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 Leominster, MA

Latitude: 42.526523 -- Longitude: -71.753582

Other Area Cities: Gardner Leominster Sterling Ayer Fitchburg Lancaster Townsend Groton

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Before European settlement, various divisions of the Pennacook or Nipmuc tribes inhabited the area, with a settlement nearby called Nashua. Leominster was first settled in 1653 and was officially incorporated in 1740. Leominster is now known as "The Pioneer Plastics City" because of its thriving plastics industry from the early part of the twentieth century to present day. Leominster and Fitchburg are commonly known as the twin cities in the area because of their similar populations and shared history of industry, and also because they are on opposite sides of the Nashua River. The city is divided into a few "villages" such as French Hill, a large hill covered in planned blocks of "triple decker" apartment houses located from 1st Street to 12th Street. It is called French Hill because this is where the large immigrant French population took root. In the early 1900's, on Lincoln Terrace, the Italians moved in as a group and built up a semi-closed society which existed for many years. -- Source: Wikipedia.com

Massachusetts 2000 Census Population Profile Map

	Leominster	Massachusetts	United States
Population	41,303	6,349,097	281,421,906
Median age	36.3	36.5	35.3
Median age for Male	35.3	35.4	34
Median age for Female	37.4	37.7	36.5
Households	16,491	2,443,580	105,480,101
Household population	40,909	6,127,881	273,643,273
Average household size	2.48	2.51	2.59
Families	10,902	1,576,696	71,787,347
Average family size	3.05	3.11	3.14
Housing units	16,976	2,621,989	115,904,641
Occupied units	16,491	2,443,580	105,480,101
Vacant units	485	178,409	10,424,540

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