Spending a week or two in the market has been a good rule of thumb for evaluating the selling price of your home. However, in a popular market, it's possible that within a few days of announcing it, you'll know if you're overpriced, depending on how quickly other homes sell. If your advertised home hasn't received any offers after 30 days, consider reducing the price in increments to reflect neighborhood prices. Buyers, sellers and real estate professionals across the country are trying to adapt to a real estate market that is very different from that of a few months ago.
I wouldn't say it's a buyer's market, but since August we've been achieving a new balance between buyers and sellers, Barnett said. Before taking steps to reduce the price, you'll want to take a step back and make sure that price is really the problem and it's not an ineffective marketing issue. But if you make too many sacrifices just to get a house, you might end up with the buyer's remorse and an expensive albatross that you have to unload. Even with a slight increase in the number of homes for sale, buyers are still faced with high prices and the highest mortgage rates in 15 years.
Ask your real estate agent to perform a comparative market analysis by examining recently sold homes in your area that have similar characteristics to yours. Be bold in a buyer's market and attract buyers who are priced below market value, especially if your home needs some repairs. Still, a home can be too expensive, and today's savvy home-hunters can smell an overpriced home a mile away. Andrea Riquier is a New York-based writer who covers mortgages and the real estate market for Forbes Advisor.
Analyze what you can't change, add what you've put in the house to improve it, and compare it with others in the market. Fannie Mae's economists expect prices to be, on average, 16% higher in the next quarter than they were a year ago. When considering a reduction in price, get down to business and ask your real estate agent to give you feedback from potential buyers about what they like and don't like about the house. Real estate agents will also promote a price reduction, both on the front yard sign and in the online advertisement.
Cook recommends that, if you don't need to sell quickly, consider removing the house from the market for a few months and then putting it back on sale at a lower price. It would be easy to say that all you have to do is price your home correctly and competitively first, and then you won't have any problems, but there are several schools of thought about when to be competitive and when to test the market.