subject: Pricing Your Home To Sale [print this page] Before actually putting your house on the market you need to consider exactly how much you could get for it and how healthy the market is.
Your Realtor can give you the best information on pricing, but there are a number of other options out there as well.
A Realtor with knowledge and more preferably based in your area would be your best bet. Realtors need quick access to the sale prices of similar houses in your area so you can get an approximate figure. Be sure to change Realtors if the current one will not entertain the price you have in mind for your property, you need to get the best possible results from your sale.
Going at it alone is what some people do because they do not want to pay Realtors but this requires much more research in order to set the best price.
A good judge of the price of your house would be to see if a similar house has sold in the same neighborhood. Where developers have built many houses lumped together they are essentially the same design with little changes. If a property has sold there are a few ways of finding out. Talking to the owner is the easiest way or talking to the previous owner. Another way is to talk to the Realtor who sold it or go looking through old newspapers. House sales are public record so go to where the information is stored and research it if none of the other options work.
Finding similar homes to yours in real estate ads and seeing the prices is another way. For a quick reference price this is great but it still does not give you're the exact neighborhood or street and leaves the other important information about your house out.
You can look up property values and see how they compare to each other in most cases. Tax values are now listed to most localities online where comparing the value of your house to others in your area can be done. They may not be prices but a higher tax value usually means a higher house value. There are other localities that include everything you need to help value your home including; types of porches, side features, heat, construction dates, etc.
If in doubt, price a little high. You can always negotiate down, but it's almost impossible to raise your price without pulling it from the market for a while and starting over.
