Pricing Your Home

When you call me to give you the value on your home, I still get butterflies in my stomach.

There is a lot of responsibility with this request. I know how important that number is to you. You have put a lot into your house...all those bills you pay every month, the maintenance, and improvements. The price that you sell your house for will make a lot of difference in your future decisions.

So I would like you to know that I take this very seriously.

The first thing I do is have you show me your home and tell me what you think. I collect detailed information from you about your home and ask you questions so that I know everything about it.

Next I do a comprehensive CMA for you from MLS Data. I work and work this over and over until it is right. For example as you pull up homes in any area on the MLS, there are "exception" houses which are really different from every other house. I have to decide whether to leave these homes in the analysis or not.

Foreclosures and short sales might be infrequent in your area. But in some areas they are the norm. I look at this and show you these numbers because those numbers are helping to set the market price for your neighborhood.

I get in the car and go out and see some of the comps. You can only tell so much from online photos.

I pull up the tax records and the tax records of your neighbors. I compare the assessed values but know that these numbers don't often tell the whole story.

I look at other "home value" websites, to see what the statistics say about your home.

And, from all this I develop a range of prices. I call it the SIT or SELL range. At the top range is a price that I feel your home is worth, but at which it might SIT for a long time. At the bottom of the range is a price that I think will get buyers in your home and excited to make an offer. This is the SELL price.

I can see the thinking in pricing a home a little higher to see what happens. However, after a few weeks at the "SIT" price, I usually encourage sellers to move towards the "SELL" price. That is, if they really want to sell.