Hello, Seattle home sellers. Do you have a plan to sell your home in the Seattle area this year? This is Emily Cressey with HomePro Associates at HomeSmart. I’m here at Lake Forest Park Town Center in Lake Forest Park, WA and I just wanted to give you some tips if you’re looking at pricing your property and how under-pricing and over-pricing can affect what’s going on.
So I have a couple buyers, we’ve been looking at a lot of homes in Shoreline right around the $600,000 price point. We have looked at some that are priced at $550,000 and some that are priced at $650,000, let’s say, but they’re all about similar quality. So here’s what happens. The ones that are priced correctly go right away. The ones that are overpriced sit for a long time and they get stale and you have to drop the price and drop the price, and drop the price and finally, someone makes you an offer and you take it.
The third thing that I’m seeing is that people are somewhat dramatically underpricing properties, and I’m not sure if this is a strategy or just the curiosity of the marketplace. But when you under price your property, you are going to have the nicest house in that price range that anybody has ever seen, it’s going to attract all of the people in the market who are looking at that price. I call it the shiny penny. If you have a bucket of coins and one is a shiny new penny and all the rest are old and dingy, that shiny new penny really catches the eye. So people are generally looking in swaths from $525,000 to $575,000 or they’re looking at a neighborhood at everything that’s under their maximum of what they can afford. And when they see your house, they will say, “Whoa, that’s a really good deal for that price.”
We’re doing an open house in Everett, WA on Saturday. The deal came out priced at $400,000, it had 10 people signed up to go do a showing that day. We looked at one today in Shoreline. It came out and within an hour … it came out mid day, what is this? Thursday. Within an hour, it had eight people booked to come to a showing. So when you use this shiny penny approach, you really catch the eye and the interest of all of the potential buyers in the marketplace. Anyone and everyone who’s in the market at that price point sees your home, recognizes, “Wow, that’s a smoking good deal,” and makes a plan to come out and see it. If they like it they’re going to make an offer and they know that it’s going to be a competitive offer situation. So they’re going to bid it up and you will find out exactly what the market thinks your home is worth. It happens fast and it’s very competitive.
The last one that I had my buyers taking a look at was a multiple offer situation, it got bid up. As agents, we don’t tell each other exactly, we kind of give a range, so it got bid up between 25 and 50,000 over the asking price. So, that was where the market thought that home was worth. This one that we looked at today, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a similar situation. It was very cute, it could even go 50,000 over asking.
So the key is to get all of the people in the marketplace, all the buyers in the marketplace to see your property, to like your property and to recognize that they’re in a competitive situation. And so they’re going to give you the highest and best. It’s not a situation where they offer and you counter it, we work our way to a number in the middle. That’s not what we’re seeing right now, it’s like, “Hey, I have a property that’s for sale like this. If it’s lower than what the market thinks, boom, everybody brings their, money and makes you a really strong offer.”
So if you’re thinking about selling, yes, it is November, it’s selling like summer right now, it’s very competitive. So if you’re thinking about selling, let me know. We have low interest rates, we have a lot of pent up demand in the marketplace and things are not slowing down right now. So just keep that in mind and let me know how I can help. This is Emily Cressey with HomeSmart. I look forward to chatting with you.
