How to Price Your House to Sell Quickly

This article explains how to price your house to sell quickly, and it reveals a trade secret that is normally kept under wraps.

Up the street from where I live, there’s a house for sale. The sign out front says that it’s “priced to sell.” Despite a decent amount of buyer activity in our neighborhood, that house has been on the market for over six months. I’ve never even seen anyone park and go inside. Priced to sell? Hardly.

Eventually, I got curious about this house. Why has it been on the market so long? What was the price compared to other listings in the neighborhood? What did it look like inside? One day, there was an open house, so I went inside. The listing agent claimed the house was priced to sell. It wasn’t. The inside was awful — stains on the carpet, no upgrades of any kind, just a lousy presentation.

Then I compared the price of the home to others in the neighborhood. The sellers were asking more for this property than homes that were larger and nicer than theirs. I guess they were waiting for a sucker to come their way, the kind of person who would pay more than a home is worth. Long story short, I found out from another neighbor who knows them that the owners priced the house based on the amount they owe. Six months later, they still don’t have a clue. Unless they wise up, it will sit on the market for another six months.

These people could benefit from the advice I’m about to give you. It’s a closely guarded trade secret that will help you sell your house quickly, even in a tough market. Are you ready for it? Here it comes…

Price Your House Based on Current Market Values

Groundbreaking. Earth-shattering. What a revelation! Am I being sarcastic? I’m being a little sarcastic. It’s not really much of a secret. At least, I don’t think it is. But based on the number of overpriced homes on the market, it seems that many sellers still don’t get it. Nobody cares how much you paid for your home two, five or ten years ago. That price is totally irrelevant in the current market. If you want to price your house to sell quickly, you need to know what it’s worth in the current market.

Here’s another “secret” formula to help you price your home effectively:

Comparable sales + unique upgrades = good asking price

Home buyers today are better-informed than ever before, thanks to websites like this one. Buyers know what’s going on in the real estate world. How could they not know? They hear about it every time they turn on the news. Everyone knows that home prices have dropped in most markets across the United States. So buyers (and their agents) are looking closely at comparable sales to see what the market will bear. And they’re ignoring any pricing data that’s more than a year old, because it’s not relevant to the current market.

If you want to price your house for a quick sale, you need to accept this reality. That’s the first step to success. The next step is to find out what comparable homes are selling for in your area. This will give you a good baseline for your pricing strategy.

Then you need to factor in whatever upgrades you’ve done, if any. You should also consider any special features that make your house different from the rest, such as a corner lot or a totally decked-out kitchen. These things add value, so they need to be part of your pricing strategy. How much value do they add? That’s the tricky part. It depends on many factors, so you might want to get some input from a professional home appraiser. It’s worth the $400 appraisal fee, or whatever the going rate is these days.

If you hire a real estate agent to help you sell the home, he or she will handle much of this pricing research for you. If you’re taking the FSBO approach, by selling the place yourself, then you’ve got some homework to do. You need to research house prices in your area to see what they’re selling for. Then you need to do some extra research to find out how much value your upgrades might add. If you’re doing it by yourself, I would definitely recommend getting the home appraised.

This article explains how to price your house to sell fast. If you would like to learn more about this topic, check out the home-selling category of our blog.