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 Williamsville, NY

Latitude: 42.904657 -- Longitude: -78.849405

Other Area Cities: West Seneca Amherst Buffalo Clarence Hamburg Tonawanda Orchard Park Kenmore Lancaster Niagara Falls

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Buffalo is an American city in western New York State. With a population of 279,745 as of the United States Census Bureau's 2005 estimate [1], it is the state's second-largest city, after New York City, and is the county seat of Erie County.GR6 The Buffalo-Niagara metropolitan area has a diverse population of 1.1 million. Buffalo's thriving arts, cultural, and nightlife scenes are considered the hub of the greater bi-national region in New York and Ontario. Buffalo lies at the eastern end of Lake Erie near the head of the Niagara River, which connects to Lake Ontario. European-Americans first settled there in the late-18th century. Growth was slow until the city became the western terminus of the Erie Canal some forty years later. By the turn of the next century, Buffalo was one of the country's leading cities, and by far its largest inland port. -- Source: Wikipedia.com

New York 2000 Census Population Profile Map

	Buffalo	New York	United States
Population	292,648	18,976,457	281,421,906
Median age	33.6	35.9	35.3
Median age for Male	31.6	34.5	34
Median age for Female	35.3	37.2	36.5
Households	122,720	7,056,860	105,480,101
Household population	281,522	18,395,996	273,643,273
Average household size	2.29	2.61	2.59
Families	67,053	4,639,387	71,787,347
Average family size	3.07	3.22	3.14
Housing units	145,574	7,679,307	115,904,641
Occupied units	122,720	7,056,860	105,480,101
Vacant units	22,854	622,447	10,424,540

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