Pricing your house right is the most important step in the sale process, as well as your most effective marketing tool. If your house isn’t priced to sell, chances are it will languish unsold on the market- which further decreases your chances of making a sale at or near the price you need. You will, of course, need to run a comparative market analysis, but don’t neglect to deploy the other effective pricing strategies. With that in mind, we offer these 4 insider tips for pricing your house in Ventura County.
1. Price Competitively
Pricing competitively is the first and perhaps the most important step in pricing your house in Ventura County. You don’t want to price either too high or too low – because the end result is the same. If you price too high, buyers will be put off, and your house won’t sell. And then when it sits unsold on the market, other buyers will think something is wrong with it. If you price too low, your house won’t sell because buyers will automatically think something is wrong with (not to mention the money you’ll lose if it does sell when priced too low).
The trick is to see what similar, comparable homes are priced at and have recently sold for in your neighborhood and immediate area. This is what a comparative market analysis examines in order to help you price competitively at fair market value. Keep in mind, too, that the season and local market conditions have a lot to do with what a competitive price will be. Your agent can be a valuable asset in helping you price competitively. (You can discover more by calling 805-232-8503.)
2. Price Strategically
After determining a competitive price, you need to think about strategically pricing your house in Ventura County. This means finding the target buying audience’s price range and then getting the most out of pricing within that range to maximize both selling power and profit. This also means making the most of price ranges at online listing sites. These sites allow buyers to search for homes within a certain price range – setting search parameters at a minimum and a maximum price. What you should do, then, is price your house near the top limit within the appropriate range. If you priced at the lower end of the next incremental price range up, you’d lose out on many potential buyers.
3. Use Value-Range Pricing
Value-range pricing is another strategy for pricing your house in Ventura County that can garner you more showings and higher bids. Here’s how it works: you set a price based on what you would sell for right now, today if a buyer whipped out her checkbook and wrote you a check on the spot. Then, you select another lower price that you wouldn’t reject outright but would use as a negotiating starting point to work toward a better price somewhere in the middle. And then, instead of listing your house at a specific price, you list it for a price range (which you just determined with the two prices) – for example, between $525,000 and $545,000.
4. Avoid Century Pricing
It works in retail, and it also works in real estate for effectively pricing your house in Ventura County. And that is avoiding century pricing – or avoiding round numbers in pricing. There’s a good reason all the products in your supermarket are priced at something like $5.95 or $10.99. It has the psychological effect of making consumers perceive the price as significantly lower than $6.00 or $11.00 – even though there’s only a penny’s or a few pennies’ worth of difference. So if you want to get close to $650,000 for your home, price it at, say. $649,500 or even $649,999. Buyers will see it as more affordable than $650,000. (Just make sure to avoid weird number like $648,753.)
Bonus Tip
Last, we have a bonus tip that could turn out to be the most important: use a qualified local real estate agent. Local markets can vary widely – even from neighborhood to neighborhood – and, as a result, there are a host of local and micro factors that can and should influence your strategy for pricing your house in Ventura County. Find out how our agents can help you price to sell. Contact us today! 805-232-8503