Whenever a person is going to do something major in their life, they will develop a plan or a strategy. This is a concept that should be applied when a homeowner wants to sell their home. This is an important event and one that should be well thought out and planned for. There are different home pricing strategies that have proven to be effective for many home sellers in Canada.
List of Top 7 House Pricing Strategies
- Being House Pricing Savvy Strategy
- Internet Strategy
- Playing with the Figures Strategy
- High Price Strategy
- Research Strategy
- Positioning Strategy
- Unique Pricing Strategy
1. Being Price Savvy
Knowing what others are selling their homes for in the area can be valuable information for several reasons.
- First, it can give some good insight as to what homes in the area are being listed for. Another important purpose is to use this pricing to your advantage.
It is common for people to play “follow the leader” in house pricing, which means that the majority of homeowners selling in an area will all stay within the same range.
Buyer Attraction
Those who want to become price-savvy will develop a strategy for determining the best price without it falling into the too high or too low range. When this is successfully accomplished then the pricing creates a lot of buyer attraction. When other buyers take note of the attention your house is getting many will be more inclined to make a better offer than what they otherwise may have done.
2. Internet Strategy
Both homebuyers and home sellers now make use of a lot of resources. One of these is the internet.
- When homebuyers are looking for listings, they will often use filters to narrow down their choices. One of these filters may be related to their price range.
Study the price ranges
Pricing just outside of the ranges that apply to your home could cause you to miss out on viewers seeing your property. Look carefully at what the price ranges are on some of these search sites. Determine which one you can fit into.
3. Playing with the Figures Strategy
It is a common practice when retailers are pricing products to go with the 99cent theory.
- Instead of round off the price, they will bring it to 99 cents.
A similar strategy can be applied to setting the sale price for the house. Except ending the figure in “999” is not a good practice.
A better approach
A better approach is simply to set a figure that ends in zero. For example instead of a house being listed at $299,900 an easier figure to grab the attention would be $300,000.
4. The High Price Strategy
There may be some strategies that are very common but would be better avoided. One of these is the high price tactic.
- Sellers will inflate the selling price with the intention of taking a lower asking price.
Beware of the risks
This is something a real estate agent may use as a tactic, although some private home sellers may adopt this tactic. Which comes with a lot of risks. For one it is not going to attract the right buyers. Which will delay the sale of the property.
5. Doing Your Research Strategy
Another strategy that may be more old school compared to the others is to just do your homework. This can mean focus on just one area of research. Or a better approach is to combine a series of efforts. Some of the individual research strategies are:
- Doing comparable research
- Checking out homes on the market that are not setting
- Invest in a comparative market analysis
- Get an Appraisal
Each one of these as stand-alone research will be beneficial. Combining several of them may give a much more detailed outlook as to what would be the best price. At the same time, there is no need to spend money if the results of the findings are going to be the same. So choose wisely when it comes to paid research.
Additional Research
This can be included in the research strategy depending on how much work you want to put into this. Looking at what is trending is going to be of interest. Then looking at what features your home has and promoting these to fall in with the trends will help you stay on par with what is considered to be fair market pricing.
6. Positioning Strategy
This strategy focuses on making the property price stand out among all the other listings. One of the ways to grab the attention is with a lower listing price. This is a strategy that has to be done with extreme caution.
- Underpricing by too much is going to raise some red flags on behalf of potential buyers.
The Right Market
It may set the property up for a quick sale but what was expected to be gained financially from the sale will be lower. If this strategy is going to be implemented, then it should be done in a buyer’s market. In a seller’s market, the sale prices are often escalated because of the buyer demand.
7. Unique Pricing Strategy
Efforts should be made to make your house stand out among the listings. At the same time, this has to be done for the right reasons.
- There is a unique pricing strategy that can be used but only if there is something about the home that warrants this.
For example, there may be features about the house that stand out from the other homes for sale in the neighborhood. For example, maybe your home backs out onto a park or forest where the other homes listed don’t.
No competition
If your home has features about it that none of the other houses can compete with, then this sets you up for being able to implement a unique pricing strategy.
Choosing the Right Strategy
A strategy that you are not going to have any choice with is to adopt the strategy that you need to choose the right one. Which means you are going to have to familiarize yourself as to what are the common strategies. Then from this point choose the one that you feel is going to work the best for you.
