Getting the Best Value for Your Home
Consult with an expert, local real estate agent to
ensure your house is priced competitively and well-staged. Why? Because while
there are always three factors to getting a home sold—location, price, and condition—only
two are under your control: price and condition. Of the two, which is more
significant? Price. Remember that price will correct bad
condition, but condition will never overcome a bad price.
Act
fast. You’re in a race
against time—the best price you’ll get in today’s market is the one you get
now. If you wait, it will be lower. And every month the price on your home
decreases, your costs remain the same. For example, Keller Williams research
shows that sellers who listed their home at the price the agent originally
recommended, sold the home 38 days faster. This is over a month of mortgage and
tax payments! For a home that cost $200,000 at time of purchase, with 20
percent down and an interest rate of 6.5 percent, selling a month sooner results
in a savings of $1101.31 for the mortgage alone, not including the taxes and
insurance that the homeowner would be paying during this time.
Don’t
worry about where the
market has been, keep your focus on where it is going. The price your neighbor
down the street got six months ago is not relevant in a market where your house
is competing with others from all across town. Again, a local real estate agent
will have the kind of long-term, wide-ranging data that will help you decide
how to pinpoint your price with precision.
