4 common home pricing adages to ignore

It can be difficult to price your home. While you’re likely to get a lot of well-meaning advice, here are four commonly shared pricing adages you should ignore.

1. A better offer will always come along
When looking at an offer from a potential buyer, it’s normal to wonder if someone else would be willing to pay more for the house. While it’s possible, it’s not a certainty. In contrast, the offer you’re looking at is real. Unless it’s unfair, it’s better to accept it than to hold out for a higher bid that may never come.

2. A quick offer means the price is too low
It’s likely that your agent put a lot of time and energy into researching the market in order to advise you on pricing. Getting a quick offer doesn’t mean the home was underpriced. Plus, markets usually self-correct when a property is priced too low, which means that if you truly underpriced your home, you’ll likely get many competing and increasingly high bids.

3. You should give yourself room to negotiate
Pricing your home above market value so you have room to negotiate may seem like a good idea. However, most buyers won’t entertain making an offer on a property that’s clearly overpriced. You may ultimately have to drop the amount more than once, which is likely to harm your position for negotiating.

4. You can roll the renovation costs into the price
Sellers sometimes think that renovating a home before putting it on the market will pay for itself. The truth is, flashy kitchen and bathroom remodel will likely have a limited return on investment and the amount isn’t always easy to recoup in the price of the home.

Selling a house is a difficult process. Make it easier by not following bad advice.