Assuming you price your property appropriately, your home for sale should start to gain awareness and leads within hours. But what exactly goes into setting a list price? Let’s delve into the primary factors that affect the specific dollar amount you ask for your residence.
1) Understand the local real estate market
As noted, your real estate agent has considerable intelligence regarding the market in which they work, so leave it to them to source data and create reports that give paint you an accurate picture of what others have done with their listings price-wise. In turn, this information can inform your own price-setting. In addition to what others listed and sold their homes for, though, you need to take into account factors like home style/type, square footage, age, and how long their homes sat on the market.
2) Consider a professional appraisal
Hiring a professional appraiser, which usually runs a few hundred dollars, can tell you about the condition of every last detail of your home. These certified and licensed professionals conduct thorough searches of residences to gauge their worth and, as with a market analysis your agent performs, compare homes to those of others nearby in terms of quality, newness, and amenities.
3) Be wary of 0nline home valuations
Search for “home valuation tool” in Google and you’ll get quite a few — er, millions — of results, so there’s no shortage of online resources that can give you a rough estimate of your home’s value. Also, remember just that: These will be rough values. For instance, Zillow’s “Zestimate” tool is arguably the most popular home value calculator, but it’s certainly flawed and doesn’t always provide the most precise data.
4) Stay realistic with your home price
What your list price really, ultimately comes down to is figuring out what home buyers are spending on properties at the moment in your neck of the woods and what you’re comfortable with putting your residence on the market for. There is no one perfect price — rather, you simply need to take some time to evaluate all of these aforementioned factors and consult with your agent to find the idea middle zone.