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 Saint George, UT

Latitude: 37.095279 -- Longitude: -113.578151

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St. George was founded as a cotton mission in the 1850s under the direction of Brigham Young, the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon Church)— part of a greater church effort to become self-sufficient. While the early settlers did manage to grow cotton, it was never produced at competitive market rates; consequently, cotton farming was eventually abandoned.St. George is home to Dixie State College of Utah, a four-year institution. It is also home to three high schools, Pine View High School, Dixie High School and Snow Canyon High School, as well as a number of elementary and intermediate schools. New high schools are in the planning stages to meet the area's rapidly growing student population. Nearby Ivins is home to Utah's first charter high school, Tuacahn High School for the Performing Arts, which provides an alternative education with no tuition costs to any Utah resident. -- Source: Wikipedia.com

Utah 2000 Census Population Profile Map

	Saint George	Utah	United States
Population	49,663	2,233,169	281,421,906
Median age	31.4	27.1	35.3
Median age for Male	30	26.7	34
Median age for Female	33.1	27.7	36.5
Households	17,367	701,281	105,480,101
Household population	48,804	2,192,689	273,643,273
Average household size	2.81	3.13	2.59
Families	13,041	535,294	71,787,347
Average family size	3.21	3.57	3.14
Housing units	21,083	768,594	115,904,641
Occupied units	17,367	701,281	105,480,101
Vacant units	3,716	67,313	10,424,540

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