Now that you have hopefully chosen an Agent that You are comfortable it is time to discuss pricing your home to sell.  Intelligent pricing is tied for most important element of Selling your home along with the Marketing Plan.  Some sellers have an idea what their home is worth, others have no idea, and the last group have a hopeful value in mind.  The job of the Real Estate Agent is to properly educate the Seller with a Comparative Market Analysis and other pertinent market statistics.  The Comparative Market Analysis consists of recent sold data along with whatever may be "In Contract" or "Pending" status.  Active listings generally aren't used because nobody knows what they will sell for until they sell.  The rule of thumb used to be going back six months but lately because of volatile markets three months has become the new norm.  Hopefully there will be enough supporting data to properly determine a value.  Other important factors are property location, condition, upgrades and additions.  If there is not enough recent sales data in the immediate neighborhood branching out to the rest of the town may be the only other solution.

If there is work needed to a home it is best to either do the work yourself or sell the home "as is" but reflect it in the price.  Just as a Seller puts together a CMA for A Seller, a Buyers agent will most likely put one together for their Buyer client.  The information they will use will most likely be the same.  Knowing and understanding this will help the Seller to prepare for what's to come.  I will get into presenting the home and pre-listing inspections next post. 

In essence it is not the Agent or the Seller that determines the price, it is the Buyer.  The sale price of the home will be whatever a ready, willing, and able buyer is willing to pay.  If the home is listed accurately there will be alot of activity the first couple of weeks.  Most homes receive the bulk of activity when it first comes on the market.  If the home doesn't receive much activity and Buyers are overlooking it, that means that either the marketing isn't effective or the price is too high.  Alot of Sellers like to test the market to see if they will get "their" price, but testing usually leads to price reduction, price reduction, and more price reductions.  You then run the risk of becomming a stigmatized property and Buyers will wait until the home comes down to earth or they will just move on.  In the Westchester market I have been noticing that the more attractively priced homes tend to sell much closer to the asking and even still over the asking price.

The last important factor to consider is most Buyers will be getting financing for the home, that means the home will have to appraise for the purchase price.  This brings us back to the value, appraisors use the same data that the Agents use, just a bit more in depth mathematically.  The only way to offset a low appraisal is either the Buyer comes up with a higher down payment thus needing less of a loan or the Seller comes down in price.