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 Mobile, AL

Latitude: 30.679523 -- Longitude: -88.10328

Other Area Cities: Bay Minette Daphne Chickasaw Prichard Saraland Theodore Mobile

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The settlement, then called by the French name "Fort Louis de lá Mobile", was first established in 1702, at Twenty-seven Mile Bluff on the Mobile River, as the first capital of the French colony of Louisiana. Following a series of floods, the town was relocated downriver to its present location near the head of Mobile Bay in 1711 and named Fort Conde. The capital of Louisiana was moved to Biloxi in 1720 and to New Orleans in 1723 and Mobile was relegated to the role of frontier town and trading post. In 1763, the Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the French and Indian War. The treaty ceded Mobile to Great Britain and under British rule the colony flourished. The British renamed the city Fort Charlotte, after the English Queen, and reenergized the port. Major exports included timber, naval stores, indigo, hides, rice, pecans and cattle. -- Source: Wikipedia.com

Alabama 2000 Census Population Profile Map

	Mobile	Alabama	United States
Population	198,915	4,447,100	281,421,906
Median age	34.3	35.8	35.3
Median age for Male	32.3	34.4	34
Median age for Female	36.1	37.2	36.5
Households	78,480	1,737,080	105,480,101
Household population	192,735	4,332,380	273,643,273
Average household size	2.46	2.49	2.59
Families	50,764	1,215,968	71,787,347
Average family size	3.09	3.01	3.14
Housing units	86,187	1,963,711	115,904,641
Occupied units	78,480	1,737,080	105,480,101
Vacant units	7,707	226,631	10,424,540

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