Priced To Sell

November 20, 2008

In today’s volatile market, buyers expect to get a great deal when then purchase a home. It’s almost as if they want to be rewarded for being brave and credit worthy. So how do you price your home so that it’s competitive enough to get buyers looking at it, but high enough to allow the negotiating room buyers need so they can assure themselves they purchased the home at a discount?

A while back I showed a home that had been reduced for a quick sale. It was a great deal. The buyer I was working with loved the house and made an offer (90% of list price) on the home. The offer was rejected. When I asked if the buyer would have been happy with the purchase price if the home had originally been listed higher and he’d offered the current list price. The buyer admitted that buying the home at a discount was more important than finding the right house at the right price. He absolutely could not pay full list price for the home, even though the list price was below comparable homes.

It’s difficult for sellers to understand that some of the appreciation they’ve experienced over the last few years has been wiped out. But if a seller has owned for more than about 8 years, he still should have built up enough equity to be able to price well, leave a little room for negotiation and walk away from the table with some profit. Compare profits to what your stock portfolio or retirement is worth, and sellers in most parts of the country are still OK. Yes, there are areas in the country where sellers are upside down in their mortgages, but how many of these sellers have owned for more than 8 years?

So if you’re a seller with enough equity to negotiate, do so with grace and gratitude. Hopefully, you’ll get just a good a deal when you go to buy your next home!

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Local Information for Portland, OR

Latitude: 45.52304 -- Longitude: -122.640155

Other Area Cities: Hillsboro Portland Beaverton Lake Oswego Milwaukie Oak Grove Raleigh Hills Tigard Tualatin Vancouver West Slope Oregon City Troutdale Gresham

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Portland is the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon, and county seat of Multnomah County. It straddles the Willamette River immediately south of its confluence with the Columbia River. Portland is the third largest city in the Pacific Northwest after Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia, with a population of 556,370 (July 1, 2005 estimate).[1] Approximately 2 million live in the surrounding metropolitan area (MSA), the 24th-largest in the U.S. Portland is known as "The City of Roses" or "Rose City" — its climate is ideal for their cultivation, and the city has many rose gardens, including the International Rose Test Garden in Washington Park. Other nicknames include "Stumptown" (due to early logging to clear land for development), "Bridgetown" (due to its numerous bridges), "Puddletown" (due to the rainy weather), "River City" (due to its proximity to the Willamette and Columbia), "PDX" (after the city's airport code), and "P-town". -- Source: Wikipedia.com

Oregon 2000 Census Population Profile Map

	Portland	Oregon	United States
Population	529,121	3,421,399	281,421,906
Median age	35.2	36.3	35.3
Median age for Male	34.2	35.1	34
Median age for Female	36.2	37.5	36.5
Households	223,737	1,333,723	105,480,101
Household population	514,129	3,343,908	273,643,273
Average household size	2.3	2.51	2.59
Families	118,447	877,671	71,787,347
Average family size	3	3.02	3.14
Housing units	237,307	1,452,709	115,904,641
Occupied units	223,737	1,333,723	105,480,101
Vacant units	13,570	118,986	10,424,540

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