While I am a Certified Pricing Strategist, this is a common sense tip that everyone should use when putting their home on the market. Every day, I see homes put on the market priced at $499,000, $749,000, or $3,900,000. This is not wise, and I’ll explain why. When you put your home on the market, the obvious goal is to generate tremendous awareness & interest. This is done by getting as many eyeballs on your home’s photos/videos as possible which drives showings and offers. The more buyers interested in your area that see your home, the better. People and agents search for homes in $ increments or buckets. If your home doesn’t show up in the search, you won’t get the eyeballs. Here’s an example:
Pretend you are buyer “A” looking for a new home and you are preapproved for a $500,000 mortgage or you have $1 million cash, but you only want to spend $500,000. You search on Zillow, Realtor.com, etc. for homes ranging in price from $400,00 – $500,000 or ask your agent “Please send me what is available for under $500,000”. The agent enters their criteria along with under $500,000 into the MLS and 90 homes pop up. That list is way too long, so the agent narrows it to $400,000 – 500,000 and 25 homes are for sale. They think, this list is much more manageable to select houses for visiting and hits send. We will call these buyers set “A”.
Let’s next pretend you are buyer “B” looking for a new home and you are preapproved for a $600,000 mortgage or you have $1 million cash, but you only want to spend $600,000. Everything remains the same as above, but the search is now $500,000 – $600,000. We will call these buyers set “B”.
Now, if you were selling a home for $500,000, wouldn’t you want buyer sets A & B to see it? Absolutely. Here is the reality, if you price your home at $499,000, BUYER SET B WON’T EVEN KNOW THAT IT IS ON THE MARKET! Please price your home at $500,000, $750,000, $4,000,000, etc. I wish people would wise up and drop the 9s! I hope that you hire me when you want to sell but please, if you don’t tell your friends and family about me, at least give them this tip if you see their home is priced unwisely.
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