PETALUMA CALIFORNIA - PETALUMA Homes and Real Estate For Sale

Article

Property appraisers apply some serious methodology in their work, but they will be the first to admit that they have no scientific way to determine the value of anything. In negotiating the purchase price of a home, all we have to work with are opinions, and ultimately the only opinions that matter are those of the buyer and seller. People often look to their Realtor for guidance in setting prices and making offers, and Realtors are always looking for ways to help. We can provide plenty of information about comparable sales and competing listings, all of which is important, but I think people would sometimes prefer a less complicated way to analyze price.

If you are thinking of buying a home, how will you know if your offer is too high, too low, or just right? There is a way, my own better-than-scientific method. I would ask you to close your eyes to get the most out of this exercise, but then you wouldn't be able to read the rest of this. Just imagine that the home under consideration has been sold ' to someone else. Now imagine receiving this news with different sale prices. There is certainly some number that is so high your reaction will be, 'Whoa! God bless those people who bought it! For that kind of money, I'm sure glad I'm not buying it!' Good. That price is too high. Now try prices that are successively lower. Eventually you will reach a number that produces this reaction: '(Your choice of expletive)! I would have bought it for that!' Congratulations. There's your number. The beauty of this simple approach is that it will work for you regardless of the listed price of the property. In some cases people are finding their number may be as high as or even higher than the asking price.

Now, what about when you are selling your home? What if you get no offers, or the only offers you see are lower than your asking price? Try thinking of the process this way: whenever your home is offered for sale with thorough market exposure, it always sells. The home is sold either to someone else or to you. If it's you, that's perfectly all right, as long as you are happy with your purchase. If your asking price was $550,000, and the most that anyone would have offered was an unacceptable $500,000, you just bought your own home for $500,000. After all, your refusal to sell at that price means that you would rather have the property than the $500,000. It also means that if you had $500,000 and no property, you would choose to buy the home you're in now. If that doesn't sound right, you need to take another look at the price.

If someone does agree to pay your asking price, will you then be concerned that you sold for too little? Unfortunately, there is only one way to know for sure. You'll have to get the price high enough so that no one buys it (except you).

Your Realtor understands the difficulties of making decisions about buying and selling. Put your agent's good advice together with your best instincts to make the right decisions for you.