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Tips for
Sellers
How to Sell Well...
Selling your home can be an onerous
experience – people and Realtors traipsing through your private
castle, a sign out front for all the neighbor’s to talk about,
agents calling and knocking on the door at inconvenient times, let
alone keeping the house in showable condition all the time.
The key is to sell effectively and efficiently. And
the key to that success is market-based pricing.
The Marin County market historically has been a
ten-year cycle – up three or four years in the seller's market phase,
then for the next five or six years the market goes sideways and
consolidates. The sellers’ market phase prices
appreciate, multiple offers are common, sellers are happy and buyers
are frustrated. However,
2003 finds the market in the sideways phase following the recent
sellers’ market phase. There are fewer buyers, much more inventory,
and many sellers are over-listing their properties based on the
premise that the appreciation of the past few years is continuing on
a straight line up. The result? Long listing times, no offers, price
reduction(s), disappointed sellers, agent changes (it must have been
the agent…) and sometimes stagnancy with a lower price realized when
the home finally does sell than it would have received
if that home were priced correctly when it first was listed.
The key to selling well today is careful, market
based pricing. Here’s why. What
happens when a home comes on the market in today’s market it that
buyers are eager to see it in hopes that “this is the one.” But, if
it is priced more than five to nine percent above what the market
says it is worth, the buyers look at it, then walk and don’t enter
into the negotiation conversation. In fact, it is worse than that.
Many buyers even seem to accentuate the negatives of an over-priced
property as a way a rationalizing their aversion to the
over-pricing…..sort of like the fox’s reaction to grapes she can’t
reach in the Aesop’s proverbial sour grapes scenario.
Sellers have two to three weeks after their property
is listed and hits MLS to capture one of the eager buyers looking
for their new home. After that period, the active buyers will have
seen the house, had the opportunity to decide whether to engage in
the negotiation process, and will move on if it is not priced
correctly. After those initial few weeks, if a seller doesn’t get a
nibble from one of the active buyers in the market, he or she will
have to wait for a new buyer to enter the market calculus.
To make things worse, you won’t have the agents on
your side either (”Oh, I saw that one, it’s overpriced”) and that
can add to market stagnancy.
The moral of the story? Market pricing is everything in today’s
market. Call us…We are the only southern Marin Broker who has sold
every property that we have listed! We know how to read the market
to determine what price will sell your home and can position it
against the competition so it will receive the most favorable
reaction from buyers. Call Us at (415) 435-1040
or Email:
homes@headlandsrealestate.com |
1620 Tiburon Blvd. Tiburon,
CA 94920