You need to do some research to get the best pricing for your home. The value of the house is determined by several things, including the location and condition of your home and the value of similar homes in your immediate area. If you set the price on the house too high, it can linger on the market for months or years; but if you set the price too low, you can end up losing money on the sale. Here is how you can determine and set the price of your home so you can sell it quickly while getting the best return on your investment.
Determine Your Home’s Value
What you paid for the home is not always indicative of the price you will get when you sell. In many cases, the value has risen during your time of ownership. However, in other cases, the value could have also fallen, and you won’t be able to get back what you originally paid – especially if you have only owned the home for few years.
Here are two things you should do to determine your home’s value:
- Find all the information you can on recent homes sales in your area.
- Find out which homes are comparable to yours.
The sales information you gather must be recent for it to be valid. The real estate market can change quickly and even sales from six months to a year ago may not reflect the current real estate environment.
The next step, once you get the sale prices together, is to find three or more homes that sold that are very similar to yours and are in roughly the same condition. To do this, you should pull up the listings of homes that have been sold recently and compare what’s in this listing to what you have at your home.
How Your Real Estate Agent Can Help
A real estate agent is essential when gathering and understanding the research you need to get done to determine an asking price for your home. The agent can quickly pull up the old listings and what they sold for so you can do your comparisons. Real estate agents are trained and experienced in performing market study analysis so they know which way the market is expected to be heading in the next year or so. You can use this expertise to help you set an appealing price on your home that will allow for a quick sale while protecting your financial interests in the property.
Asking Price vs. Selling Price
The asking price is the amount initially set when listing the property for sale. This price should be set low enough to attract buyers to your open houses and such. The listing price should also be high enough where you make a profit. The one thing you need to remember is that a home will typically sell at or near the price of other homes in the area regardless of the amenities and additions you may have added to the home over the years.
The selling price is what the home will actually sell for once an offer by a prospective buyer is made. The offer and sale price can be much different than the asking price.
Set the Right Price at the Beginning
Setting a realistic price based on market conditions and the sale of homes in the area at the beginning of the process will make the entire process of selling your home go a lot smoother. A realistic price will reduce the amount of haggling that occurs when a home is over-priced and it will generally result in a quicker sale so you can start your life in a new home without being burdened by still owning another home.
Your real estate agent is the best source of information about the local community and real estate topics. Give the Bean Group a call today at 603-657-6787 to learn more about local areas, discuss selling a house, or tour available homes for sale.
I like that you mentioned that a real estate agent can help you determine the price of your home based on old listings. I would imagine that the amenities around your home, parks and schools for example, probably have an effect on the value as well. A real estate agent would probably be able to help a seller determine the value of local amenities as well.