That is what I did when we sold my parents house and it worked.
Well, as I mentioned the 3 different realtors did comps and all came in different. My realtor says $339,000. The other guy I liked said $280,000 - $320,000 and no higher. So I was thinking maybe talking to our realtor about listing it for $319,000, but hubby says $329,000. he is also concerned if we have to spend money to fix things per the inspection- and I am sure we will- that is going to take away from our proceeds.
Meanwhile, prior to all this, I was thinking we would be lucky to get $275,00! The town assessor has the market value at $266,000 (and the assessed value at something like $179,000)- but remember he has not seen our home.
So just now the realtor in NH sent me a photo of our lot all staked out!!!
The town assessor is not who needs to put a sales price on your home. I recommend that you look at recent sales that have closed in your direct neighborhood in the past 2 months and not further back than early 2018 so you can see the trends in your area. Then when you get an idea of the range of current market value, you can compare square footage, number of rooms, lot size, any updates the owners have done snd adjust your estimate up or down. Only compare the major criteria but don’t get obsessive about the other stuff and do not get emotional either. If the cost to update some things before you put it on the market is reasonable relative to the price you can get, then you could invest in some minor cosmetic stuff. Our agent made us spend a lot more than I wanted to get our house ready for market and the bad thing is the house was shown more times in the 30 days before it was listed, with no fixes and our old furniture, than after. We did not really need to make an improvements but our agent is super pushy so we did some, not all. The agents in Silicon Valley pay out of their pocket to stage the houses completely and to deep clean on the inside and on the exterior. So while this is good, we had to get all out stuff out and stored in a POD before the agent open house. By then we had 2 preliminary offers but we waited until after the regular open house weekend and asked for offers to be made in writing by the following Tuesday. We lost the 2 previous offers by going to market but a new family made an equivalent offer to one of the people who changed their mind. We accepted it within 2 hours and it went pending the next day before we got any other offers. Since it was a great offer with no contingencies and a big enough non-refundable deposit, we are hopeful this buyer will not drop out.
We had a buyer drop out right at the 30 day mark on some land we own in Carmel 2-3 years ago and we still have not been able to sell the land. We got a full price offer and accepted it quickly and the buyers had 30 days with no contingencies. They put down a fully refundable deposit and the contract said they could cancel up to 30 days and get their full deposit back. They waited until day 30 to cancel. A real bummer. And we can’t sell the land even in today’s hot markets. I think the mistake I made was to over price the land and the buyer’s got buyer’s remorse. Lesson learned!
I have been tracking the real estate market diligently for the past 13 years in places we own property. I usually set the sales price. In this case, I let the agent set it and he underpriced so much that we had people coming by every week before it was listed. I asked him to raise our list price on the home a few days before it was listed on the MLS since I could see the market changed here in February/March when we started working with this agent. The sales prices often come out 2 weeks or so after closing so in late April, more homes had closed and sales prices became public. I was seeing significantly higher sales prices now in May, than in late 2018/early 2019. He listed our house $200K before the open house using late 2018/early 2019 closing data and before the mortgages rates dipped again in 2019 to record lows. Things slowed down in the second half of 2018 when mortgage rates went back up. In April and I think even now, buyers can get a mortgage for under 4%. This will probably go up again in 2020 or so. So now is a little window in time when you can get a good sales price since more buyers can get low rate loans.
We got a bridge loan in April for 3.5% in the event our home did not sell in time. But we made the offer on the new condo non-contingent so we could lock in the contract with the developer and we got some developers incentives and a few discounts by doing this. Even in the SF Bay Area, the market is not even. We are selling in a hot neighborhood in Silicon Valley and buying in the North-East Bay Area across the bay from San Francisco. It is like 2 worlds in terms of price points and who has the upper hand ie. Sellers or buyers. People read about California and think it is all over priced but this in not true. Some counties out in the Central Valley are struggling to catch up. There are micro markets, hot markets, weak markets and it can vary significantly by county. We bought the condo in an up and coming neighborhood because I loved the bay views and you can’t find that anywhere now or even in the last 20-30 years directly on the bay.
Our agent did not want us to increase the list price because I think he measures his success on how much above asking he can get for a homeowner. He brags about this data in his sales pitch to new buyers. So I only asked him to raise it by half so we would still appear like a good deal (for Silicon Valley). The agent screwed up and listed it for $200K less afterall without my permission. I had him change the listing within a hour and I found the error on my own. He did not have us sign off on it until later. Unfortunately the MLS still has a record with the lower price. I think that could be why so many people came before the open house. It was priced too low. Then after he corrected the price, I was scared maybe no one would make an offer But the good news we got a new offer quickly and with no contigencies.
Make sure you do not accept an offer with too many contingencies or a too small deposit or where it is completely non refundable. Also the offers came with financial documents from their brokerage so we can see they can pay cash. The family for the first lower offer submitted a letter and it was so nice, I was tempted to sell it to them but they offered a lot less that the house is worth, although $100K above the first asking price. So you do not want to completely under price like ours was before the open house. Yet you do not want to price too close to market or you will not get offers. We were still $100K or more below market when we agreed to the listing price so buyers were still motivated. But essentially our buyers is paying a little under market even though it appears like they offered well above the list price. The list price on the MLS