It’s Not All About Money

When I just started in real estate years and years ago, I had a mentor. I’ll spare you the details of that relationship but tell you about one piece of advice I remember well. We were working on listing presentation in the hopes of getting a couple of different home owners to list their home sale with us when she told me, “It’s all about the price.”

That line has stuck with me all the years - every time I look at a home’s price in both my inventory and the general inventory of homes on market. It’s all about price, everything can be figure into the price…the price, the logic goes, says it all.

For a while I liked that piece of advice and worked with it. It worked well - after all, if the price is right then there should be no trouble selling the house. But after some experience, and a changing market, I realized that this is not necessarily so.

It is true, we can figure anything into the price. After inspection, we can renegotiate the price figuring in the costs of repairs, we can set the price around what the house looks like. But, does this absolve us from marketing the home aggressively and preparing the home for greatest appeal?

If we only focus on price, then we are missing some important aspects of a successful home sale.

In the sea of housing inventory, it is more vital than ever to have the right marketing in place. How else would a buyer find your home when looking at a list of fifty suitable homes in the area? How does your house “pop”? Your house must be promoted in the right place using the right pictures and text to appeal to the right buyer.

Saying that everything can be figured into the price also assumes we can methodically and very precisely know the price of the home in advance. That is hogwash. We can’t know exactly. Furthermore, even the best real estate agent can be off a bit on the price sometimes. The housing market is too dynamic and complex for there to be an exact price, and getting it wrong isn’t the end of the world.

Sure the final sale price figures in everything about the house, but to each buyer that is something different. One buyer will pay a premium for a large yard, another will focus on a discount for a damp basement. Remember, the buyer is not only seeing your house and making an offer based on your home’s features. The buyer is making an offer based on all the homes he or she saw, paying more or less for features in comparison to the competing homes.

So is it all about the price? Pricing the home well is extremely important, but without an aggressive, well-thought-out marketing plan, and investing in the preparation of the house for sale, you will not be getting everything you can for your home.

How did you price your home when it went on market? Have you had to adjust the price?