As many as 75% of homes were undersold in 2019.
The question then becomes, how do you get the most value from your home in order to avoid underselling it?
This is an especially important question to answer if you’re trying to sell your home rather quickly. If you’re in serious financial need, selling your home fast may be the best option. But that doesn’t mean you have to settle low on a home price.
Learning how to negotiate house prices can help you get the most value from your home without feeling pressure to sell low.
Here are some tactics and strategies to learn if you’re trying to sell your home and you want to get the best possible value from your home.
Strategies on How to Negotiate House Prices
These strategies will help you get the most value from your home regardless if you’re in no rush or you’re trying to sell quickly.
These strategies are especially helpful if you inherited a home and you would like to sell it quickly. Other predicaments you may be in is if you have to relocate suddenly, you’re downsizing, or you lost a job and you need to quickly move out of your home.
You can find more about how to sell a home you inherited in our blog. These 5 tips can help you sell an inherited home fast.
These negotiation strategies can help you overcome each of these predicaments. They can help you get the most from your home regardless if you know very little about real estate and home value.
Counter with Your Listing Price
One of the strategies you should consider employing in order to effectively negotiate a house price is countering at your list price.
Most buyers will offer a price lower than what your house listing price is. And many sellers will counter with a higher price but a price that is still lower than what they originally listed it at.
While offering a higher price than what the buyer offered, albeit still lower than your asking price, you might think you’re selling your home faster. But you are still losing value in your home.
When you, the seller, counter with an offer at your list price. If the buyer is serious, they will counter with a higher price than their original offer. This also avoids lowball offers from buyers.
The offers are also from more serious prospective buyers. They will often stick around if you negotiate with this tactic because they are serious about buying.
Reject the Initial Offer
Another tactic to employ is to reject the initial offer from the buyer. While this may seem like an extreme tactic, it is actually quite effective. If the buyer remains interested, they will counter with a new offer.
Similar to the first tactic, the initial offer strategy allows you to talk to people are actually interested in buying the home. You also avoid low-ball offers.
Create a Bidding War
This negotiation tactic is effective when you have multiple buyers interested in buying your home.
You can have an open house, which allows more potential buyers to see everything about the home, and it opens up more bids. You may find that you have multiple offers after the open house. You can ask the top bidders for a better offer if you do receive multiple offers.
Even if you don’t receive multiple offers, the buyers don’t know that. The only buyer may have attended the open house and may think that a lot of people are interested.
The point is, you control what you set the bidding at. Don’t let the buyer take advantage or control of what the house price is.
Don’t Let Your Emotions Control the Sale
If you’re trying to sell a home quickly, especially if you inherited it, it’s important to not let your emotions get in the way.
If you’re selling a home that you have fond memories of as a child who spends time at their grandparent’s house or a parent who raised their children in that home, it can be difficult to let go of that home.
If a buyer gives you a realistic offer, you have to stay composed and be ready to accept that offer even if you think the house is priceless because of the memories you’ve accumulated in that home.
It’s hard to let go of the emotional stories you’ve had in a home, but if you want to learn how to negotiate home prices and you want the best price for that home, you can’t let emotions dictate your price.
Put a Date on Your Counter Offer
After you counter with an offer of your own to a potential buyer, you can’t accept a higher offer from someone else even if it’s millions higher.
This is why it’s important to put an expiration date on your offer. It allows your buyers to make a decision quickly and it gets you out of a bind if you do have another offer that’s much higher.
Don’t put a deadline that is unrealistic to the buyer. Be fair in what you set your deadline to be. Just keep in mind that it’s important to have a deadline so you can sell your home when you need to.
You Determine the Ultimate Value of Your Home
Selling your home doesn’t have to be a complicated process. You don’t have to lose value on your home even if you are trying to sell it quickly.
Learning how to negotiate house prices as a seller can help you get the most from your home if it’s only a couple thousand to tens of thousands. You can avoid being taken advantage of by the buyer.
Even if you don’t know real estate, you can employ these strategies and get a better value than you might think.
For more information on real estate and how to sell your house fast, contact us here.
