Why isn’t my Orlando home selling? I would say that 90% of the time the answer to this question would be that the price is too high. If your home is taking much longer to sell than the average home in the area, it means that potential buyers don’t agree with the valuation that you’ve priced your home at. The fact that your home is the nicest one in the neighborhood doesn’t mean that you can name your own price when it’s time to sell. Just like any other material object that you buy or sell, your home’s value is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
Pricing a home correctly is more difficult than you might think. Large corporations have research teams that specialize in pricing so that when a product hits the market it’s priced just right. When you sell your Orlando home, it’s no different.
Selling a home will probably be one of the most important decisions in your life so it’s worth taking the time to educate yourself about what’s happening in the Orlando real estate market. By hiring a top Orlando realtor to help you come up with the price, you’ll have a much better chance of arriving at the magic number.
However, if you choose to come up with the price without doing your homework, you could be heading for disaster…ICE BURG! Equally dangerous is to hire an agent that just agrees with everything you say so that they can get the listing. They’re not doing you any favors by listing your property too high, actually, they’re hurting you. Remember, if you’re house doesn’t sell, it’s you that suffer the consequences and no one else.
Selling your Orlando home? Be sure to avoid these common mistakes made by sellers when setting the price.
Pricing your home based on how much you need. The amount of money that you “need” shouldn’t play a role in pricing your home. Buyers don’t care how much you need to make on the sale of your property, nor should they. Using this strategy to come up with the listing price will surely fail.
Leave your ego out of it! Since the guy down the street sold his house for $250,000 last year, you can easily get $275,000 because you believe that your house is better. Who cares that the local market dropped 6% since the last home sold in your neighborhood. Working as an Orlando real estate agent that specializes in listing properties, I can tell you that 90% of the time sellers believe that their home is the nicest house in the neighborhood, even when it’s not. Over the years I’ve become an expert at talking homeowners off that ledge. I have a simple rule of thumb when it comes to setting a price; If the homeowner doesn’t agree with the price that I recommend then I don’t accept the listing.
Don’t be greedy! If you know that your home is worth $200,000, don’t insist on listing it for $220,000 because you think someone will just fall in love with your house and has to have it regardless of what the price is…That’s just not going to happen. Sometimes homeowners adopt a “we can always lower the price if we need to” attitude which almost always ends up backfiring on them. Homes that are listed too high and then gradually lowered stay on the market much longer than they should and that will make some buyers believe that there may be something wrong with the home and scare them away.
The best way to arrive at the right listing price is to get a Comparative Market Analysis known as a CMA. The Orlando real estate agent that you hire should be happy to provide you with one before you even sign the listing contract. Comparative market analysis gives you a complete breakdown of home sales in the area for homes that are similar to yours in size, condition, and features. It will include data on homes that have sold recently as well as homes that are currently active for sale. Your Orlando listing agent should be up-to-date on the ever-changing real estate market to be sure that the home is priced just right.
It’s also important to make sure everything is functional and looks as good as possible in your home. This will avoid potential buyers wanting unreasonable discounts on items that you can fix yourself before listing the property. Although there’s not much you can do to change things like a funky layout or being next door to a train station, you should do all you can to make your home as appealing as possible to potential buyers. Your Orlando real estate agent should factor in the positives as well as the negatives when coming up with the price for your home.
