Originally posted on http://blog.bluematch.com/selling-home-houston-tips-find-right-price-home/

 

When you are looking to sell your home and you want to get the right price for it, you need to make sure that you follow each and every step well.

Houston can be a beautiful housing market, but every area comes with positive steps forward and dangerous missteps.

Eager to get your best foot forward on the right path towards selling off your home?

Below is a straight forward and through guide towards getting the right price for your home!

The Best Tips For Finding the Right Price on Your Home

Selling your home will always be a large undertaking. Real estate is a big process, from listings to market analysis to appraisal. Getting turned around on any of the many steps can lead to major losses for your family.

Even if you are in a hurry to get your house sold, the first and biggest piece of advice is to never cut corners. Until you have pure confidence in where you stand, take your time to do research and weigh your options.

Preparing Both Physically and Mentally

Real estate is a marathon, not a sprint. With so much research, paperwork, research with meetings, and tiny details involved, you need to prepare yourself on a physical and mental level.

Get some of the personal little details right around you organized first. Then work outwards from there.

1. Keep Your Ideas Calm and Rational

The last thing you need when trying to sell your home is to get filled with stress and frustration that you do something rash.

Focus on being meticulous. Make a list of what you need to do and keep yourself organized by it. If you find yourself overthinking something or running yourself ragged, take a step back and reconsolidate.

You also need to avoid making your expectations too high.

Many often dream of selling their old house for big money and using that for a brand new house and some money left over.

While you should always aim for a good deal, understand that you may have to cut and compromise to get the house to sell in the first place. Being stubborn about your dream price without understanding the market is dangerous.

2. Do the Small Repair Jobs

To get the most out of your house, your house has to be at the best level it can be.

Besides thorough cleaning, look around your house for any and all little repair jobs you can do.

Faucet leaks? Get it fixed. Paint is chipping on the outside? Get a new coat of paint. One of the windows have a small draft in them? Get it sealed.

In addition to filing off all the rough edges, look into upgrading some of the older pieces of the house.

It may seem counterproductive to spend money into a house you plan on selling, but oftentimes a good upgrade on the house gives peace of mind to the buyers and ups the price they may be willing to pay.

If the bump in price is better than the cost of the upgrade, you get out ahead!

Market Research

This will be the biggest part of the house selling section will be market research. This will determine what houses and properties you are in competition with as well as that elusive price range your home may fall under.

There are a number of ways to do market research.

A real estate agent will be the largest and most professional guide. You can get their services for any or all of the steps in selling your house. More on these agents and how best they can benefit you later on.

Other methods include specific area guides on pricing history and property value.

The Houston area has a massive array of different neighborhoods, proximity to landmarks and business, and housing styles that can affect your potential home price.

When doing research, be sure to be thorough and complete. If some information does not fit with the rest of your research, double-check its legitimacy.

1. Understanding Comparative Lists

A lot of what will help you determine your best selling price and market strategy for your home is comparative lists. These lists are of houses that are similar to your own in both area, price range, and general upkeep.

All of the homes on this list, or comps, will tell you an overall picture of the area you are dealing within.

These lists will receive constant changes, as housing markets are an ever-shifting mix of neighborhood details and economy, among other things.

Make sure that your list has the major aspects of it. Without these, you may get the wrong picture on your market.

Look at houses within the 1/4 and 1/2 mile marker of your house.

Listing older than 3 months are often out-of-date.

The houses you look at should be the same age as your house, give or take a few years.

As well, the square footage of all the houses should be close together, within about 10 percent difference.

2. Getting a Professional Market Analysis

You can a lot of information from comparative lists and various research guides. For some, this is all they need. For many, this still doesn’t quite paint an accurate picture that they can judge their house’s value with.

When in doubt, find a professional market analysis. Most real estate agents and appraisers will be able to provide the service and most of them provide it as a free consultation.

These market analysis will often compile most of the information found within the comparative market lists you may have looked at earlier.

The difference here is the professional help in weeding out red herrings and getting a thorough and experienced eye to parse out what all the details mean to you as a prospective home seller.

3. What Has Sold

During your research, you will have a lot of very different kinds of potential houses to look at. The two big details that can help sway an actual price is what sells and what does not.

What has sold will be the usual market lists that you will see. These houses are the ones that actually got what they are worth and will be a great gauge for what you should do.

