Time to Sell My House, but What's the
Property Worth?
Buying or selling? what's your
property worth? you need to do some research or you
could lose out big time...
I am sure that you have heard all the
horror stories of double-dealing real estate agents
valuing Grandma's house way too low and snapping the
property up themselves, for a quick re-sale and a nice
little profit...
Well that might be an extreme case,
but there plenty of examples going around where people
have lost $10, $20 or even $30,000. AND it's mostly
because they just didn't do their research. Of course
there are also cases where the seller of a property
lists it for sale way too high and the property sits on
the market for too long.
So how do you go about getting a
handle on the value of your home?
First, make up a summary of what
your house has to offer - features and benefits.
Include: Land size, number of
bedrooms, location, proximity to amenities, pool, living
areas, car accommodation, security system, recently
renovated, other features/benefits?
This will help you in comparing your
property against other properties that are for sale.
Next step is to do some desk top
research,
Make a list of houses to compare yours
against:
1 - Have a look in the local papers
and Real Estate Guides for properties that are in your
area.
2 - Browse the Real Estate web sites
(there are several good ones covering most areas these
days) There are some seriously powerful tools available
on the internet today, check out:
PropertyValue.com.au
Cut out or make a note about all the
ones that are a) in your suburb b) in surrounding
suburbs and have similar features and benefits as your
property.
Now it's time to do some LEG WORK
Armed with your list of properties
it's time to visit some open houses or view some of the
properties with the real estate agent*.
*not a good idea to tell them you are
thinking of selling your house yet.
Remember to take a good look at each
property, make some notes and ask the agents questions,
like "how long has it been on the market?" "have you had
any offers yet?" If you listen and observe the agents
responses, it doesn't usually take long to get a fairly
good idea of whether they think the price is right."
After you have looked at 5 or more
properties that are similar to your house you need to
sit down and work out a ball park figure plus or minus
$25,000.
Real Estate Agents
When you visited the other houses, you
would have developed a sense of which Real Estate Agents
do the best job in marketing properties. Invite the ones
that you think would be best to market your property and
most of them will put together a marketing plan for you.
Meet with them to discuss their
marketing plan and make sure they are very aware of the
research that you have done. Never sign up on the spot,
take some time to way up the pros and cons of each
proposal. Sleep on it is a good rule of thumb.
These days Real Estate Agents will
push hard to get a property to an auction. There can be
good and bad reasons for this. Make sure you know what
you want and stick to it. If they push you into an
auction, they will certainly be there on auction day
bullying you to take a low offer...
One final thing to
remember, the value of a property is also about what
someone is prepared to pay for it.
Like to Comment on this Article?
Use our BLOG |
