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Why Home Sellers Should Not Pick a Sales Price
What home sellers don’t know about listing prices can fill a book. What makes a home sell immediately while another lingers on the market? How many days should it take to sell a home in Elk Grove, for example? It depends on which part of Elk Grove and the sales price ranges, but if we look at 95757 for the past 30 days, the average days on market are 53 and 63 cumulative, and the average listed price is $384,794 versus average sales price of $382,061, with an average size of 2,377 square feet. But that’s all homes up to a sales price of more than $600,000. The variance between list price and final sales price is about $1.00 per square foot, not much.
However, if you narrow the search criteria to homes under 1,500 square feet in 95757 over the past 30 days, you will see the smaller, entry-level homes are selling in 12 days over list price. It’s subjective. It’s why home sellers should not pick a sales price without this kind of information.
This is the sort of analysis I prepare for myself when I’m getting ready to list a home in Elk Grove or Sacramento. I also study the competition, meaning homes for sale now, as well, because those are the homes that buyers will see. Buyers won’t see the homes that are sold and, in fact, many of their agents will not share those comparable sales, for a variety of reasons. Home buyers tend to have limited vision because they compare homes that are for sale to other homes that are for sale and then try to discount the sales price from that inventory, which is really an ineffective method to use to buy a home.
That’s not to say that positioning is not important because it is paramount. But in the end, it is always what the market will bear. It’s the figuring out of what the market will bear that separates the struggling real estate agents from the top producers. It’s also a reason why home sellers should never pick a sales price by themselves without input from a seasoned agent.
Sure, sellers own the home and enjoy a vested interest, but they really don’t know how much that home is worth. Being right on the nose is an art developed by experience and backed by numbers. If you’d like to hire a top listing agent in Elk Grove or Sacramento, call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.
How Much Will Your Sacramento Home Seller Take?
A common question asked by Sacramento real estate agents and directed toward the listing agent is how much will the seller take for that home? Now, you see, I could swear that there is a listing price attached to that home, but maybe the print is too small to read. I know, we could outfit buyer’s agents with those big honkin’ magnifying glasses like you see in photos of Sherlock Holmes. Or, maybe we should attach spectacles to a chain they can keep in their pockets or wear around their necks to whip out for such an occasion?
When an agent asked me that question yesterday, I immediately suggested he look in Zillow. I was being facetious, of course, but he didn’t realize it because I made that suggestion by projecting a lot of excitement and enthusiasm in my voice. I can’t help it. I have fun at work; and I like to make people laugh. Except the agent didn’t laugh because he didn’t know I was joking. I mean, let’s face it, Zillow is the last place for any reasonable much less professional real estate person to look for a market value, but that doesn’t mean the public doesn’t go there because they do. The professionals, on the other hand, use MLS for comparable sales to determine market value.
But it’s such an innocent question, an outsider might presume. How much will the seller take? It is . . . for a person who is not a real estate agent. And I suppose that question is OK for an agent to ask as well if they can get an answer. As my husband is fond of saying: a guy can ask 10 women to go home with him at the bar and the first 9 might slap his face. But that 10th . . .
I asked the buyer’s agent why he would ask me, the listing agent, because I am not the seller. I don’t make decisions for the seller and all that I really know for certain is the seller will accept list price. Not to mention, it’s a breach of fiduciary to utter any kind of different answer.
Well, he didn’t want to “waste time” writing an offer the seller would reject. What? Isn’t that the name of the real estate game? An agent writes an offer on behalf of a buyer and a seller either accepts, counters or rejects? And there is one way to find out what a seller will do, too. If you want to know how much the seller will take for that home, there is one sure-fired, tried-and-true-method to get that answer. You write a purchase offer and send it to the listing agent.
