Don’t Undersell Your Home

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Don’t Undersell Your Home in Today’s Market

There are many ways to determine the value of a home and how it is executed is essential to being accurate.  I recently did a comparative market analysis (CMA) for a family in Basking Ridge, so let’s use this for the example.  For this particular home, I was called in for a second opinion and my price was $170,000 higher than the other realtor’s price.  Before I explain why, let’s go through the process I used to determine the price for this house.

1. Once I gather all the data of the subject property, I pull all active, pending and sold listings for the entire town that are similar in lot size, style and square footage.  When dealing with larger towns, some neighborhoods are more desirable than others which is important to me as this could positively or negatively affect the value of the subject property.
2. Second, I gather all the active, pending, and sold homes in the immediate neighborhood to determine the high, low and median price range to further pinpoint the accuracy of where this specific home stands in relationship to its locality.  This is also helpful for home owners who can’t decide between adding an addition and updating their home versus selling and buying a larger, already updated home with a more desirable location.  If the subject property, before adding the addition and updating, is already in the higher price range of the neighborhood, then adding on and updating this home may price the owner out of the neighborhood leaving him/her with a loss of time and money.
3. Third, I narrow the neighborhood inventory down to homes that closely match the subject property by style, updates, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, lot size and square footage.  Next I drive by all of these homes to see if there is anything that would negatively or positively affect their values such as: swamp land, streams, highways in the backyard, power lines or substations, neighboring properties that are not well kept, well-manicured landscaping, in-ground pools, nice curb appeal, level and open lots, prime location, positive amenities, and agreeable neighboring properties.
4. Once this is complete, I make adjustments up or down on each comparable property and present my findings to the owners.

Using this detailed process and multistep system to determine the home’s true value, we have included all aspects that a buyer would consider when making an offer at a fair sale price which then allows us to price the home scrupulously.  Now the reason the other realtor’s market analysis was so far off was because he/she only did step one; he/she pulled all similar size homes with the same number of bedrooms in the entire zip code.  It was a blended average of split levels, bi-level, ranches and colonials which is this case did not encircle all the ideal attributes for this subject home and its specific neighborhood.  At Feel @Home Realty, our process to determine the right price for your home ensures your home will not be under sold.

At Feel @Home Realty, your family comes first.