Jay Walden

As indicated in some of the other replies, we are typically seeing homes selling 2-4% below list price. But wait - that statistic is usually based off the List Price at the time it went under contract and that could have been after a price reduction. What typically is not shown or reported on is the comparison of Sales Price to ORIGINAL List Price. That difference could be as much as 10-15% for homes that were not priced well from the start. Pretty much every time I have run the numbers, what see is that homes that are priced right from the start (meaning there was no price reduction before going under contract), sell for more and in a much shorter period of time. In an analysis I did for a customer yesterday in a Chapel Hill neighborhood, homes that had a price reduction sold for 8% less and were on the market for an average of 7 months vs 2 months for those that had no price reduction. The bottom line is that if you price too high, not only will you not get the price you would have gotten if priced right from the start, you will get less - and be on the market 2-5 times as long!

A WORD OF CAUTION - Many sellers inflate their price a little to leave room for negotiating. Be very careful when doing this. If you bump your price above the bracket that your target buyers are looking in, they will never even see it. I had a seller once that insisted that we list his home at $355k. When he finally agreed to adjust the price to $350k, the online traffic tripled and we had an Offer in 8 days. His buyer pool was only looking up to $350k and never saw it.

Whether you are a buyer or seller, a strong agent can help guide you through the process and do the analysis so you can have a well thought out pricing strategy and game plan.

You can also use the link below to request a customized, no-obligation Market Snapshot report that is based on live MLS data for the area you define. It will show both active and sold listings, with lots if data, including inventory, sales, and charts on List Price vs Sales Price. I'd be glad to help any way I can as well. - Tue May 1, 2012