Vashon Homes & Events from Go! Real Estate

Vashon Real Estate: Sales Prices Should be Reconsidered

November 27, 2008 at 5:32 am Leave a comment

An emerging truth about the state of the current housing market is also an old bit of wisdom.  In its most familiar guise, “a house is only worth what a buyer is willing to pay for it.”  In today’s Buyers’ Market, serious home sellers must take a bite of reality sandwich in setting their sales pricing strategy. 

By “serious home sellers” I am excluding those home owners who float their homes on the market at an unreasonable price in hopes that P.T. Barnum’s proverbial sucker will come out of the woodwork in a minute.

A realistic home seller, today, must reassess his or her expectations in view of the many factors at play in today’s economy.  A recent report from Coldwell Banker showed that more than three-quarters of its real estate agents surveyed said “most sellers have unreasonable initial listing prices for their homes.”  In the context of traditional house marketing wisdom, an unreasonable initial sales price will deny a seller an opportunity to take advantage of the one month honeymoon that a new listing experiences on the market.  During that first month of listing, a new listing will attract significantly more buyer interest than at any other time in its on-market history, and a serious seller simply cannot afford to squandor that opportunity.

As the Seattle Times reported on November 23, 2008, “the housing market may have gone bust, but many homeowners are still living in a bubble.”  A study released by Zillow.com (which GoVashon does not recommend for accurate valuation services) found that half of homeowners polled think their home’s value has increased or stayed the same in the past year.

An owner’s attachment to a home for sentimental reasons only intensifies the trauma of setting a realistic selling price.  This places real estate listing agents in a precarious position in their effort to help a seller set a reasonable price in the context of the seller’s inflated expectations.

In fact, setting an unrealistic price tends to sustain the unstable market, with seller’s keeping the inventory artificially high by over pricing their homes or, in frustration, pulling their listing off the market with the intention of adding it to the glut of homes that will re-enter the market when the economy stabilizes.

The bottom line is that a seller should pay close attention to a real estate professional’s custom Comparative Market Analysis before deciding whether to list their home for sale.  The consequence of inflated expectations is that a home may sit unsold for months, wasting the seller’s and the agent’s resources, and unintentionally sustaining the meandering of the market.

Entry filed under: • Real Estate, Housing Market News. Tags: Seattle real estate, Vashon real estate.