Price your house carefully

Price is the prime factor that needs to be kept in mind if you are going to do this on your own. It needs to be understood that not many people care for your feelings and the fact that you think ‘x’is the right price. That is especially important if you want to make a quick sale. You must behave like a businessman; avoid getting emotional about the price and set the right price that will give you enough buyers through the doors.

Check current and past prices

Take a look around the neighbourhood and try to find out what kind of a price is prevailing in the area. Ideally you want to compare apples to apples so look for houses similar to yours (size, type, condition) on offer nearby yours. This will give you the current rate for your house.

There other way you can look at prices in your locality is using past sale prices. Find out comparable houses that have been sold not too long ago in the neighbourhood and then adjust the price using (upward or downward) trend of the market since it was sold (see our section on Using the Internet). This would provide you with a realistic past reference which can be used to calculate your sale price of today.

If attractively priced your house should bring significantly more viewers and therefore you will likely sell your house fast. However don’t undersell your house. Professional buyers would likely react very positively to a 15-25% below market value house. However non professional buyers may be happy to save just 5-10% of the market value of the house.

Reducing prices

You likely have noticed that if a property remains on the market for quite some time, estate agents tend to ask home owners to reduce their offer price. This is done so as to make the place more attractive to the potential buyers after the first few months have past and the likelihood of finding a buyer dropped (estate agent would have likely already exhausted their list of customers).

It does have generally a positive effect on the number of visitors especially the first time you drop the price. Sadly as it does send negative signals, people will ask questions and you need to be prepared to answer these. What happens is that with a property whose price has been reduced, buyers start to wonder and may be more wary. In most buyer's mind; the only reason someone would reduce the price would be when there is something wrong with the house. However professional investors on the other end will see through that and actually take it as a good sign.

Hence, if you have to reduce the price, try to get some expert advice on the matter before contemplating a reduction in price. Generally it would be better to set the price right in the first place and achieve a house sell the first time around.