Given, further, that it's our own house and some bias could sneak in, we hauled in three of our trusted local colleagues for a group think and sanity check on our best efforts at market evaluation.
Their estimates landed pretty much on top of ours. Market value homed in on a range from something over $850,000 to a about $885. One had us over $900k for a while and one had us initially quite a bit lower, but came to the pack after a short discussion.
Two things. First, note that even five really good experienced agents, in a non-competitive environment, giving their best shots produced a range of almost $40,000. There is complexity, art and gut involved in the process as well as the system and science.
Second, market value is what you should expect to get once the dust has settled. List price is a tactical decision to help you get there.
Right now, we remain in a hot sellers' market. Some of what follows would be dramatically different if that were not the case.
A critical rule is "Don't price too high or you will be punished".
For whatever deep psychological reasons, buyers are resistant to offer lower prices on over-priced listings. They just go elsewhere. When they go elsewhere, the listing doesn't sell; when the listing doesn't sell, it gets stale; stale listings get forgotten...quickly. You don't want to be quickly forgotten. Don't overprice.
When this happens you move quickly from dreaming of insane bidding wars to price reductions and praying for an offer.
So that seemingly clever approach: "Let's try it at $xxx and if it doesn't go we can always reduce it later."?
Nice thought. Doesn't work. Don't do it. You typically end up with less money and more time taking 45 minutes to make the bed and trying to find where you hid your toothbrush and toaster before the last showing.
