How Not to sell your house: Mistake 1-Overpricing

BUYING OR selling a house is said to be one of the biggest financial transactions we will ever undertake in our lives.

When it comes to selling a property there are rigid but straightforward and common sense dos and don’t dos to observe to ensure a successful sale.

Mistake One: Overpricing:

Overpricing can doom a house sale to failure before even the FOR SALE notices have gone up. If the property has too high an asking price, potential buyers will be put off and wonít even bother to look at it. If it’s priced too low, sellers will be concerned about losing potential sales profits.

Some sellers have hopelessly unrealistic expectations about sales prices and run the risk of both being offended by offers which don’t match their expectations and end selling their home for less than its market value or indeed not at all.

One of the biggest mistakes made by eager sellers – driven by dreams of what they want to do with the money (holiday, new car, etc) from the sale ñ is to employ the services of estate agents who entice them with potentially lucrative sale prices. Some estate agents can intentionally exaggerate the value of a property with the aim of getting sellers to agree to an overpriced listing. This could place the seller at a disadvantage when they inevitably have to drop the price later on. Sellers beware, if you test the market you run the risk of getting get stung.

What sellers have to come to terms with is no matter what they or even their estate agents think the property is worth, it is buyers who ultimately determine the final sale prices.

Pricing a property for sale takes a skillful mixture of economics, science and psychology. There is an art to combining knowledge and skill in all these areas to achieve a sale at the desired price.

The market value of a house is often driven by sales of comparable properties, but additional factors playing vital roles, include: where the property is. It can seem unfair, but if an area has a reputation for social problems this will have an impact on the price.

Sellers need to make comparison with similar properties in their area and also be prepared to allow for any differences between what they want and what the local market is determining.

Other factors include analysis of market movements and how many similar properties are on sale in the same area, access to local services and the overall condition of the property. At best, any sale price is, at best, only an educated guess determined by current market conditions.

Many potential sellers could save themselves much frustration, anguish and disappointment if they just heeded the simple but true maxim – which also applies to many other transactions we make in life – it’s not what you think it’s worth, but what someone else is willing to pay for it