Sellers

• If you set the price too high, your house won’t be picked for viewing, even though it may be much nicer than others in the area. You may have told your REALTOR to "Bring me any offer. Frankly, I’d take less." But in that list of houses, yours simply looks too expensive to be considered.
• If you price too low, you'll short-change yourself. Your house will sell promptly, yes, but before it has time to find the buyer who would have paid more.
• NOTE: Never say "asking" price, which implies you don't expect to get it. 

To determine the proper list price, contact me today and I'll provide you with the following professional services:

• Furnishing comparable sales.
• Analyzing market conditions.
• Helping to determine offering incentives.
• Estimating your net proceeds.

Also we can furnish data on sale figures for those "comps", and analyze them for a suggested listing price. The decision about how much to ask, though, is always yours. The list of comparable sales we bring to you, along with data about other houses in your neighborhood presently on the market, is used for a "Comparative Market Analysis (CMA)." To help in estimating a possible sale price for your house, the analysis will also include data on nearby homes that failed to sell in the past few months, along with their list prices.

This CMA differs from a formal appraisal in several ways. One major difference is that an appraisal will be based only on past sales. In addition, an appraisal is done for a fee while the CMA is provided by us and may include properties currently listed for sale and those currently pending sale.

In the normal home sale, a CMA is probably enough to let you set a proper price. A formal written appraisal (which may cost a few hundred dollars) can be useful if you have unique property, if there hasn't been much activity in your area recently, if co-owners disagree about price, and any other circumstance that makes it difficult to put a value on your home.