Ok, selling my house. Currently been on the market for 2 weeks. We’ve had two people come look at it. One couple came back a second time with their contractor to look at the house (this was saturday)
We are working on scheduling our Open house for Jan 8th, and are trying to decide whether to lower the price before or after the open house. My wife thinks we should do it before, I think it should be after. Researching this online brings up groups that support each.
here is the reasoning for each:
Before:
brings more buyers to open house
house might sell quicker.
Price the house to sell, not negotiate.
After:
Not on the market long, and christmas/new years was in the middle.
Price is currently close to break even, lowered would put us below.
Open House might build interest and get offers. We found the house because of an Open House originally.
Price reduction amount would break the $100k mark.
We also have an accepted offer in on a new house that is contingent on selling this house.
So given this info, and based on your previous experiences, what would you guys suggest?
Some realtors say a lower price will actually get you more action and you may end up with more money. The key is getting all of the offers in at the same time because you need to accept or reject pretty quickly.
The other thing is you must establish what your biggest priority is; money or quickness. I sold my house in less than 15 minutes because I didn’t want to mess around for three months to get a couple grand more. Everyday you own costs you money.
Also be as sure as possible that the offer you accept is from the person most likely to actually get a mortgage.
yeah, we would like to sell quickly, but I feel like it is too soon to drop the price almost 5%, even though it will have been almost a month by that time.
After. Most people have an aversion to paying sticker price, and those who will will probably pay it even if it’s a little more, if they really like the place. By doing it before you are already capping out your potential gains.
If anything, keep the price high and have your agent stress that you’re open to offers. That way the power is on your side when you see what you get, not the buyers’ since they’re bidding blind.
I’d say stick and stay at the selling price (not knowing the condition of the house). You have NOT been on the market that long!! After 2-3 months then MAYBE, just a few hundred to $2k, just to get the auto-emails to be sent back out “with new price”. You are in a TOUGH time of the year to sell a house. But again if the house is right it also does not matter the time of the year… Real-estate is such a PITA to predict.
When i sold my 1000sq/ft 2 bed house with garage and .1 acre. It was completely renovated. NEW kitchen and NEW bathroom, new carpet, new pergo flooring, new paint, nice flowers, fence. I put it on the market for $69,999 and i had a offer the next day of $61,000 i waited and then i received another offer for $62,000. We told them that there was competing offers and they both came back with $65k. Then another offer came in, and we told them that there was competing offers and they dropped out. Then we got another offer that threw there hat into the rink… But they were FHA and we would never have gone with them with 2 other conventional offers.
We sold the house in 7days at full asking price, CASH offer.
Now we priced the house to “move” so i would not have taken under $65k for the house. You have to know your market and your product.
That was the 2nd time that we “sold the house”. The first time fell thru the buyer had a Motorcycle accident and lost his financing. But that took a month to sell and that was “fast” and we agreed to $65 that time.
as long as you have people coming back and somewhat seriously considering the house I wouldn’t touch the price. I would vote for after. If you lower it before or while people are considering it you’re only inviting them to low ball you more they would have.
What have other houses sold for in your neighborhood? Are they comparable (Size, updates, lot, utilities, etc.)? Keep in mind winter/spring is a buyers market, usually sellers are eager to sell.
i have to agree…this time of year…2 people…1 somewhat serious in 2 weeks isnt all that bad…hold the open house at current price…if you get no traffic or serious lookers then consider lowering it…i say consider because you might get more lookers after the holidays…i would wait til the 2 month mark before lowering…
Drop it and dump it. It’s Christmas time, people aren’t really buying right now, and is it really worth a few grand for you to lose out on the house you bought?
The houses that have sold recently in my area have all been in the $65k-95k range, and some have looked better on paper. The one 2 down sold this summer for $71k and is 3br, 2bath. But it was an estate, and needed a bunch of updating. Unfortunately, Zillow doesn’t tell you that. There are also a few that have 1.5 baths, where we only have one. Again though, most need updating. Ours is basically move in ready on the inside, but the outside could use some updates. We also have a larger lot, and a 3 car garage, where as most have only a 1 car and it’s in the back yard rather than a side lot like mine.
Right now we are leaning towards lowering it right before the Open house on the 8th. That should give enough time for people to look and make an offer at the current price. My wife really wants to be done with, and I do as well. Looking over the costs, it seems the sooner we get into a new house, the better.
Other factors:
Drive to work is 18 miles each way, plus another 10 during lunch to get food. That’s about 250 miles a week. New house is about 1 mile from work.
Drive home on weekend to spend time with my wife and work on the house is about 170 miles each way. Once of us makes this drive each weekend currently.
Eating out more costs money.
So after spending a little time last night looking over responses here, and actually figuring out costs, I will be saving quite a bit the sooner we can get this done, probably in the order of $300-600 a month once we close on the new place
Yea well you can NOT go by Zillow! They are not that accurate… At least what i have found. I like to look up the actual tax assessment on each and EVERY house i looked at, and when i was selling all the houses in my neighborhood. It takes a good bit of work. Also didn’t your agent give you comparable in your area or is that where the 65-95 come from.
Patience man. The average home sale in my area and its a STRONG market was 4 months. Simply put i had the BEST house in the price and size range, i COULD have gotten $5-$10K more but i think that it would have taken at least 4 months to get that and we would have missed out on the house we are now in.
Yeah, I agree that Zillows estimates are way off, but i was looking at the actual home sales figures. Our realtor also brought the comparable with him, and that’s where the range came from. I have both the Broome and Monroe County tax assessors websites bookmarked, as well as the GIS departments to check out the lot sizes.
The other thing which might be a factor is the recent flood we had here. We figured that most people would be wanting to get out of flooded area, but I think now since there are so many houses in the $20-40k range, many of which only had water in the basement, that people are willing to gamble on them to get more for their money, even though it might not be true when they go to sell it. The ones who wanted out of the flood area bought back in Oct and Nov.
And the listing is in my other thread about curb appeal.