Buying A Home today..Does Your realtor Show You Comparable Sales?

I was unsure whether to write this blog post or not initally...Then after some thought and talking with a few recent buyers who purchased homes with me I decided I should. When you find that house/townhome you want to make home; is your Realtor showing you what the comaprable properties sold for?

In this market; buyers are looking longer for a house. The choices availble to them is great and they want to be sure they are making the right descsion. All right reasons when searching for a home. One thing that eludes me is why a Realtor may tell them initally that the house is priced accordingly or X amount to high or they under priced the house. But, what about when they are prepared to make an offer on the house? Most of my buyers are taking 3 to 4 weeks to make a descsion on the home they want to put an offer in on. When they say it is on the short list of homes they are considering I let them know at this moment here is what the comparables in the area sold for and what adjustments you may need to make based on condition, location and features in the home.

Three to four weeks later that number could dramatically change. In a recent case; the house was priced right for the comaprables in the enightborhood. However; 3 weeks later with 2 foreclsoures on the market and 2 short sales the price now was too high. We looked at the foreclosures but the overall condition and the financing they wanted precluded us from considering those homes. But, we added in the cost to bring those homes up to the one they were cosndiering and we still came $15,000 too much for the hosue they wanted.

Now, we adjusted what we were going to offer based on this information. To make this short, after some negotiation we ended up makeing a fair deal on the house and closed. But as he put it to me a few days ago; "your hard work and not rushing me saved me over $15,000 in what I might have paid for this house". One of our jobs as a Realtor is to look out for our clients best interests.

He metnioned that to me because one of his neighbors recently bought one of the other homes we were intially considering. They paid more for the house because when they looked at the house it wss priced right and their Realtor never adjusted or ran a new market anaylsis on the neighborhod or property.

I do a revised market anaylsis on every one of my lsitigns every 30 days to see where we are at in comparison to other homes. If the market has changed we sit down and discuss pricing strategy accordingly. Most Realtors I talk with do the same thing. If we do it for our listigns why are we not doing it for our buyers?


Dave diCecco

Realtor/Broker

www.davedicecco.com