RETECHNOLOGY PREMIUM MARKETPLACE RELATED PRODUCTS | WEBINARS | SPECIAL OFFERS
You are viewing our site as an Agent, Switch Your View:
Agent | Broker Reset Filters to Default Back to ListPricing It Right: How Agents Can Show Value to Home Sellers Through CMAs
December 11 2023
The numbers don't lie: Sellers who attempted to unload their house without an agent in 2023 left behind about $95,000 in potential profit. Those are the numbers from the most recent National Association of REALTORS® Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, which indicated that 89% of survey-takers used an agent to help list their home.
What exactly are agents doing for sellers that help them net that extra cash at closing? Respondents said that their agent was instrumental in helping them with one critical piece of the puzzle: Choosing the right list price.
Why the Right Price Matters
It's not news to agents, but it might be news to sellers: Homes that are on the market for longer are much more likely to undergo a price reduction at some point. The longer the home is on the market, the more the reduction is likely to be.
According to NAR, sellers who sold their house in 17 or more weeks got, on average, 92% of the list price. On the flip side, 42% of sellers who sold their house in less than a week got more than their asking price. Nearly half of all sellers (43%) with homes on the market for three to four weeks reduced their asking price. But most sellers (55%) said their home was on the market for less than two weeks.
Finding a price that will entice multiple offers in the first few days the home is listed seems to be the sweet spot.
How FSBOs Are Finding Their Sales Price
The sellers who decide not to use an agent are also pricing their home for sale. But how do they land on a sales price without an agent?
Most FSBO sellers (54%) are using some form of a comparative market analysis, or CMA. Other tools used include appraisals (28%), online home valuations (19%), or simply pricing the home according to the amount of money the seller hoped to make from the sale.
The Value of a Quality CMA
While the tools to create your own CMA are available online (and FSBO sellers are using them), it's clear that those sellers don't truly understand how to select comps, how to compare the homes, and how to find the sweet spot of the sales price.
With access to the RPR Property Database and other robust resources for CMAs, the work agents do on behalf of their clients is clearly head-and-shoulders above (or $95,000 above) the work that those clients would be able to do on their own.
Providing a quality CMA to your listing prospects is just another step in the process for you, but for your clients, it could be the item that helps them decide which agent to use. Make sure you're up to speed with the latest software options for CMAs, that you know how to explain them to your listing clients, and that you're offering them to current homeowners as part of their financial planning.