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 Tigard, OR

Latitude: 45.42764 -- Longitude: -122.778974

Other Area Cities: Tigard Beaverton Hillsboro Milwaukie Oregon City Raleigh Hills Portland West Slope Tualatin Troutdale

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Like many towns in the Willamette Valley, Tigard was originally settled by several families, the most noteworthy of which was the Tigard family, headed by Wilson M. Tigard. Arriving in the area known as "East Butte" in 1852, the family settled and became involved in organizing and building the East Butte School, a general store (which starting in 1886 housed the area's post office) and a meeting hall, and renamed East Butte to "Tigardville". The Evangelical organization built the Emanuel Evangelical Church at the foot of Bull Mountain, south of the Tigard store in 1886. A blacksmith shop was opened in the 1890s by John Gaarde across from the Tigard Store, and in 1896 a new E. Butte school was opened to handle the growth the community was experiencing from an incoming wave of German settlers. -- Source: Wikipedia.com

Oregon 2000 Census Population Profile Map

	Tigard	Oregon	United States
Population	41,223	3,421,399	281,421,906
Median age	34.5	36.3	35.3
Median age for Male	33.3	35.1	34
Median age for Female	35.7	37.5	36.5
Households	16,507	1,333,723	105,480,101
Household population	41,002	3,343,908	273,643,273
Average household size	2.48	2.51	2.59
Families	10,739	877,671	71,787,347
Average family size	3.03	3.02	3.14
Housing units	17,369	1,452,709	115,904,641
Occupied units	16,507	1,333,723	105,480,101
Vacant units	862	118,986	10,424,540

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