What your think your home is worth vs the truth
How many times have we done comparable market analysis of homes to later talk to the owners and hear that their house is better than the rest?
- Your house has better updates,
- has a better distribution of space,
- is in better condition and
- has so much more than the rest.
Guess what? everyone thinks the same thing! Unless you have major deferred maintenance issues in your home or you are selling a family member’s estate, you will think that your home is superior and this will undoubtedly lead to you wanting to overprice the home.
Guess something else! we are the experts and we know the inventory. We know what has sold, what condition other homes were in and what your house’s most likely selling price will be. And in all the years we’ve been in business, we’ve never been off, not one single time! So unless you are willing to hear us out, to get the brutal truth and get a reality check, don’t even call us – or worse yet, call us, ignore us and then realize months later that we were right.
I’m not telling you this to sound presumptuous, I’m telling you this because it happens time and time again.
Miamism: “Mr. seller, according to market stats and local sales history, your house will sell between $1,000,000 and $1,100,000”
Seller: “But we just got a new roof and remodeled our kitchen, our house shows beautifully, let’s list at $1.5M”
Miamism: “By overpricing you may loose good buyer prospects, your house will sit on the market for months and may end up even selling for less than $1M if the listing becomes stale”
Seller: “I know someone will appreciate my home the same way I do and will fall in love with it, I rather keep it on the market and wait for that perfect buyer. Plus, I’m not in a rush and refuse to give it away”
Miamism: “You would not be giving it away, you would be selling at market price, and just so you don’t forget this conversation, we will write it down and put it in a sealed envelope to show it to you in 8 months when you claim we are not doing out job”
Seller: “I would never say that, you guys are great professionals and I appreciate you telling me what the market is doing. Let’s list it high and if it doesn’t sell, I am willing to reduce the price to a more reasonable amount”.
Have you any idea how many times we go through similar scenarios? And no matter what we do, we end up being the bad guy. If we take the listing and it doesn’t sell, we’re bad – If we don’t take the listing, we’re bad. WE CAN’T WIN!!! but the worst part is that neither can you if you are not realistic.
We recently listed a friend’s Miami Shores home and told them the most likely sales price would be in the low $700k’s. They wanted to list over a million, we convinced them to list in the mid $900k’s, knowing that they were grossly overpriced and they would have to listen to feedback and be willing to lower their price. Please note the home was gorgeous! After 6 months of an average of 3 showings per week (that’s over 72 showings!! with us being present at every showing and doing a lot of marketing for that home), they only lowered their price once and were still more than $100k overpriced; they decided to change agents and lower their price and MAGIC!! the home sold 2 months later in the low $700k’s!!
Needless to say, we were left with unpaid man hours, unpaid marketing bills and worst of all….a very sour taste in our mouth because they didn’t listen to us and didn’t trust us.
Team Miamism is ok with being the bad guy and even if you are friends, we learned our lesson and will not take overpriced listings. We need you to be realistic! We need to be a team and be on the same page to be able to achieve our goals. Please note that we will also be vested in your home and will want the sale as much as you. Being a team means that we will market aggressively and be at your beckon call, but you need to cooperate as well – by providing excellent showing conditions, by having your house available, and by pricing correctly. If you’re not a team player, there are plenty of other Realtors that will take the listing and let it ferment with the rest of their unsold inventory.
Well put. I saw a funny video on youtube recently that portrayed this same scenario, which plays out over and over again. It’s the age old saying of buyers always feel they paid to much and sellers always feel they sold too cheap. It’s just like the Kelly Blue Book. There is a realistic range for market value for your home. The bummer is these sellers ultimately hurt themselves by “testing” the market because the listing does get stale and the days on the market start to add up.
As our friend Russell Shaw says: “You could take an overpriced listing or you could go fishing on your boat. Take your pick, they both pay the same.”
You know what I have found has worked for me is taking prospective sellers to comparable properties. I can’t say that it’s a magic pill, but i has certainly been an eye opener for them. It’s one thing to see other homes online, but to physically tour a property puts things in a different perspective (hopefully a more realistic one). Sorry to hear about your listing selling with somebody else (at the price you originally suggested), such is the human fickle nature. Have a good weekend.
Alex, we tell clients to visit open houses before they list to get an idea of comparables. I don’t think the problem is about the listing selling at the price we said or even that they changed agents, it’s the fact that they didn’t trust us and friendship was on the line.
We don’t hesitate to go out of our way to help our friends’ businesses, but somehow things change with real estate – maybe emotions are more at play.
This is so true.. Sometimes you can show all the comparables in the world to a seller, and they feel like there home will be an exception to the rule, and people will magically gravitate to there home, although its overpriced. Most will end up listing too high and learning the hard way.