Birmingham Real Estate: You've Got Options: February 2012

The Right Price, Location and Condition = A Home That Sells

Birmingham Alabama Home Seller

There isn’t much you can do about location if you are planning to sell your house.  Hopefully it’s in a prime location.  But even if it’s not in a prime location, if you are serious about selling the house, then you need to price it right for the location and its condition.  Andif it’s an investment property, at the very least, you’ll want to make sure that it isn’t trashed.  Here’s a little secret, if you hire an agent that is willing to list your house for sale for more than the available data supports (a.k.a. overprice it) then don’t count on that agent doing their best to try to sell your overpriced home.  Yes,I know this sounds awfully harsh, but I’m afraid it’s the true.  Personally, I’d much rather walk away from a listing than to overprice it.

Let's Talk About Condition

When we talk about pricing a home right for its condition, we mean its present condition.  Of course our vision is not always the same as the buyer's vision of their desired home, so pricing it on what you believe the buyer do with it, is usually not a formula that works well.  That doesn't mean that your ideas aren't good.  It's just that I'm sure that the buyers probably want to do things their way and as they see it (No offense.  Really).  If the home needs to be updated and you are not willing to do it, then pricing it like the home down the street that has been update from the foundation to the roof is not a good idea.  Price the house "in the now" and see how buyers come a calling.

Birmingham Alabama Home Buyers

If you are in the market to purchase a home, then location means everything.  If at all possible, it just makes sense to move in areas where values are not dropping more often than you bat your eyes.  It’s no secret that homes for sale in prime Birmingham-Hoover locations that are priced right and show well, will sell faster.  The best advice that I can give you is to make your offer like you want that house.  You can play games if you’d like.  You can ignore the advice of your agent and the facts presented to you and watch home after gorgeous home go under contract (with another buyer) if you’d like.  But know this, more often than not,  buyers loose out on homes that they want because they don’t use the available information to make their decisions.  In other words, they wing it.  The best homes, in the best locations that are priced right, almost always command the price that is being asked.  It just can’t get any simpler than that.

Here's Where I Come In

My job as a Birmingham-Hoover real estate agent is to provide you with the best information possible so that you can look at the evidence (proof) and make the best decision possible (or not). What you decide to do with that information is up to you.