real estate agent

How to price your house in this crazy market

by John Rice

Everybody knows that it is the craziest seller’s market ever.

Everybody knows houses are selling for over the list price.

What a seller does with this information is often all wrong. Sellers think they need to price their house as high as they can to get the most out of it. That is totally wrong today.

Today the list price is really just an opener, similar to an auction. Imagine if you went to an auction and the auctioneer began with the number that would be the same as the sale price at the end of the auction? How many bidders would you have? Maybe one? Maybe none? This is effectively what a seller does when they start too high.

I showed a house a few days ago that was listed for $185k, which is pretty high for what it was. There was a line of people waiting to get in to see it. This morning I got an email from the listing agent that they had “An” offer. A few days on the market and they get one offer from all those showings. Had they started at something more reasonable like $175k, they might have ended up at $185k or more. Why? Because buyers are used to going over the asking price these days. When you start at the number they would be willing to pay, they assume they would need to go over that to get the house and are not willing to do so. To a buyer, a list price of $185k means expect to pay $190-195k or more.

The best strategy today is to price the house in line with the most recent comps and create a multiple offer situation. The only way to take advantage of the buyer frenzy is to have two or more people trying to outbid each other for your house. Pricing it high and only having one buyer would be just like going to an auction where there is only one bidder in the room. This is why the success of an auction depends on having maximum exposure for a brief period and then setting a deadline for the sale.

Sold for 25% OVER list price!!

by John Rice

I listed a manufactured home in a tiny town in northern Scott County on 15 acres last week. I have had it in my pipeline for close to a year so I have been watching the market in the area for a while. Prices have gone up quite a bit, but lately similar properties have all been listed for about $160k.

So we got pictures and put it on for $160k. I fully expected it to sell for a little more since the market value is no longer determined by recent sales. It is determined by how desperate the buyer is.

Turns out they get more desperate every day.

We got 8 offers. 10 actually but two were for a financing type that did not do manufactured homes so we can’t really count those.

One offer was $155k. I always laugh at those buyers and scratch my head. What rock have they been hiding under that they and their realtor don’t know that practically every house in multiple offers goes for at least list price.

Five of the offers had escalation clauses. That is where the buyer pretty much says they will pay so much more than any other offer up to a certain price.

I got one offer for $200k. My mind was blown. No escalation clause. Just a flat $200k.

This gave me the chance to tell the buyer’s agents with the escalation clauses that they might want to up their amount if their buyer really wanted the house.

Fortunately one buyer whose offer had some better secondary terms raised their escalation clause to be $200k. I have seen where people throw out some high number on an escalation clause to get their offer noticed but they have no intention of every going that high. I called that buyer’s agent to confirm they were legitimately willing to go that high. They were. They got the house for $200k. Next step is to convince the appraiser it is worth that.

Is it a good time to buy?

by John Rice

This is a question I get asked a lot these days. People are worried about a housing crash and they dread the process of finding a home. It is not a fun time to be a buyer for sure!

My response usually is “Today is a better time to be a buyer than tomorrow will be, but it isn’t as good as it was yesterday.” Prices are going up every day between the whole supply/demand thing and inflation. I don’t see an end in sight short of some major economic crisis that creates a lot of unemployment and/or skyrocketing interest rates. (And keep in mind that we DID just have a major unemployment situation in 2020 due to COVID.) Even if either happens, there will be more buyers than sellers since people will simply decide not to move from their current home, which will create an even more out of balance supply/demand situation.

All this is pretty wild compared to 6-7 years ago. Back in 2014 I bought a rental house that had been on the market for more than 6 months. I was the only buyer and I offered much less than the list price and the seller was happy to accept it. I just sold that house for more than twice what I paid for it. Granted I did paint it, put new carpet in the bedrooms and replaced 3-4 windows over all those years.

So, if you are on the fence about entering the market, I say go for it. Sure, you will pay top dollar. You will probably have to bend over backwards to get a seller to even consider your offer. You might lose a few houses along the way. But what is the alternative? Keep renting? With all this inflation we are seeing, your rent is soon going to go up. And it will always keep going up. Meanwhile, the principal and interest part of your mortgage payment will always stay the same. All that can change in your payment is the property taxes and insurance amounts you pay.

Moving Day!

by John Rice

It’s finally here. Moving day. Well, almost. It is this weekend. The day I have been looking forward to for the past 5 months. I had no idea something I was so excited about could be so stressful. I spent a lot of time daydreaming about what it is going to be like living in my new home. Now I am daydreaming about what it will be like when my old house is empty. I haven’t moved in 9 years. I had no idea how crazy it is to try to put everything you own in boxes and take it somewhere else.

In case you are just now seeing this, I bought a small home on 15 acres about 20 minutes from my old house. We have spent the past several months renovating the inside. It is going to be a huge change for me and my family. One we are excited about. It has been done for about a week and I have been busy doing several small things like getting appliances in and working on some items from the home inspection. In all reality, I have really wasted a lot of time trying to fix things and leaving them in worse shape than I found them. LOL, this house has reminded me how bad I am at those type of things.

This experience has put me in the shoes of my clients. I’ve had to find a house, buy a house, get through a home inspection, close, pack, schedule movers, get utilities changed, prep my old house to sell and still be a realtor to my clients. This makes me even more empathetic to the stress my clients are going through when they move.

A pleasant surprise this morning

by John Rice

Like always, I woke up, made a cup of coffee and checked out the new listings. I saw what prices got reduced, then viewed the pending and sold listings. Pretty routine. Lately it takes about 30 seconds to go through the 15-25 new listings every morning.

Today I woke up to more new listings than I have seen in a while. Many of them were under $200k!

I am really hoping this is the beginning of a new trend. There has been speculation that a lot of sellers were holding off on listing there homes until COVID got under control and they felt okay about letting people in their homes. Today might have been the first day of that.

I am starting to hear from a lot of sellers that it might be a good time to sell their homes. Of course, it has been for a long time. However, when many sellers feel like prices have gotten crazy and decide to cash out, it could mean a shift in the market a little. While I think it will remain a Seller’s Market for quite a long time, I totally welcome a more balanced market. It is good for everybody.

Or it could just be that it is the first big spring day when all the sellers begin to put their homes on the market. Sellers usually need the first couple of warm weekends to spruce up their yards before listing.

We’ll see how the next few weeks pan out. All I know is that it got me excited to think about so many new listings hitting the market!!