Rod Moser

Pricing a home is one of the most critical pieces of a real estate agent's success or failure. Consistently pricing homes higher than market value will leave both the agent and the client very frustrated. Consistently pricing homes below market value is a direct violation of the fiduciary responsibility (I call this the 'sacred trust') you have towards your home owner. The challenge, of course, is that determining the price of a home is not an exact science. You can't just take all of the homes in the market place, add them all together, get an average price per square foot and voila.....the exact price the home will sell for! No, no.

What makes our job fun and interesting is that every property we walk into is different. Style, condition, age, square footage, and color patterns will vary. The type of heating and cooling, garage, landscaping, and lot size will also vary. What was it that we learned in grade school about real estate? Location, location, location.... Of course, how could we forget, right? Even if you have two homes exactly alike, they are in different locations. During my time in Oklahoma I witnessed the devestation after a tornado and it amazed me that homes right next door to each other were affected differently. One home would be completely destroyed and the other didn't look like it had even been touched. Even being right next door makes a homes location, well, different, doesn't it?. Another often overlooked variation in the property has nothing at all to do with the property but with the owners level of motivation. Are they pressed to be out tomorrow or can they wait?

There really is a lot to consider when you begin to put together a market analysis for a home owner. I know you are thinking, great Rod, I get it. Doing a market analysis is a challenge, now, give me the magic pill. What is the answer? How can I determine the beginning price of a home?

Well, I have some great news for professional real estate agents........ I will share it in my next blog.

If you are getting slightly frustrated with the dispersion of information, please accept my apology. I have blocked out some time to blog in my schedule and before I get finished, I run out of time. Maybe scheduling would be a great theme for my next blog sequence. Thank you all for reading....

One more thing, feel free to visit my website, www.rbmhomes.com make it a great day!