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That All-Important Detail: Price

As you prepare to sell your home in Bellingham/Whatcom County, consider the following facts:

1. Emotions have nothing to do with setting the price. Nor does what you paid for the home, the amount of your tax assessment, what you need to net, what you want to net, what your neighbor says you should get, what a colleague at work says you should get, or what it might cost to rebuild should a catastrophic event destroy the home.
   
   
2. Some people use their lender’s appraisal of value as the basis for setting their asking price. A lender’s appraisal is an opinion of value for a certain purpose. If the lender wants to lend you money, he or she is motivated to obtain a high appraisal. The appraiser may ignore foreclosure or distress sales in order to justify the high value. And appraisers only look at sold properties. They do not consider those properties that are also on the market in your neighborhood or area with similar homes--your competition. A buyer will not ignore those other properties. Nor will an appraiser consider homes like yours that did not sell. Often three elements (location, price, and condition) together contribute to an explanation as to why buyers rejected certain homes. A buyer's agent will look at all three categories of homes (those that did sell, those that are currently on the market, and those that did not sell) when answering the question "is your home worth what you are asking?" for the buyer.
   
   
3. In setting the price you will ask, do your homework. If the value you were told by someone else is now several months old, that information may no longer be relevant. The market for homes in Bellingham/Whatcom County, as for automobiles, furniture, and food(!), experience seasonal and other changes. Find out the asking price of similar homes that are currently on the market (your competition), the actual sale price of homes that have sold recently (the success stories), and the asking price of homes similar to yours that have not sold (those homes that were rejected by buyers). If you don’t know how to obtain this information, ask me. I will be happy to provide you with a Comparative Market Analysis of your home. You can send me initial information about your property by clicking on Your Home's Value in the section for Sellers. This service is free to you! All I ask is an opportunity to preview the home to see for myself its many unique features before providing that information.
   
   
4. The price you get is set by the buyer. That is, the buyer is going to make an offer and if you accept that offer, the two of you—together—have established the market value of your property.
   
   
5. Buyers are savvy. They know that a home being sold by the owner is not going to cost as much to sell precisely because no agent fee is part of the owner’s cost of selling. Many buyers thus view “For Sale by Owner” homes as opportunities to get a property at a “discounted” price. As a result, they may approach you with an offer well below what you would like to accept. Unless you know how your home’s price compares with others on the market, you may be tempted to accept an offer that does not support the home’s real market value.

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