Keep in mind the details you looked at earlier. How well did the house match the surrounding neighborhood? Was it a “fixer-upper” or was it refurbished like new? Did the house have to get relisted at a lower price, and why?

Knowing what events of note happened on the road to selling a home can give you an idea of what bumps or challenge you may face in the same area.

4. What Doesn’t Sell

There will always be stories of homeowners who couldn’t sell their house. There could be any number of reasons why, and you should know them well.

Most often, the biggest reason a house does not sell is that the asking price is far above what the house is worth. This can be because of needed repairs, the neighborhood, or the amenities in the house.

If there is a consistent item that makes houses seem to fall through, such as a lack of an amenity, you might find an edge you can exploit.

At the very worst, they may prove to be showcases of warning on what not to do.

Your Real Estate Agent and You

During this entire process, real estate agents can be invaluable in their help.

Besides their professional market analysis, real estate agents can also guide you on what aspects of your house are worth upgrading, what patterns in the market you should focus on, and whether it may be good to wait for a shift in the market.

These are all details that you can miss when you lack proper real estate training. While you may be fine on your own, there is no shame in making sure an important deal like selling a house goes as well as possible.

As with all things on this journey, do your research to ensure you do not find a bad real estate agent. There can be many problems that come from the wrong agent.

The Appraiser Situation

Hiring an appraiser may seem like a quick and easy solution instead of all this market research and agent trouble.

An appraiser can help to give you a solid estimate on your entire house’s worth and even point out items that are in need of upgrading and repair that can boost the house’s worth in significant ways.

What an appraiser does not do give you a clear and accurate battle plan towards selling your house out on the open market.

Using an appraiser’s services is a smart and potent way to get the most accurate estimate, but it will cost you and won’t fix all of your problems.

Getting the Right Number

Between the real estate agent, the appraiser, and your piles of market research, you should have a good understanding of where your house lies on the Houston housing market.

One of the last finishing touches, though, is the exact number you place your house up for sale with.

You will have worked out a figure, but the presentation on that number can be odd in how important it can be. You want to stand out from the other houses in your general market as much as possible.

1. The Zeros Concern

There is a concern with the presentation of numbers that a number ending in zero can be a problem. Many see a number ending in zero as more flexible than one that has a solid number like a 9 on the end.

If you then price your house at $200,000 it may seem more open to bargaining than $199,000.

Of course, the difference is you lose $1,000 in price difference, but if it saves you constant barrages of haggling, it may be worth it.

The other side of the argument comes from the clean and even factor of zero.

The number 200,000 sits right in the middle between two different large ranges, both 100,000 to 200,000 and 200,000 to 300,000.

This means that when people would search either of those ranges, a $200,000 house would appear in both. Meanwhile, the $199,000 house only appears in one. This trick expands the potential of prospective buyers to find you.

2. Staying Away From Tacky

In grocery stores and similar markets, the pricing idea is to be as close to the nearest dollar as possible. It takes the idea of the 9 as a more solid price to an extreme.

The example prices would be something like $199 instead of $200. This can work for smaller labels, but on big-ticket items like houses, it can look tacky. A price of $199,999 is too many 9s and is distracting.

As well, where 9s are a solid number, most anything else can be distracting. This gets worse the smaller the digit is.

A good example is the house price of $327,893. It looks all over the place and has no solid form. As such, buyers are going to think you either have no idea what you are doing or are so precise that you will be a pain to work with.

The Final Shot and The Redo

With all the aspects in mind, you are ready to finally put your house on to the market. Putting everything together can be daunting, but with all the research and help you have gotten through this process, you are ready.

There is one last word of wisdom to keep in mind. Across Houston and any other place in the world, housing markets go up and down. You may not always get the right price you want at the right time.

While there is a real tactic towards selling a house as fast as possible, it doesn’t always work that way.

Do not be afraid to pull your house off the market after a few weeks of no offers and try again. The comparative lists reset fast enough that you might be able to move on as if nothing happened, assuming you have the time to do this.

Real Estate Without The Mess

Working on getting that right price for your home will put a lot on your plate, but with this guide and a bit of patience, you will be on your way towards the next step in your life.

We here at Blue Match want to make sure that you get the most out of your real estate. Bad real estate agents and questionable tips are what we aim to avoid.

When you need help, you don’t have to hesitate! Get the best real estate advice out there and contact us today!