Whether you’ve already got your eye on a new home, you’re planning a major move to a new city, or you simply want to unload your current property for some reason, a quick sale requires a careful pricing strategy.  Your Realtor should be able to help you figure out a price that delivers both a suitable return on investment and short timeline, but here are just a few tips to help you price your home to sell.

1. Check Recent Home Sales

If you’re not sure what your home value might be, the place to start is by checking out recent home sales in your area.  This should give you some idea of market trends so you can start to determine a suitable price range.

2. Understand Comps

No, this isn’t something you get for free, as in complimentary – in real estate, comps refer to comparable listings.  It’s not enough to look at recent sales and current listings.  You also need to know what homes similar to yours are selling for.

This means looking in your neighborhood, development, or a broader search area within your home town.  You also need to look for similar age, lot size, square footage, number of rooms, and other features.  Comps will get you closer to a target price than random home sales in recent months.

3. Know the Market

The type of market you’re in when you sell will definitely affect pricing.  If the market is flooded with similar homes, your best chance to sell, and sell quickly, could be to price competitively.  If, however, you’re in a seller’s market, where buyers are clamoring to snap up limited listings and getting into bidding wars, you could price slightly higher and probably still sell.

However, pricing at market value in a seller’s market could be a shrewd move if you want a quick sale.  If you can hook multiple bidders early and start a bidding war, you’ll likely come out ahead of competitive sellers.

4. Undercut Active Listings

If there are listings similar to yours that seem to be getting more attention, think about undercutting their prices slightly to make your property more attractive.

5. Leave Room to Negotiate

Pricing slightly below market value can definitely spur interest in your property because it shows you’re a motivated seller.  However, you’ll probably find that buyers like to haggle, so you need to leave a little meat on the bone if you don’t want to stray too far from your asking price.

6. Adjust Your Price if Needed

If you’ve listed your home at what you think is a fair market price and you’re not getting so much as a nibble, it could be that you’ve simply misread the market.  Don’t hesitate to take action, aggressively if need be, in dropping your price so that you can compete and gain interest in your property.

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