Posted on
December 4, 2010
by
Leong & Roozendaal (Re/Max Camosun)
Selling your home is a complicated process. It’s natural to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of details involved, but the experience can be very manageable—and educational!—when broken down into its component parts and plotted out into steps. Here is mistake #1. Others will follow in the coming days.
1. Faulty Pricing:
It is essential you determine the asking price of your home based on its market value. I know that this sounds obvious, but too many times home-sellers let emotions or needs influence their asking price, drawing from numbers based on the price paid for the house originally, or the amount of money they’ve invested in the home. This mistake may prove to be a costly one.
If your home is priced significantly higher than what the market is bearing at the time, prospective buyers interested in your style of home will reject it for larger homes listed at the same price. And, those buyers who do see your house may have significantly higher expectations than what you have to offer. Ironically, over-pricing your home actually increases the chances that your home will sell for less than it is worth. Driving prospective buyers away will increase the amount of time your home stays on the market, which raises an additional red flag for buyers. They become wary of the reasons your home has not sold, thinking, “If no one else has bought it, there must be something wrong with it.” The bottom line: price it correctly, and they will come.
Be vigilant, too, of pricing your home too low: a lack of market value awareness could result in selling your home for much less than it’s worth.
