Can You Spot The Overpriced Home in a Neighborhood?

Know Thy Market When Pricing a Home for Sale
Picking the right price for a home is part art, part math, part intuition, part experience. If you're not careful, you'll end up with an overpriced home - and that can really hurt your chances of selling it anytime soon. The person coming up with the numbers needs something to go on. You know . . . some actual data to use to figure it out. Emotions need to be checked at the door - as strong as they may be, they just get in the way of what needs to be done: get the price right so the house sells as fast as possible at the highest price possible. Let me share an example with you so that you can see why just breezing through some other local listings, or recent sales isn't quite enough to nail the price on a listing. What you learn here could save you a lot of time and money (and teeth gnashing).But It's Priced Right!!!
I ran across a listing a while ago that stuck out in a sea of data as an outlier - a data point that looked out of place. At first, it was a bit confusing: the price per square foot was clearly under other homes of similar size and age in the area. The photos in the MLS looked okay. The photos themselves weren't that great, but the home looked presentable in them. The neighborhood and schools are considered desireable. Other listings were selling in just a few weeks. And yet . . . this one was still on the market. It was still on the market despite several downward price adjustments, each of which made it look more and more favorably priced than the competition. And yet, other houses were coming on the market and selling and this one was . . . sitting. It was the classic overpriced home.The Big List of Small and Not-So-Small Things That Matter
To re-cap: at first glance, the priced seemed reasonable. But at deep-gazing, the price was way off, from a combination of these things:- The house was built by a lower-end builder in a subdivision of homes built by better builders: it did not have the same quality of original fit-and-finish as the typical home in the area.
- The fixtures (faucets, light fixtures, shower surrounds) were original, and in a bright-brass finish.
- The house did not appear to have been well-maintained.
- The fence was rotty.
- The playscape was falling down.
- Some cabinets had sharpie (?) markings and other scribbles on them.
- The bathrooms had dated (and peeling) wallpaper.
- The flooring that looked like hardwood was actually super-thin, poorly-installed laminate.
- The floorplan was awkward.
- The house was crowded with too much stuff (that had been moved aside for the photos).