Don’t Forget Comps-A Guide to the Right Price For Your Home
Congratulations! you found the home you want and you’re ready to make an offer. You have secured your loan, picked out furniture, planned the guest list for Thanksgiving Dinner, and you finally are ready to roll out an offer, but then Brrrr..here come the cold feet. Why? You’re not sure what to offer.
One of the toughest parts of purchasing a home is choosing the right initial offer. Thoughts swing back and forth from “I don’t want to insult the buyers” to ” If I go in at my highest price I won’t have room to negotiate”. Then there are the buyers who try to psyche out the sellers by coming out with a crazy number like $342,678, hoping the Sellers will think it is based on either a percentage, or Lotto numbers. There are so many techniques/idiosyncrasies to coming up with an initial offer that I sometimes get confused between real estate and Major League baseball.
Whether listing or buying there is one sure-fire way to make an offer and take away the jitters at the same time. Ask your agent for some comparable sales, aka comps in the neighborhood over the last 6 months. This can give a general idea of what Sellers are taking and it can give you an edge when negotiating. Because all the homes are so different, comps are not always that easy to find in a neighborhood like Big Canoe where the prices can range from 100K to nearly 3M. However, if you have an agent that knows the neighborhood and sales statistics by heart then you will have a big advantage. For example take the Laurel Ridge Section of Big Canoe. Last week one of my 5BR 3.5 BA listings closed at a selling price of 369K. I also have 362 Laurel Ridge listed (also 5BR 3.5BA) for 369K. It’s a realistic price and should sell very close to 369K because the homes in Laurel Ridge are very similar in style and view.
A good comp will have similar lots, bedrooms/bathrooms, age, and style. When buying a non-foreclosure home, foreclosures as comps are not always adequate because they are sold as-is with no disclosures. BUT if you add one foreclosure comp to every 5 non-foreclosure comps it should balance out to suit the current market competition. In conclusion be sure to know your neighborhood and how it is selling so you can get a bargain to brag about!
Happy House Hunting! (See 362 Laural Ridge below)
Karin Elliott-IBA Mountain Homes
362 Laurel Ridge, Big Canoe
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