"The Price is Right" - 10 Tips to Price Your Home Perfectly

Love Selling Your Home Series

This series, Love Selling Your Home: Minimize Your Stress, Maximize Your Profit, is a step-by-step guide that covers everything you need to know to sell your home in today’s market, from finding a real estate agent to all the way to settlement day.

Selling your home can be an overwhelming and emotional experience. So many never-ending decisions to make and things to do from start to finish.

And many of those decisions can either help maximize your profits from the sale, or hurt them.  Just facing that unknown outcome can cause stress and anxiety for many sellers.

That’s why you need to focus on successful strategies that help you price your home “right” from the very beginning! Let this next statement sink in:

Every single day your home sits on the market, it essentially loses value. 

I can’t emphasize this enough to sellers. It’s so important to price your home correctly when you first list it so that you attract buyers who are serious and ready to make offers.

That means not pricing it too low (buyers will wonder what’s wrong with it), but also not pricing it too high (buyers will cross it off their list.) You want to avoid that “huh?” reaction.

Even when inventory is low and buyers are eager to view any listing that comes up, you don’t want to make any mistakes with your initial pricing. 

Here are 10 tips to make sure you price your home perfectly. Your agent should go over many of these items with you to help determine a list price for your home.

1. Look at recent comparables or “comps.” It’s a given to look at these but  how you interpret this information is what matters most.
2. What is a comparable?  It’s a home that is similar in size, location, and condition.
3. Only consider homes that have actually sold, not homes currently on the market. That’s a more telling sign of the market.
4. Don’t just look at the asking price, but also the net price.  Did it go up or down from the asking price?  Did the seller pay closing costs? 
5. How is the comparable home different than yours when you take out size, location, and condition?  Did it have a better or worse view; a better or worse street; a better or worse yard?  Be honest about the differences and how they would impact the price of your home.
6. Only look at the most recent homes sold.  Appraisers look as far back as 6 months to arrive at a value, so you should look at homes that have sold within the last six months as well.  And, the more recent the better, especially if the market is rapidly changing.
7. What you paid for your home a few years ago or what you could have gotten at one time is not relevant when pricing your home to sell today. Don’t ever get stuck with this thinking at all!
8. You can’t count on getting every dollar you’ve spent on your home throughout the years.  Unfortunately, sometimes what we like, not everyone likes. Every homeowner hopes any upgrades are solid investments with a good return. It’s time for some honest evaluation and understanding of how well your home shows to today’s buyers (not those from three or five years ago).
9. What’s the inventory now or in the next few months? If there is less inventory and more buyer demand, then you may be able to set your home’s price a bit higher. But remember to tread carefully here so you still attract buyers to view your home. That way, they are the ones who could push the price up due to multiple offers.
10. Try to avoid putting your home on the market during a holiday weekend and/or the holiday season at the end of the year.  Homes always sell for less during these times. Don’t aim for Memorial Day weekend, but the weekend or two before it!

Pricing your home correctly is both art and science, and most of the time the online estimators are not correct.  Because there are so many factors that go into pricing a home, such as what a seller has done to the property since owning it, there can be huge swings in prices, even in the same neighborhood, on the same block!

My approach to pricing is simple.  I’m seeing homes all day every day with buyers and so I know how they react to certain price points and what a home needs to have to reach a certain price.  I take that knowledge and experience and apply it to the uniqueness your home brings to the marketplace.  And, time of year also changes pricing strategy as well.

Since there are many factors that go into pricing a home correctly for the best outcome, contact me, and I’d be happy to walk through your home and tell you what it could be priced at and the marketing strategies I use to get you the most money possible out of your largest investment. 

Now that you know how to price your home, you will be ready for next week’s article, Marketing Your Home to Sell Quickly and Profitably. You’ll see that a customized approach to marketing your home will attract buyers who mean business!