It's up to the market. Not the fictitious national housing market with the bubble that's about to burst, but your local real estate market, the central Ohio Real Estate market, the house two streets over, the one down the block, the one next door.
If the house next door is an awful lot like your home, chances are excellent that you'll price your home close to where the home next door sold. It's not about what you want to get out of your house, the money you put into your house, the house down the street that sold for a lot more (of course it did, it had a 3 car garage and a finished basement) and it's not about what your mother (friend, co-worker, brother-in-law, friend who once took real estate class) told you to expect.
I hate the I told You So on so many different levels and it happens all the time.
I'm talking about a conversation like the one I had yesterday with a guy who listed with another agent at a list price that was considerably higher (25%) than what I told him his house would sell for (he had asked me to talk to him and give a 2nd opinion because we knew each other well, though he felt obliged to the agent he used). It turns out his house in now in firm contract and at the exact same price I told him it'd sell for six months ago. This happens all the time, not just to me but to other agents I know, the good ones, the nice ones, the ones who tell it like it is.
In the meantime, the listing agent probably got a lead or two from buyers looking at that house, had the sign exposure, the Internet exposure, and will receive the commission check in a couple weeks. It's nice to be right but it's even nicer to get paid.
Don't listen to the agent who tells you what you want to hear or comes in with the most money for your house, listen to the agent who can back up what they're saying with simple and direct and relevant market data. Selling your home in Columbus, Bexley, Gahanna, Westerville, Grandview, German Village or Clintonville is a numbers game, not an emotional one. Wednesday, August 24, 2005 |
