How to Know if Your Home is Priced Right
When it comes to pricing a home for sale, the goal is to strike a balance between underpricing and overpricing. This sounds obvious, but it can be difficult since there are so many factors to consider in a home valuation. Finding the right price for your home takes some research but it’s surely worth the effort. If you price your home correctly right off the bat, you’ll attract more buyers and increase the likelihood of a fast sale.
Here’s how we make sure your home is priced correctly:
Research the Comps
Comps – or “comparable” sales in your local real estate market – are recently sold homes with a similar size, age, and layout to your home. Understanding the comps in your neighborhood is a sensible way to get an idea of how to price your home. Potential buyers and their agents will use comps to determine if your home is priced correctly, and whether they should make an offer. If your home is priced significantly higher than a similar home in your neighborhood, this is often a dead giveaway that your home is overpriced.
So, it’s time to do some research and find out what kind of prices similar properties are selling for. Pay close attention to the listing price as well as each property’s final sale price. This can tell you what buyers are willing to pay for a home like yours in your area at this time.
Work with a Local Agent
Remember all those factors we mentioned earlier? Fortunately, there are those who specialize in incorporating these factors when determining the price of a home. As an experienced Realtor team here in Miami, one of the first things we do for our clients is create a Comparative Market Analysis – or “CMA.” This is a report that looks at the current real estate listings and recently sold homes in your area.
A CMA will also tell you how similar each comp is to your home, and how much inventory is currently available.
When calculating a price of your home, we take into account how long each comp has been on the market and other key indicators. While a CMA is highly technical, it’s key for any Realtor to provide an accurate pricing range for your home that allows you to sell quickly and not sit on the market without any prospective buyers.
Get Your Home Professionally Appraised
If you’re looking for a second opinion after your Realtor, a professional home appraisal is your best option. While an experienced Realtor is going to look at a lot of different factors (including how to reduce the time on the market), a licensed home appraiser specializes in the specific task of pricing a home. This person will come to your house and conduct a walk-through to understand your home’s features, upgrades, and any other changes that may impact the home’s value.
Potential sellers get their homes appraised because they know the appraiser is completely objective in their analysis and are incentivized simply to be accurate. This can be particularly helpful if you have an emotional attachment to your home, which can prevent you from seeing this transaction from the buyer’s perspective. Buyers care about the price and quality of the home, what you originally paid for the house and the years of memories you’ve created are not how they see it. The final sales price will come down to cold, hard market research.
If you’re preparing to sell your home and aren’t sure how to price it, the Kern Team is here to help. We even have a free-market analysis tool that generates an extensive property valuation report from basic information about your home.
Learning about the current market is the first step in selling a home, and we’re happy to start this journey with you. Get in touch with us today so we can determine the best course of action for this life-changing experience.
