The Dangers of Overpricing Your For-Sale Home

Have you ever thought about pushing the limits when setting a price for your for-sale home? While it’s nice to think you could have a few extra thousand dollars in your pocket, overpricing your home can be detrimental to selling quickly or even at a fair price. Along with postponing the sale of your home, here are a number of reasons you should refrain from hiking the listing price.

Appraisal Problems

Even if you do find a buyer willing to pay an inflated price, the fact is over 90% of buyers use some kind of financing to pay for their home purchase. If your home won’t appraise for the purchase price the sale will likely fail.

No Showings

Today’s sophisticated home buyers are well educated about the real estate market. If your home is overpriced, they won’t bother looking at it, let alone make you an offer.

Branding Problems

When a new listing hits the marketing, every agent quickly checks the property out to see if it’s a good fit for their clients. If your home is branded as “overpriced”, reigniting interest may take drastic measures.

Selling for the Competition

Overpricing actually helps similar houses that are competing against yours. You make their lower prices seem like bigger bargains. Nothing is worse than watching your neighbors put up a sold sign before you.

Stagnation

The longer your home sits on the market, the more likely it is to become stagnated or stale. Have you ever seen a property that seems to be perpetually for sale? You like most others would wonder what’s wrong with that house if it’s been on the market for so long.

Tougher Negotiations

Buyers who do view your home may negotiate harder because the home has been on the market for a longer period of time and because it is overpriced compared to the competition.

Lost Opportunities

You will lose a percentage of buyers who are outside your original price point. These are buyers who are looking in the price range that the home will eventually sell for but don’t see the home because the price is above their pre-set budget.

While most buyers look at 10-15 homes before making a buying decision, it important to price competitively to not lose out on a possible sale. If you need help determining the true value of your home, try our free Home Evaluator!