I am not an Appraiser, but I just completed 99 hours of Broker training and we spent days studying the methods an Appraiser will use to verify the market value of your home. In today’s market Buyers are buying the way Appraisers are appraising and very few are willing to pay more than appraised value for your home.
How do you price your home to sell in this market?
First, you sit down with your Listing Agent and review recent sales of comparable homes. Then, you have to be willing to listen and price your home properly. What is your choice? Either price your home to sell or decide to stay where you are for now.
In a slow market, what do you do when there have been no comparable sales in your neighborhood or surrounding area? That’s the challenge facing many sellers and their listing agents today. Learning more about how Appraisers do their job can be useful.
If your home is a 4 bedroom, 2 bath, 2800 square foot rancher with a 2 car garage on a ½ acre lot, an Appraiser will search to find other similar homes that have sold recently within the immediate area. Then the Appraiser will make adjustments up or down in value to compensate for differences. If your home is smaller than others that have sold, he will adjust the value of that home up; if another recent sale was a larger home, he will adjust that value down. It can be a complex task and the result is not necessarily what you will want to hear.
But I paid 30% more than that!
You know what you paid for your home and how much you’ve put into improvements over the years. It has to be worth more than the sum of all your efforts plus a profit right? Not necessarily. But, if you bought your home 30 years ago, have maintained and updated it as needed, you will sell if you price it right. A good property priced appropriately for the market will always sell.
