Let’s face it-we all want as much money for our house as possible when the decision to sell has been made, including me. Many sellers think they can always start high and adjust their asking price accordingly, depending on interest/activity level from potential buyers. Not a wrong way to think, but sellers need to be a little cautious here. With today’s technology (free flowing information about houses online that is easily obtained by anyone with a computer & internet), it’s quite easy for a half way savvy buyer to know whether a home is priced fairly or is priced too high.
Personally, I tell my sellers that if they want to test the market a bit and ask more than what comps are indicating that’s fine, but if you don’t get action in the first 21-30 days, be prepared to lower your asking price. The last thing you want to do as a seller is “chase the market.” I have seen many sellers do this to the point they end up selling their homes for less money than if they would have priced it accurately from the very beginning.
The reason for this is once a listing starts to collect what I call “listing dust”, it becomes stale and buyers see that the home has been sitting on the market for some time. When buyers see this, two thing inevitably happen: 1. Buyers write off the home, as they assume something (probably price) is wrong with the home (otherwise someone else would have bought it) or 2. If a buyer does make an offer, they will probably low ball the sellers, as the buyer knows the seller has been sitting on the listing for an extended period and will most likely be happy just to see an offer.
It can be a fine line between pricing your home too high and pricing it accurately, but if you, as a seller, really look at current comps in your area, you should be pretty well informed about the realistic asking price of your home, assuming you want to sell it and not just “list it.”
We all, including me, believe our home is better, nicer, more valuable than our neighbors, but if you do decide to push the envelope a bit and price your home higher than what the comps show, my free advice is to not wait more than 30 days to adjust your asking price, assuming you don’t have any real action on it. If you wait too long to price it right, you will continue to chase the market and most certainly will lose money in the long run, I can almost guarantee it.
Here is a link to an article on Realtor.com that mentions, in part, how an overpriced listing can be very detrimental to a seller in the long run:https://www.realtor.com/advice/sell/bad-online-listing/
As always, I hope someone finds this article helpful.
Mark Phillips of Hill Country Flat Fee Realty serves the communities of Boerne, Fair Oaks Ranch, Fredericksburg, Kerrville, Comfort, New Braunfels, Bulverde/Spring Branch and parts of San Antonio. We charge a flat listing fee and are a full service real estate firm. This saves our sellers thousands of dollars every transaction.