Selling Your Home? Does Your Realtor Know The Market Area

I wrote a blog on this a few days ago. At that time I was more concnerned about Realtors who go out of their market area to sell homes. In essence; if you are not listing and selling in an area you do not know the area; you are not serving the best interests of your clients.

However; what about the friend of ours or relative we have in the business....You want to sell your home and feel obliged to list the home with them. You know they really do not know the area that well. But, it does not really matter they are only listing my home for sale. Well it may make a difference.

I had a few days ago a client looking for a home in an area and neighborhood I was very familiar with. I had sold a couple homes in there recently. The day we are going to look at a few homes in the neighborhood I checked the system and found a new listing come on the market. My eyes almost popped out of my head when I looked at the asking price. Found out it was not a error and advised my client to go and look at the house immediately. Needless to say 2 hours later we offered and had immediately accepted a full price offer on the home. Why? becasue the home was priced 28% LESS than everything else in the neighborhood that was comparable in year and style.

Doing a little research and talking with the listing agent after the offer had been accepted; she informed me that the sellers were her cousins and she listed the home for them out of a courtsey and really did not knwo that part of Charlotte at all. In fact, she had confided afterwards that she had three other calls for that property and they wanted to put an offer in. I told her the reason whay her home was getting so much activity in a short time. She said, I did not know.....

If your agent who is going to sell your home for you is not familiar with the area it could cost you money and time. Just as this agent under priced the house for the market; she could have easily gone in the opposite direction and over priced the home. Then the house would get no activity and not sell.

Dave diCecco
Realtor/Broker
www.davedicecco.com