There are many factors that come into play once you decide to sell your home. You'll most likely tidy up the house, do some small repairs if necessary and once those have been completed you'll contact various agents to interview them before ultimately choosing a REALTOR who will suite your needs. But, is there anything you should be wary about when arriving at the market value of your home? The answer is YES.
Beware the incorrect bank appraisal! Incorrect use of bank appraisals or recent tax assessments of your home's actual market value can result in mispricing your home. Although these two processes used in home assessment are important to consider, they do not include specific qualities or improvements to your home and subsequently, they can result in over or underpricing your home. Mispricing your home can be detrimental to the successful sale of your property and in both cases can lead to not gettting full market value on the sale.
So, how do we avoid that?
Over the years I have been able to fine tune my approach to listing homes and determining the appropriate market value of a home.
At our initial meeting I will present a CMA (Comparative Market Analysis, also called the Highest Price Analysis) during which we will look at comparable properties in and around your neighbourhood that have sold recently to help us determine the market value of your home. We will also review homes that are currently being offered for sale as well as homes that have (recently) been taken off the market because they did not sell.
Once I have presented the CMA we will discuss specific features of your home that add or detract from it's market value, I highly encourage my clients to be active participants during the listing presentation as the value we arrive at should be consensual and make all parties happy.
By reviewing all of these different factors we will be able to arrive at the highest and best price to list your home for. Although you might be enticed by the agent who simply wants to list your home for the highest, beware. Homes that are priced right the first time often sell quicker and for over asking versus homes that have been on the market longer and have had mutliple price changes.