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How To Set The Right Price When Selling Your Portland Home

by | Apr 30, 2019 | Seller Tips | 0 comments

Setting the asking price for their Portland modern homes for sale is one of the most important decisions homeowners have to make in the selling process.  Why is it so important?

  • You only get one chance to make a good first impression.  With so many competing Portland homes for sale, yours has to pop out immediately as a good value or buyers will move on, unlikely to return. You get one stab at your home’s debut, and it’s easy to blow it.
  • Set the price too high and you could hurt your chances of selling your home. The amount of traffic a home gets in the first two weeks on the market is about 5 times what it gets the following weeks.  The traffic continues to decrease every week. You might say, “Well, I’ll just lower my price.”  This hurts almost as much as it helps.  It conveys to buyers (the few who are still considering your home) that your home was overpriced and may still be.
  • Setting the price too low can be almost as harmful. Buyers who are looking in a specific price range may not consider your home because of the low price tag.  They assume it will not fulfill their needs or worry that there’s something wrong with it.

How do you know what that magic number should be for your home?  Here are 3 factors to take into consideration when setting your asking price:

  1. Neighborhood sales prices:  Recent closed sales in your immediate neighborhood offer the most pertinent data for predicting the sale price of your home.  List prices of homes still on the market should be taken into consideration also, because they show the current pricing trend.  A professional real estate agent will do all this research for you as part of their services.
  1. Condition of your home:  If your home has been better maintained, is more up to date and shows better than the other Portland homes for sale, it will sell faster and for more money. Updates, even those as minor as having current paint colors, impact pricing.  Updated kitchens and baths are especially important to buyers.
  1. Promotion:  Your agents ability to market the home directly impacts your bottom line.  You definitely want to make sure that they will invest in the proper channels to incite a premium price.

It is a good idea to sit down with an experienced realtor and create a pricing plan for your home.  Because pricing can be a difficult task, I tend to not create a final listing price until the week the home comes on the market.  Be weary of agents that will offer pricing opinions before they have a secured listing contract.  They probably didn’t do enough research or take enough time to really look after your money like they should.

There also could be ulterior motives behind their suggested price, like leading you to believe they can get you more money for your home than they know they can.  They do this to secure the listing and hope they can talk you down in price later.

If you’d like for us to consult you through the process of pricing your home for sale, give us a call or email us today, we would love to help!