone. Lots of people look at it, you get bids all week, someone starts with $2.00 and as it gets bid up more and more people bid thinking maybe they will get it cheap, but then they get attached to it, so even though they may have started saying they wouldn’t go over $450 when it gets to $475 or $500 they want it so much they keep bidding and by the end it sells for $525. I have experienced this exact scenario and I bet you have too, well, the exact thing will happen with a well-priced home, buyers will start thinking of it as theirs and will outbid each other to keep it. Now what happens when you price too high?

When Dorchester, Mass., realtor Julie Simmons wanted to sell her own home in January, she listed it at $460,000, about $5,000 to $10,000 below what she thought she'd sell for.

"I knew I had to attract attention," she says. Even in a harsh winter, she received four offers in less than two weeks -- and sold for $465,000.

 

Death by a thousand cuts: Well, first of all you won’t get nearly the exposure, it may take 3 or 4 months to get the number of people viewing your listing as you would have had in the first week if it were priced right. Second you might have to cut your price once or twice before you get that first offer, now you have downward price momentum. You will have buyers actually competing for a lower price, thinking that you will take just a little bit lower price, or if they wait a couple weeks you will lower it just a little bit more. So your $400,000 house will be getting low ball offers at $360 or $370 and buyers walking away thinking you will just come back to them with a lower price.

Specific Pricing: This is a psychological trick that you see a lot at the gas pump or at the grocery store, but never see at high end stores, it’s pricing some at $14.99 instead of $15. You see this because people naturally see the 14 instead of the 99 and think it’s a better price than $15, so why don’t you see this at high end establishments? That’s because your brain also notices the 99 and thinks of it as a cheap trick, it devalues your product and since a home is about as high end a product you can sell the same applies. Buyers are much more likely to discount a home listed at $399,999 than they would at $400,000. But there is another interesting aspect to this, a very specific price like $396,450 will make a buyer think there is a great reason for that price and they are more likely to offer close to or at that price.

As your agent it’s my job to get your home sold at the best price possible and then make sure that the transaction goes smoothly to closing. These are just some of the many methods that I use to make sure I get that job done right. Please feel free to contact me anytime so that I can show you this and many other reasons why I can get your real estate transaction done and done right! Or if you just want to ask me a question about the market or get some advice if you are selling your home yourself.