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House selling advice?


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I'd so appreciate thoughts.

 

We've had our house (not living in it/we've moved) on the market for about 5 or 6 weeks. We told the real estate agent we wanted to price to sell. Her price was the same as the other real estate agent from a different agency set so we went with that.

 

We got one very low offer about 2-3 weeks in and they rejected our counter-offer.

 

We continue to have lots of showings but no more offers. I asked her today what she was thinking. She said a few agents have told her the price is too high for our town.

 

I asked what it should be and she said she just didn't know--we could lower it a few thousand and see. I'm frustrated. I do think the town we're selling in is tricky as there is very little for sale generally. So comparables are hard. Still I'm feeling we picked the wrong agent given she doesn't seem to know how to price it!

 

Anyway, would you lower the price about 6 weeks in? Does that send a bad message? Does a few thousand one way or the other make a difference--I'm so frustrated the agent doesn't seem to know.

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We just moved in the past month. We had a great realtor who we had used to buy our house 8 years ago and we used her again to sell it. She is really knowledgeable about our area - and even she wasn't sure how to price our house initially. So I wouldn't necessarily say that you went with the wrong agent. Our town had only one or two comps, and some short sales and foreclosures that were killing us. She told us we wouldn't get more than $x, and we listed for $x plus another $20,000 and ended up getting that. Every realtor we interviewed said we'd never get over $x - they all had the same number in mind. It is a weird market.

 

I was under the impression that lowering the price after 4 weeks wasn't unreasonable. One thing our realtor mentioned is it may be worth lowering your price if it will drop you down into another price range - say from $300,000 to $290,000, since it would open you up to the people looking to spend under $300k for example. Hope that makes sense.

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I think the real estate market is tough right now. Generally buyers think they can get a fabulous deal, and they are not happy unless they get a house for less than it is worth. A lot of that is because of the excess amount of short sales and foreclosures on the market with which you have to compete. There are many people who make lowball offers until they get one.

 

I think you either have to make your house so wonderful and amazing that the buyers fall in love with it as soon as they step in and just have to get it even if it costs more than they wanted to pay, or else you may have to take less money just to get it sold. So lowering the price isn't a bad idea as long as you are okay with accepting the lower price.

 

As the pp said, you may also be missing buyers if you are priced just above a search value. Say your house is listed for $260,000. You will miss everyone who searches for houses priced at $250,000 or less, and who would probably be the people to buy your house.

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