How to Price Your House to Sell

When pricing your home for sale, your emotions can easily get in the way. How can you quantify years of priceless memories and experiences? However, don’t conflate sentimental value with actual value. Pricing with your heart can leave your house sitting on the market for far too long. The following are some savvy strategies to help you price your property accurately and sell!

Avoid Overpricing

Overpricing is the most common pitfall for homeowners looking to sell. Emotions and optimism can lead many to adopt the overpricing strategy. While you can always lower your price eventually, overpricing initially presents some real setbacks. If your house is sitting on the market indefinitely, you cannot move on to your dream home. Worse still, if you’ve already purchased a new home, you could find yourself saddled with two mortgages. Finally, if you are continually lowering your price, potential buyers might see that as an indication that something is wrong with the property and scare off.

Compare Your Property

A good way to avoid overpricing is to reference comparable sales or “comps.” Consult a realtor who can access, compile and interpret these comparable sales. They will examine your neighboring’ homes as well as other houses with near-identical square footage, floor plans and amenities. From this list, you can determine a fair price to sell your home quickly using cold, hard data.  

Be Realistic About Value

Many homeowners mistakenly overestimate the return value for any renovations or improvements to their property. They tend to assume that there will be a dollar-for-dollar increase in the selling price (or more) for any given project. The truth is that certain renovations offer a greater return than others, and outside factors, such as location, can have a drastic effect on that return. The best way to avoid this, is to employ a trusted realtor or appraiser to take in the full picture and offer a realistic assessment of your home’s worth.

Adjust When Necessary

Once your home is on the market, you will be able to gauge potential buyers’ reactions to the price and adjust accordingly. Even if you’ve done all your research to settle on a fair price, if no one is interested in a showing, you will probably need to lower that price.

Essentially, when it comes to selling your home, you need to make a data-driven decision and remain flexible should any factors change. Price your home with your head (or better yet with your realtor), not your heart, in order to make that sale.