Costly Seller Pricing Mistakes

Here are some predictable mistakes home sellers make when pricing their home:

1. Sellers often price their home
based on "need" rather than the
market.

2. Sellers use the ‘wrong’ properties
for comparison when pricing.

3. Sellers build in a ‘negotiating
cushion’ and then have no one
with which to negotiate.

4. Sellers take advice from ‘well
meaning’ but uninformed parties.

5. Sellers allow positive emotions
about their property to influence
their pricing decisions.

Pricing a home correctly is the most important service I offer my clients. Properties that actually sell average selling for 95% of their list price. If your home is priced more than 5% above what it should sell for, it will probably never sell. Listing the home for too high a price and then reducing the price slower than the market is called 'chasing the market.' We are seeing a lot of that in this declining market.

Charleston Single Family Home Statistics

Below are the stats for sales of single family homes for different areas of Charleston. The first line for each area is for the period 1/1/07-8/6/07 and the second line is for the period 1/1/08-8/6/08 with the percentage change from the first line. Notice that these are average sales prices. I usually use median sales prices, but since I'm looking at a comparison from year to year, average sales price should show about the same percentage change. I was using the 'Sales by Area' chart on the MLS and that chart only shows average sales price.


Area # of sales AVG Sales Price

West Ashley 631 $279k
433 -31.4% $267k -4.3%

James Island 364 $344,845
216 -40.7% $310,306 -10%

Folly Beach 31 $796,833
16 -48.4% $861,148 +8.1%

Johns Island 112 $329,102
76 -32.1% $335,354 +1%

N. Charleston 504 $159k
375 -25.6% $166k +4.4%

Mt. Pleasant 784 $501k
646 -17.6% $493k -1.6%

Peninsula 206 $883k
120 -41.7% $805k -8.8%

Summerville/Ladson 1502 $226k
956 -36.4% $214k -5.3%

Hanahan/G. Creek 1186 $190k
865 -27.1% $179k -5.8%

Daniel Island 90 $831,286
68 -24.4% $824,780 -1%

Cainhoy 90 $450,025
49 -45.6% $345,974 -23.1%

Colleton 126 $147,924
69 -45.2% $184,687 +24.9%

Japan's Lost Decade

Lots of great articles on the net about Japan's Lost Decade. We seem to be following in Japan's footsteps from the 1990's. They had a really tough go of it with liquidity problems and declining real estate values and credit crunches. Hopefully, we have learned some lessons and our problems won't last as long. You can use this link or just google Japan's Lost Decade. http://biz.yahoo.com:80/investopedia/080722/3602.html?.v=1

Market Improving

Below is a list of larger cities where Units Sold have gone up for at least three consecutive months. Happily, there are 42 cities across America!

Anchorage, AK
Austin, TX
Bakersfield, CA
Bay Area, CA
Boston, MA
Chicago, IL
Cincinnati, OH
Corona, CA
Fairfax, VA
Fresno, CA
Galveston, TX
Georgetown, TX
Gillette, WY
Greenville, NSC
Jackson, TN
Las Vegas, NV
Long Island, NY
Manassas, VA
Milwaukee, WI
Modesto, CA
Monmouth, NJ
Montgomery County, MD
Moreno Valley, CA
Nashville, TN
Noblesville, IN
Orlando, FL
Philadelphia, PA
Phoenix, AZ
Pittsburgh, PA
Portland, OR
Prescott, AZ
Rhode Island, RI
Rochester, MN
Roseville, CA
Sacramento, CA
San Bernardino, CA
Stockton, CA
Tampa, FL
Virginia, VA
Visalia, CA
West Chester, PA
Westchester, NY