You take the time to prepare your home and list your property. The family is ready to show on a moments notice.
You are just waiting for the offers to roll in after the first open house. No offers, than a week passes, a month passes, than 2 months…. Showings are almost non-existent.
The confidence you had to begin with turns to doubt, now you are wondering how do I know if my home is overpriced.
When listing your home their are 3 critical keys to successful home sale. The most critical key is pricing your home properly. Overpricing your home has dire consequences and should not be taken lightly.
The good news is in many cases it is fairly easy to determine your homes value.
The problem now is you need to make some decisions and quick. You don’t want your home to become stagnant in your local real estate marketplace.
Learn to spot the signs that you may have overpriced your home.
9 Red Flags You Overpriced Your Home
1-You Ignored the Pricing of Comparable Properties
If you listed your home with any decent agent they would have gone over pricing of similar homes in your neighborhood that have sold recently in a Comparative Market Analysis. Did you follow your agents recommendation of pricing?
Often sellers get emotional about their home and want to ignore the data. Go back and look at the CMA what were comparable homes selling for?
2- Lack of Showings
It is important to sell your home in the first 20-30 days on the market. You should have an influx of showings in the first several weeks. Your busiest weeks will typically be the first 3 or four weeks. After that showings will dwindle down to almost nothing.
Have you listed your home and have had no showings or very few? It is only going to get worse. If you start off with very few showings and have gone weeks with no showing that is tell tale sign your home is probably over priced.
3- Neighboring Homes are Selling But Yours is Not
Your real estate agent should be giving regular market updates. Are many of the homes that were for sale when yours was listed now sold or under agreement but yours is not?
If your neighbors are getting their houses sold but you are not, is time to go back an review the pricing of your home.
4- The Feedback Indicates You Are Overpriced
Hopefully you are receiving feedback on a large number of your showings. Feedback is a great tool once you are listed. There are two thing to look at in the feedback.
One, buyers and agents may flat out indicate the property is overpriced. Or two, the buyers are ultra critical of your home. They may not say the home is overpriced but they nit pick it to death.
Remember one or two comments is not a reason to go off the deep end, but if you keep hearing the same thing over and over it may be time to do something about it.
5- No Offers
You may be getting showings but no offers. My general rule of thumb for homes on the market is 12-15 showings and you should be receiving offers. If you start hitting 20 showings and you have not received an offer it is time to re-look at your pricing strategy.
6- Low Online Activity
In this day and age your real estate agent can track online views of your home. If your home is not receiving the views online it will follow thru to lack of showings as well. Your home is showing up in the home searches but buyer’s are rejecting it before they even view it online. Most likely the stats of your home don’t hold up to your competition.
7- You Let Your Agent Buy Your Listing
Did you hire your agent solely based on the fact they gave you a higher listing price than everyone else? There is a name for that in our business it is called buying a listing.
An agent will play on your emotions and give you an inflated list price. Of course you are willing to believe it they are the professional. But, in doing so you probably did not pay attention to all the details like the agents marketing plan or make them back up their pricing with solid market data.
Was your sole decision for hiring your agent based on the fact they gave you the highest list price?
8- Did You Price Your Home Based on Costly Renovations?
Often a home seller will choose to price their home because of costly renovations that were done for their personal taste and not what would be considered the norms for their price range.
A gourmet kitchen in a starter cape cod home with upscale commercial appliances is a perfect example. Or, here in New England you will never come close to recouping money spent on a pool. Or, many buyers aren’t going to pay for an $8,000 bidet in every bathroom.
If you purposely asked for more money because of costly renovations you did for your personal tastes than your house will sit overpriced among it’s competition.
9- If Your Home Expired On The Market Unsold
Your listing contract is up and your home hasn’t sold. At this point you have missed all the signs your home is overpriced, now its time to get realistically. Don’t let your home languish on the market unsold.
Your Home Is Competing With Other Homes
When seller’s insist on overpricing their home they usually fail to see that their home is competing with other homes. Often when a buyer views your home and “rejects” your home they move on to buy another home that they found more compelling.
First you must remember buyers are choosing the homes they personally view online. Your homes photos and statistics must stand up to the other similar home they are viewing online. And, it certainly must carry though to the showing as well.
A house that is compelling at $350,000 amongst it’s competition will certainly not be compelling at $425,000. First it will look way overpriced alongside it’s true competition in the $350k price range. Secondly, it will not hold muster to the homes priced properly at $425,000.
The Good News
The good news is if you did overprice your home, you can usually overcome it quickly. The key in overpricing your home is realizing you may have overpriced your home and react quickly. If you are able to react quickly there is probably no damage that has been done in the marketing of your home.
The worst thing you can do is let your home sit on the market for 90, 120, 180 days without a change. The internet has sped up the real estate market. In most cases, your home should be sold with-in 60 days.
Work with your agent to get the data you need to make the right decisions regarding the pricing of your home. One last thought. It is almost impossible to under price a home in this day and age. If your home is worth more and you give it a little bit of market time it will correct itself.
Other Resources:
- Kevin Vitali 3 Keys to A Successful Home Sale
- Bill Gassett The Damaging Effect of Overpricing Your Home
- Paul Sian My Listing Expired, Now What?
- Anita Clark Reasons Your Home Is Not Selling
Avoid Asking the Question “How Do I Know My Home Is Overpriced?” by calling me for a comprehensive CMA and market report at 978-360-0422.
This article, How Do I Know If My Home is Overpriced? is written by Kevin Vitali of EXIT Group One Real Estate. Need help buying or selling a home? Give me a call at 978-360-0422 or email me at kevin@kevinvitali.com
Real Estate Services in the following areas: Northeast Massachusetts, Merrimack Valley, North Shore and Metrowest. Including the following communities and the surrounding area- Amesbury, Andover, Billerica, Burlington, Chelmsford, Dracut, Groveland, Haverhill, Lowell, Melrose, Merrimac, Methuen, Middleton, North Andover, North Reading, Reading, Stoneham, Tewksbury, Tyngsborough, Wakefield, Wilmington, Westford
