In order to price your home to sell, leave your emotions out of the equation and examine the facts about your house.
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What’s the best way to price your home to sell?
First, you need to know that the situation in our second-home market is different than the rest of the country. The average days on market for homes here is much higher because it’s based on buyers’ discretionary income.
If you’re thinking about selling your home, the most important thing you can do is get the professional advice of a local Realtor. If you need help finding someone, don’t hesitate to reach out to me.
Another key point to remember is a lot of sellers are making decisions based on emotion (which happens in the vacation rental market as well). What I mean by that is they’re attached to the history of their primary home and thinking about all the things they’ve done to make it theirs.
The question to ask, though, is what are the facts? When hiring a professional Realtor, make sure they’ll provide the facts of your house so you can make an informed and educated pricing decision.
What do those facts look like? Look at the most recent sales of comparable homes in the area or the prices of active listings that are similar or somewhat similar to your home. Ask your agent how they’ll price your property based on the other active listings so yours can be competitive in the marketplace. If you’re interviewing multiple agents, ask them to give you the best options moving forward so you can market your home effectively and efficiently and get top dollar for its sale.
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When it comes to the emotions involved in selling your home, I’m not immune either. I have a home that my wife and I remodeled personally, and we built those features for us specifically. They’re not necessarily the best options for a potential buyer, though, so they might not give those features as high of a value as we would. Keep that in mind when pricing your home—it may have wonderful features and you may think very highly of them, but that might not be the case for potential buyers.
Price your home competitively to attract buyers’ interest.
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When it comes to the vacation market, if you want to sell your vacation home, you have to be realistic as well. Again, having a professional agent there telling you what the most realistic sale is and being willing to accept that is paramount to getting a realistic price in the shortest amount of time.
A lot of people want to price their home high in order to leave room for negotiation. If you do that, you’re eating up a lot of buyers in the second-home market. If your home is on the market but there are only so many buyers coming to the marketplace and you’ve outpaced your competitors by pricing too high, your home might get looked at, but it won’t see any offers. If you don’t see any offers, there’s nothing to negotiate. That’s why it’s key to price your home competitively so you can attract buyers’ interest.
Finally, whether it’s a primary home or a second home, not many buyers will want to buy one with a to-do list. That’s why it’s best to either have your house ready to go or at least disclose what kind of repairs need to be done.
If you have any other questions or you’re thinking of buying or selling a home, don’t hesitate to give me a call or send me an email. I’d be happy to help you.
