Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Overpricing a Home for Negotiating

There is a thought among home sellers that if they price their home a little high, it will leave room to negotiate down. Now while this strategy makes sense on paper, it completely backfires in our current buyer's market. Right now, if a home is priced too high, it's impossible to even get buyers in your home to negotiate.

A properly priced home will get buyers in the door and potential offers coming in. Homes are still selling in this market, obviously. However, what is selling is priced at market or below, in excellent condition or has some other outstanding feature such as location, school district, etc.

If you look at the statistics of homes selling, once a home is properly priced and sells, they majority are selling between 95% and 100%* or more of their asking price. So a seller doesn't necessarily have to come down much from a proper list price.

*A sale price of a home may include seller concessions for closing costs, which brings the actual purchase price down, usually at 3% of the purchase price.

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