Why Didn’t Our House Sell For More?
Question: A year ago we needed to quickly sell our home. We had spent many, many weekends creating a beautiful yard with new trees and flower islands. Inside we painted every room and made coordinating window treatments. We also had a double lot. In the end, the house sold in one day — but it didn’t sell for much more than nearby homes. How come?
Answer: The general rule in real estate is that buyers seek the least expensive home in the most expensive neighborhood they can afford. Between the double lot, landscaping and interior work you had a great house — that’s why it sold in a day.
To sell a home for a significant premium above neighborhood prices is tough and sometimes impossible. Alternatively, without improvements the home may have taken longer to sell.
As to the prices of other homes, a word of caution: Sale prices do not always reflect real deals. For instance, suppose two homes each sell for $200,000 but one owner agreed to replace the roof, pay for a new washer and dryer and provided a “seller credit” to the buyers at closing worth 2 percent of the sale price ($4,000). Here you have homes with the same “sale price” but different bottom lines — one reason to use a good local broker who knows how sales are really structured.
The odds are that with your better house you had fewer concessions, if any, when compared with other local sales.
Should you fix up again? Sure — you’ll get more pleasure and enjoyment from your home.
————-
Syndicated originally by Content That Works and posted with permission.
© Copyright 