This is really a nice article on making sure you price your home correctly.  As the article discusses, most of us tend to be a little optimistic on our home's value.  As a homeowner, you've put a lot of time and hardwork into your home so it is certainly understandable.  I will admit that I try to get my sellers the highest possible price in a reasonable amount of time, and sometimes this involves stretching to a bit to see if we can eek out a little more than most Realtors would suggest.  Sometimes the strategy works and, because we've set up and staged the property correctly, we are able to get on the high end of the price for the neighborhood.  Sometimes the market just won't absorb the property at that price.  What I do stress with my sellers is that we need to be active in monitoring the market and adapting the price to reflect that market.  The statistics reflect that after the second weekend the amount of buyers viewing a home tends to go down each week from then on out.  It's important to capitalize on the traffic when it occurs.  On top of that, the longer a home stays on the market, the more stigmatized a home becomes.  In other words, buyers begin asking 'why hasn't this home sold?' and the bigger question ' why hasn't anyone else bought the home - what am I missing?'. 

Pricing a home right from the start actually helps you get the most from the home.  Many sellers say, "let's price it high and if a buyer wants to make an offer for lower they always can and we can negotiate it."  In theory it sounds great but over the years I have found that the majority buyers just won't do that.  Most buyers who feel a home is overpriced will feel that the seller won't consider more reasonable offers or, if they do, will not negotiate to a more reasonable price.  By the time the list price is brought down to a more reasonable price most of the buyers for that home are gone meaning many times the seller ends up with less for the home than they would have received if they had priced it fairly to start and gotten an offer in the first few weeks.

It really is a fine line to walk - getting the most for a home but not overpricing the property.  It is my own personal philosophy that much of that 'extra' you can get for your home actually comes into play before you list the home - the staging, the pre-marketing, the prepping of the home, etc.  You need to have everything in place the first day you put the home on the market to make a splash and to capitalize on the bounce you get from being the new home on the market.  If you don't do it this way, if all of the components just trickle into play after you've already entered the home into the MLS, then you end up missing on a good portion of your buyers and missing out on getting top dollar for your home. 

I also believe in my clients, both buyers and sellers, have every bit of information available to help them make their best decision.  For sellers this means a broad spectrum of comparables.  I will also narrow it down using the basics of standard appraisal practices so that I can give my own broker's price opinion.  With all that information, plus information on statistics from the market and their neighborhood I believe that we can find a price and a marketing strategy that will work best for the seller so that we can meet the goal - getting the best price in a reasonable amount of time with a minimum amount of stress.

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One more article for you tonight -

Can you help me sell my home, St. Joe? - It's not a new practice, but I've seen a few articles on it lately - must be the slowing market for sellers in other parts of the country.  St. Joseph, carpenter and father of Jesus, is also believed to be help sell homes when buried in the seller's yard.  There is more about the history of the practice in the article, but I found the various way that people believe St. Joseph should be buried to be interesting.  The most interesting method appears to be burying the statue upside in a hole in the backyard facing the home with his feet to heaven.