Price a Home to Sell, and What to Offer When You Find a Home to Buy

Price a Home to Sell

Conventional wisdom suggests that the best way to sell a home is to start higher than you really expect to get, and to then lower the price as necessary based on the offers you get. In some ways this makes sense. Ideally, a person trying to find a home that suits their needs could make an offer that’s lower than your asking price yet higher than what you expected to get. But this can draw out the time it takes to sell a home; if you price it too high you may turn off potential buyers who won’t even bother to make an offer, and may simply just check back occasionally to see if the price has gone down. When you decide how much you want for your home, if actually makes sense to price it low.

Price a Home to Sell Quickly

Setting a low price seems counterintuitive, but the reasoning behind it is solid. When Home Buyers Find A Home they like, a low price will prompt them to make an offer more quickly. The seller doesn’t have to take the first offer, remember. A low price will often bring in competing bids, driving the final price up. This is a tactic that a good real estate agent will use to not only sell a home quickly, but for more money. When potential buyers see a price dropping they may wonder why the home hasn’t sold yet, but a home getting lots of interest and bids generates more interest.

Buying a Home: Making an Offer When You Find a Home

The other side of this equation is the home buyer, and someone looking to sell a home is usually also looking to buy a home. First, you should be pre-approved for a mortgage before you start seriously trying to find a home. You should then find a real estate agent to work with, and make sure whoever you do find is what’s known as a buyer’s agent. This is a real estate agent who is there to serve the home buyer’s best interests. This is very important because a real estate agent who represents both has a greater interest in closing a sale quickly versus getting you the best deal when you find a home you like. Let your real estate agent guide you when making an offer, as they will be able to find similar homes the area and they they’re “sold for” price was versus their “asking price.”

Researching Prices Online for Real Estate for Sale

Don’t put too much stock in home prices for similar homes you find on web sites such as Zillow; you won’t be able to verify if the information is correct and it could lead to make a low-ball offer and get shut out of making another offer. Worse, you could end up making a higher offer than you should have. MLSListings.com lets you do a search for recently sold real estate, you can look for homes similar to the one you are looking to buy and see their actual sale price.