[M06/S10] Recognizing the Wrong Price for your Home

How do you know if you’ve set the wrong price for your home? One clue may be that it isn’t selling, of course – but that may take a long time before you recognize that’s what’s happening. Since time is money, time is something you probably shouldn’t waste. If you now what to look for, the signs of the wrong price should be apparent within 1-2 weeks of launching your home on the market.

There’s no one rule that works for every market in the country, and even with any one market it’s always changing. Things to look at though are:

• How many phone calls are you receiving on the property?
• How many people are looking at the home on Trulia, Zillow, and other popular listing sites?
• How fast are flyers disappearing from the flyer box?
• How many people are coming in the door?
• How long do they stay once they get in the door?
• What’s the feedback from buyers and agents who have visited the property?
• And, importantly: how many offers have you had on the property?

If the answer to any of these questions is not many (however that’s quantified in your market) – the answer is clear: you’ve set the price too high.

At that point you might want to pull the home off the market to regroup and make some changes to your marketing strategy. Look at improving curb appeal, and all the other things you can do to enhance the perception of value in buyer’s eyes. Or, you can do those things and reduce your asking price.

What ultimately matters though is if you have received credible, reasonable offers on your property. Again, there’s no metric that works for all properties in all markets, but a general rule of thumb is that you should have offers within 30 days, and you should get one offer per 10-20 buyers who come through the door.

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