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If you’re preparing to sell, you may run the risk of overpricing your home. From Zestimates to pricing it based on what your neighbor’s home sold for, it can be tempting to price your property based on what you might make. Here are some common challenges sellers face if they overprice their home.
You can lose potential buyers
Overpricing your home may mean potential buyers will not see your listing in their online home search. Most buyers filter their searches by price, and their agent will know the local market. If a buyer’s agent believes a home is overpriced, they won’t want to waste time showing it to their clients, especially when there are properly priced homes ready and waiting. Furthermore, as a seller, you really want to capitalize on the attention your property gets the moment it goes live. Sellers have a small window to capture buyers’ attention, and when it’s new to market, you want to make sure potential buyers see it right away. This translates to more online views, more showings, and more potential offers.
You’ll waste time and resources
Selling your home usually requires a significant amount of prep work. This can include making needed repairs and updates, decluttering and deep cleaning it, staging it, and marketing it. Of course, there are also showings and the need to keep your home meticulously clean if you’re still living in it. If you overprice your home, it could sit on the market for quite a while. Some buyers may see how long it’s been on the market and assume something is wrong with it even if it’s a wonderful property. Overpricing your home could lead to a great deal of time and resources wasted, both for you and your agent. Every week or month that passes without any offers means more staging costs incurred, not to mention still having to pay the mortgage, utilities, landscaping, and more.
There may be appraisal issues
Even if you do find an interested buyer for your overpriced home, if the buyer requires financing, this could lead to appraisal issues. Lenders require an appraisal of the property’s value. If the appraisal comes out below the asking price, the buyer may need to make up the difference. That could cause a buyer to walk away from the deal.
This may lead to lost opportunities
As a seller, you may think that starting high gives you leverage and you can always come down later if needed. However, by doing so, you lose negotiating power as soon as your listing goes live at an inflated price. Most buyers know better, and certainly knowledgeable buyer’s agents will. These savvy folks will wait for the inevitable price drop instead of making a “low-ball” offer. When they do, it’s usually lower than what you would have received if your home had been competitively priced from the beginning. As a result, the leverage shifts from the seller to the buyer. When you finally receive an offer, you’re negotiating from a weakened position with a stale listing. And, they may want to negotiate down even more.
Simply put, overpricing your home can derail the sale from the start. Pay attention to your local real estate market. Don’t ignore the realities of it or the time of year in which you’re selling. It’s best to take a pragmatic approach to pricing and to trust your agent. Our Windermere Bainbridge Island Brokers are highly rated and can provide a free Comparative Market Analysis (CMA). Along with this detailed report on your home’s value, they can discuss our local market here on Bainbridge Island. By beginning with a data-informed approach, you’ll be able to make better decisions. Don’t let your desire to get a little more money by overpricing your home result in a financial loss. Proper pricing gives you the best chance to sell your home quickly, attract motivated buyers, and have a smooth home-selling process.
