Real Estate Feast

Two easy ways to value your house: right and wrong.

There are two easy ways to put a value on your house in South Florida.  There’s the wrong way:  use a site that purports to value your house with just a click.  And there’s the right way:  get a licensed Realtor to provide you with a “broker price opinion.” 

The automated sites generally do not do an accurate comparison within a short enough period of time. 

To be accurate, a price analysis has to compare four factors:  size, age, geographic proximity and date sold.

When I do a BPO, I compare homes within +/- 10% of size, +/- 10 years in age, within one mile and within 6 months of sale date.   For example, a house with 2400 square feet of living area, built in 1965, would be comparable only to houses between 2,160 and 2,640 square feet, built between 1955 and 1975, within one mile of the subject and sold in the last six months only.  The automated sites usually include sales that are outside those parameters and this creates unrealistic expectations.

My neighbor down the street is listing his house with me (jinx, I hope!).  For the last couple of months he’d come out of the house when I was walking my dog past and wave some more printouts at me.  Then I’d sit down at the computer, look up those sales and report back to him.  In every instance, the automated sites were comparing houses too different in size, age, proximity and sale date to be valid comparisons.

I not only look at houses that have sold, but also houses that are for sale to see what prices aren’t working.  (If it hasn’t sold, that price isn’t working, right?)

Then I vary my pricing recommendation for such factors as does the house have a pool, what is the lot size, updated or not, and any really unusual features such as a wood-fired brick oven.  (I’ve seen those here in Miami.)

Nobody wants to make a penny less than their house is worth.  And no realtor wants to sell it for that penny less either.  But I make it a policy to not accept listings that don’t have a chance of selling, unlike a lot of Realtors who take any listing and hope to wear their sellers down.  That strategy doesn’t work, because after house has been on the market for a year, even if the price has been coming down steadily, it’s looked at as a tired property.  Then in order to sell, the price has to really jump down ahead of the market by a very significant factor.  I’ve seen that happen time and again.

I turned down a listing that I thought should be priced at $995,000 and the lady wanted $1,300,000.  It’s still on the market six months later with another realtor for $1,295,000 and two of her neighbors have sold for $995,000.

If you’d like any information on how to price your house or any information about real estate in easy-living South Miami/High Pines, Coral Gables or anywhere else in South Florida you can reach me at 305-401-8058 or bishopric.r@ewm.com.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 10:26 am and is filed under Selling a Home in South Florida. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1. Riley Smith | Coconut Grove Real Estate said at November 14th, 2008 at 2:23 pm

   Robert,
   Great site, love the theme.
   Congratulations on your new blog!
   Riley Smith

2. SELECT SOUTH FLORIDA CITIES HOUSE SALES STATISTICS | Bob Bishopric said at November 18th, 2008 at 3:13 pm

   [...] for a general idea of things.)  For an accurate methodology on pricing your home, see my article here. These are the main variables people want to [...]

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