June 06, 2011

“Buying a Listing”

Unfortunately, in today’s competitive real estate environment, some home sellers are not getting accurate pricing information on their homes. In a recent article by Lawrence Yun, NAR’s Chief Economist, he stated that several MLS data indicates there is a fairly consistent downward trend in the ration of “final sales price” to “original listed price.” He went on to explain that this implies that homes are not being priced to sell from the start. It is hard as a REALTOR to be the “bearer of bad news” when it comes to pricing. However, I feel that homeowners deserve to be treated openly and honestly. You want to be sure that when talking with a REALTOR about price that they are showing you the comps supporting the values they come up with. When pricing a home a REALTOR will typically spend several hours evaluating the pricing strategy for a house. The active houses on the market are also important to look at when evaluating a home’s price. These are the properties that you will actively be competing against. However, the sold properties are where pricing needs to be verified. Typically an appraiser will use the last six month sales to establish pricing. If you overprice your house and it doesn’t appraise you typically have to either drop your price to the appraised value, tell the buyer to bring more of their own cash to close or take your house off the market.

Do you have any questions about the local Boone, Hamilton or Hendricks county real estate? If so give me a call/text at 317-413-5311 or contact me at .

Posted by: Jeremy Page