Hiring a real estate agent to sell your home is important for so many reasons, but the most important piece of advice you should heed from your chosen agent is the suggested price. Real estate agents are professionals who analyze house pricing every single day. It's what they do. Yet, unfortunately, some clients ignore their agents' advice and price their home for what they need to sell it for, rather than what it is worth. Here are six reasons why that strategy is dead wrong.
1. Low-Ball Offers: Buyers are pretty smart. They know how much homes are worth in your area and where they should be priced. In fact, some like to throw out lowball offers to see how serious you are about selling your home.
2. Difficult Seller: Other agents will know that you are overpriced and will assume you are simply a difficult seller that didn't want to listen to the agent you hired. They will steer their clients away from your home to avoid drama later.
3. Newness Window: When new homes come on the market, they have a newness window. Potential buyers that are out there looking every day will notice you when you pop up on the MLS. If you are overpriced, however, they will ignore you. Lowering your price later does not earn you another newness window, though. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
4. Agent Enthusiasm: Your own agent may become frustrated with you. Agents work on straight commission, and an overpriced house that is not selling does not put food on the table. Having a client not listen to their knowledgeable and honest opinion of a home's value can make an agent's enthusiasm wane.
5. Search Price Ranges: Buyers search for a home in a certain price range. If you list your home at 203K, buyers who are searching for homes below 200K will never even see the listing. It won't come up in their computer-generated search that they receive via email each week. Your agent took this into consideration when making his or her price suggestion.
6. DOM: Lastly, an overpriced house can have a bad DOM, or days on market statistic. Your DOM number stays with your house until it sells. A high DOM will make buyers wonder what is wrong with your house and why it hasn't sold. If everything else in your area has an average DOM of 30 days and yours is 60 days or more, it can be a tough hole to dig yourself out of.
If you have done your due diligence and hired a real estate agent that you feel is experienced and can successfully sell your home, then trust their judgment when they suggest a list price to you.
Share22 January 2020
When you decide you want to sell your home or buy a new one, you will need to hire a real estate agent to represent you. A good agent will do most of the legwork as far pricing the home, creating a listing, and advertising the home goes. However, you will need to work beside them and make decisions along the way. We've created this website to give the average home seller or buyer a little more insight into the world of real estate. Learn how to find a good agent, help them do a better job for you, and navigate the sale process in the articles presented on our pages.