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 Orange Park, FL

Latitude: 30.168569 -- Longitude: -81.708479

Other Area Cities: Orange Park Green Cove Springs Jacksonville Middleburg

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Founded in 1877 by the Florida Winter Home and Improvement Company. Following the Civil War, the company purchased several thousand acres of the McIntosh plantation at Laurel Grove, for the purpose of creating a southern retreat and small farming community. The town was incorporated in 1879 by a special act of the Florida Legislature. Orange Park was the home of the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center, one of ten regional centers for primate research. The Orange Park center, established in 1930 by psychologist Robert Yerkes and Yale University, was the first laboratory in the United States for the study of non-human primates. In 1956, Emory University took over operation of the Center. In 1965, the center was relocated to the campus of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2002, the Center was renamed the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, though officially the "Regional" name still applies. -- Source: Wikipedia.com

Florida 2000 Census Population Profile Map

	Orange Park	Florida	United States
Population	9,081	15,982,378	281,421,906
Median age	42.7	38.7	35.3
Median age for Male	40.4	37.3	34
Median age for Female	44.3	40.1	36.5
Households	3,429	6,337,929	105,480,101
Household population	8,391	15,593,433	273,643,273
Average household size	2.45	2.46	2.59
Families	2,363	4,210,760	71,787,347
Average family size	2.92	2.98	3.14
Housing units	3,648	7,302,947	115,904,641
Occupied units	3,429	6,337,929	105,480,101
Vacant units	219	965,018	10,424,540

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