HOW TO PRICE YOUR PROPERTY CORRECTLY
One of the biggest mistakes people make when selling a property is getting the pricing wrong. The worse thing is under selling it, where it sells quickly and for the asking price, but there’s also the risk in marketing the property too high and it sits on the market for too long going stale and not selling at all.
I’ve come up with some methods that can help you uncover the true value of your property.
GAUGE LOCAL HOUSE PRICES
With residential properties take a 3-5km radius from your property and see how much houses are being listed for, putting into consideration land size, bedrooms, pool and age. If it’s a rural property you may need to do a 10km radius. But better yet, try and locate houses that were sold in your area in the past 6 to 12 months, and for what price. Sold properties are better than properties for sale because the price properties are being advertised for is not always what they sell for.
GET AN APPRAISAL BY A LICENSED REAL ESTATE AGENT
An easy way is to get a licensed real estate agent to do a sales appraisal. Usually these are done free of charge as the agent does these in the hope that if you do choose to sell you’ll sell through them. You can even ask an agent to do a “remote” sales appraisal where they don’t even come to your home but just do research online. The most important thing when getting a sales appraisal from a real estate agent is that they supply you with comparable sales so you can visually see the price they are giving you is realistic and not a figure they just made up.
Typically real estate agents have access to RP data to obtain detailed information of other sales in the area.
I recently did a sales appraisal where the owner had several sales agents with prices ranging from $650,000 to $800,000. My sales appraisal was $585,000. The property ended up selling for $605,000. It turns out I was the only sales agent who supplied comparable sales as evidence. The other sales agents just guessed what they thought the property would sell for.
LICENSED VALUER
Licensed real estate agents are not licensed valuers so they can only supply you a sales appraisal. If you would like a property valuation you need to engage a licensed valuer. Valuers have usually done a university degree and are far more qualified than a real estate agent to value your property. It’s a myth that licensed valuer undervalued properties. Valuers can do a bank valuation, which can be conservative or they can do a sales valuation which is what they believe the property will sell for in the current market. Depending on the property size and value this would cost you around $500.
CHECK THE MARKET CONDITIONS
This is a common theme with anything related to buying or selling property, but nevertheless an important one. If the market is slow, you will have to price your property more competitively to sell. You also need excellent marketing and the best sales agent.
GETTING PRICE FEEDBACK FROM BUYERS IN THE MARKETPLACE
Something we have been doing a lot of recently is launching a property for sale for the first 14 days with no price. Then during this time getting feedback from buyers on price and pricing the property accordingly. Lots of people talk about how they hate seeing properties with no price, but the truth is motivated buyers contact us regardless, in fact usually lots and it’s only for the first 14 days the property has no price.
DON’T OVER PRICE, AND DON’T UNDER PRICE
Well it’s quite obvious why you wouldn’t want to under price your property, but why is it a bad idea to over price your property? Well I’ll tell you, properties tend to get the most amount of viewings during the first 2-3 weeks of the property being on the market. As the old saying goes, you only get one chance at a first impression, so if your property is overpriced the buyer’s impression of your home is going to be a negative one, and they won’t buy. You want to give buyers a reason to buy, not to walk away, and by overpricing your property you will force away the majority of buyers.
For these reasons it’s imperative that you do adequate research into all the things we’ve listed today, in order to obtain an accurate price for your property. We know selling a property can be difficult and stressful, and following our checklist while you have a job and family is extremely difficult and time consuming. So why not let the team at Asset Agents take some of the burden off your shoulders and help you out? Feel free to contact us today, and see what we can do for you.
If you are on the Sunshine Coast Qld and interested in a remote sales appraisal, shoot me your details and we can get one out to you or contact your local agent they’d be more than happy to help.
