Five serious mistakes to avoid
Houses sell, if priced correctly, even in a weaker Princeton NJ real estate market. This article will help you avoid the deadliest mistake many home sellers make. The only way to succeed when selling is to start with with the Correct Price. For home sellers who bought their homes in the last two to four years this may be a hard pill to swallow, as this price may not be what you were hoping for.
1. Not knowing the correct price is NOT:
* Its not what you paid for the house
* Its not what your neighbor sold for 3 months ago
* Its not what you owe to the bank
* Its not what you need to make to buy another house
* Its not what you think is good as a starting price
2. Not knowing what the “right” price is
What is the “right” price? There is a technical answer, but put simply, it a price the buyer is willing to pay you TODAY. Most likely this number would be a bit less than what is offered by your competition.
Real estate pricing is both art and science. The only way to arrive at the correct price is by being an expert in local real estate. Even for the experts pricing is not easy and many get it wrong. You may ask why? For one, real estate agents sometimes agree to set the price that their client wants, because they want to get the listing. It may not be the right thing to do, but unfortunately its a reality. The other reason Princeton NJ area pricing is tricky, is that what the buyer is willing to pay today is a moving target and the price today may not be the same price tomorrow.
If you want to sell your Princeton NJ real estate – price it at a Market Price. As difficult as it may be to hear this message, its is only fair that I say it to and set your expectations as to what will happen, if you dont get it right from the beginning. If you dont want to sell at market price or, dont need to sell, do not put it on the market now. You would save yourself a lot of work and disappointment.
If you are thinking you can reduce the price later, read the next point.
3. Planning to reduce the price later
You may think that you could start at a higher price and reduce it later, hoping that the market will improve. There is statistical evidence, that the best chances of selling your Princeton NJ area real estate is in the first 30 days. Consider the following. Pricing with the idea of reducing the price down the line, would not allow you to catch-up. Buyers, who could have been interested, moved on to other properties. Its hard to sustain an emotional connection to the property, which is needed to generate offers, once the property was scratched off the buyers top choices list because of the price.
The inflated price also turns off other real estate agents. Their reputation is based on introducing their home buyer clients to the properties that are priced right. They wouldn’t want to risk upsetting their clients by showing them overpriced houses.
4. Hoping for an offer
Buyers do not make offers on overpriced Princeton properties. There is a big misconception among some sellers. It goes something like this. Lets set a high price, the buyers could still make any offer they want. In theory it sounds good, but in practice it doesn’t work. Buyers don’t usually do it, they wait for the price to drop, or even worth they go on to the next property.
5. Benefiting the buyer
Reducing price later is not good for the home seller. In a declining market reducing the price creates a bigger gap between the sellers and the buyers, to the disadvantage of the seller. In other words, its much harder to catch-up on the correct price, than to do the right price from the beginning.