Columbia SC Home Prices: Tips For Setting Your Listing Price

When selling a home, trying to figure out what Columbia SC home prices should be can only be determined by actually selling it. Because homes vary, estimates can and almost invariably do vary widely — they are essentially opinions, more or less qualified, and based more or less on fact. Additionally, most opinions of value will be expressed in a price range, rather than a particular number, because of the nature of the whole process.

Here are 3 Tips For Setting Columbia SC Home Prices

1 – Online Estimates and Appraisals –  Online estimates can be a useful tool for a rough estimate, but they have a variety of issues. The computer simply cannot appreciate all the nuances of location, home style and home condition that a human being can, and they frequently fail to detect flat-out errors in the public record details about your home or the comparable properties it chooses to use. Some of the most popular automated estimate tools online actually carry a very, very high error rate.

On the other hand, an actual physical appraisal is simply one more form of opinion. And appraisers in today’s market are generally under pressure to be very, very conservative in their home estimates; one of the most common reasons home-sale transactions fall out of escrow today is because the appraiser’s opinion was lower than the price the buyer and seller agreed upon.

2 – Get Multiple CMA’s – To get a closer idea of what Columbia SC home prices might actually sell for is to ask multiple agents who are successfully selling homes in your neighborhood on today’s market. If you can get a relatively unanimous range or estimate of your home’s value from agents, it behooves you to take that number seriously.

Agents don’t make a commission on homes that don’t sell. Columbia SC home prices that are set too high simply don’t sell. What honest agents also know is that even to get a properly priced home to sell, it will take a fairly substantial investment of their own time, energy and money — these are resources they would rather not invest in a listing that will never sell because the seller is determined to ask too high of a list price. So agents these days have doubled-down on a strategy that is hard in the short term, but pulls in favor of success on the horizon: brutal honesty.

Most agents would rather not list a home that is destined to lag on the market because of its price, because (a) the unhappy seller will likely not say good things, and (b) they’d rather be able to show future prospective seller clients a portfolio of homes that have recently sold, quickly and for a price near the list price.

3 – Columbia SC Home Prices Are About Marketing – Keep in mind that the list price of your home is as much about marketing and competitively positioning it against other listings as it is about trying to approximate it’s true worth. Many agents start the list-price conversation at what you believe it’s worth, then take a tad bit off to entice buyers to come see and make offers on the home.

If you are priced right in line with other listings, that might make you feel like your price is the right price. In the same vein, if your home has been sitting on the market for longer than it takes the average home in the area to sell for the same price and hasn’t sold, you may need to do something different. And think of it this way: If you want to distinguish yourself from those other listings and beat them at the competitive endeavor of luring a buyer in, you might need to be priced better than them.

Columbia SC home prices are determined by a lot of factors, but these three tips should help you in determining where you list your property when the time comes.