Home Selling Advice - High Listing Prices

High Listing Price

You have decided to sell you home so you arrange to interview several Realtors. During the interview each of the Realtors will have prepared a CMA or Comparative Market Analysis that looks at local home sales and estimates a market value for your home.

Each Realtor comes up with a value, some of which are lower than you expected, but they do have recent home sales data to backup their figures. One of the Realtors comes up with a value which is more than you expected so you decide to go with them, after all if they think they can get this amount then it must be worth it. But wait is it really that easy?

This is a well know tactic called buying a listing. Basically the Realtor gives you a number greater than the market value knowing full well that they can never get this price. The idea is that once they capture your listing they can get you to lower the listing price at a later date.

So how can you avoid this? The only real way to avoid this is to get the Realtor to back up their claim with a list of recently sold comparable homes. These comparable homes should be a similar size to your home and be the same type of home in the same general area.