Overpriced listings are hard sell in a down market
When pricing your home for sale, sellers need to be careful with the price that’s initially set. In today’s market especially, sellers really need to be cautious of making an error of overpricing their home. If you price it to high and the market is moving down, your home will be passed on by.
Too many sellers make the mistake of suggesting to their real estate agent, “Well can’t we just try this higher price for a month or two and then we’ll change the price” or “Lets price it higher and the buyer can just make us an offer.” Sellers should never try these tactics in any market, but especially if the market is moving down. Your home will not sell if buyers feel it’s overpriced.
By far, this is the main reason a home doesn’t sell. Although a seller might be just testing the market, prospective home buyers are smarter than this and they know an overpriced listing when they see it. Worse, their buyer’s agents won’t even bother showing homes with asking prices above recent sales prices of comparable nearby homes.
Any buyer that’s been out with their agent looking at homes will soon realize, as well as the buyer’s agent, that your overpriced home is out of place. Even if they like your home, they won’t make an offer in fear of insulting the seller. Then when you lower the price, the buyer usually thinks…”there’s that overpriced home again.” Your far better off starting at the real market price for your home than an inflated price to begin with.
In a market like this with it favoring the buyers, most buyers are very leery about making offers in fear that they might have paid too much. Buyers are also thinking that the prices might come down even further. This is why an overpriced home to begin with, in most cases ends up selling for less than what it would have fetched if priced right when it was first listed.
In today’s real estate market, more than half of all home sellers attempt to set their listed price above the market. This type of strategy of over pricing the home will usually backfire on the home seller.
Because of the internet and other technologies, most home buyers now have access to the same real estate information that was once just for us Realtors. Savvy buyers now have information about recently sold homes in a particular area. With this information in hand, it’s hard for sellers to fool a weary buyer on the price of a home. If your home sits on the market too long from being overpriced it can create a negative aspect to the home causing it to sell for much less. Sellers should never play this game, and especially at this time of the real estate market with sales as low as they’ve been the past 15 months.
It’s been an interesting run up in prices and Im certain an even tougher one to swallow on the slide backwards for some. I can’t tell you how many times I told who ever would listen, that there’s no way the prices of real estate would continue to go up as sharp as it was for a couple years there. Hopefully we can get back to normal times and it looks like thats whats ahead for at least the the next 12-18 months at least.
Jerry Campbell | The Muljat Group | Bellingham WA | Bellingham Homes For Sale