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 Astoria, OR

Latitude: 46.188825 -- Longitude: -123.821007

Other Area Cities: Astoria Gearhart

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The Lewis and Clark Expedition spent the winter of 1805-1806 at Fort Clatsop, a small log structure south and west of modern day Astoria. The expedition had hoped a ship would come by to take them back east, but instead endured a tortuous winter of rain and cold, then returned east the way they came. Today the fort has been recreated and is now a national monument. Several years later, in 1811, Astor's Pacific Fur Company founded Fort Astoria as its primary fur-trading post in the Northwest, and in fact the first permanent U.S. settlement on the Pacific coast. It was an extremely important post for American exploration of the continent and was influential in helping establish American claims to the land. The fort and fur trade was sold to the British in 1813, and house was restored to the U.S. in 1818, control of the fur trade would remain under the British until American pioneers following the Oregon Trail began filtering into the port town in the mid-1840's. -- Source: Wikipedia.com

Oregon 2000 Census Population Profile Map

	Astoria	Oregon	United States
Population	9,813	3,421,399	281,421,906
Median age	38.3	36.3	35.3
Median age for Male	36.6	35.1	34
Median age for Female	40	37.5	36.5
Households	4,235	1,333,723	105,480,101
Household population	9,590	3,343,908	273,643,273
Average household size	2.26	2.51	2.59
Families	2,467	877,671	71,787,347
Average family size	2.93	3.02	3.14
Housing units	4,858	1,452,709	115,904,641
Occupied units	4,235	1,333,723	105,480,101
Vacant units	623	118,986	10,424,540

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