When putting your home up for sale, one of the best ways to determine the asking price is to look at comparable sales. There’s rarely a perfect apples-to-apples comparison, so a pricing your home often relies on comparisons to several recent sales in the area. Here are six criteria for pricing your home that you should look for in a sales comparison.
- Location: Homes in the same neighborhood typically follow the same market trends. Comparing your home to another in the same neighborhood is a good start, but comparing it to homes on the same street or block is even better.
- Date of sale: It varies by location, but housing markets can see a ton of fluctuation in a short time period. It‘s best to use the most recent sales data available. Going back no more than 3 months is best but sometimes you have to look back a little further.
- Home build: Look for homes with similar architectural styles, numbers of bathrooms and bedrooms, square footage, and other basics like the age of the home.
- Features and upgrades: Remodeled bathrooms and kitchens can raise a home’s price, and so can less flashy upgrades like a new roof or HVAC system. Be sure to look for similar bells and whistles. Quality features and upgrades can make a big difference.
- Sale types: Homes that are sold as short sales or foreclosures are often in distress or sold at a lower price than they’d receive from a more typical sale. These homes are not as useful for comparisons.
- Current listings: It’s also a good idea to check out homes currently for sale in your area. If they are a pretty comparable home based on the above criteria, you will want to take that into consideration when pricing your home.
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