What the average price should tell you when selling your home in Charleston
Some homes sell. Others don't.
And if you are listing your home for sale in Charleston, of course, you want to be one of the people who sells their home and moves on instead of having the listing expire or withdrawing it and re listing it again with the same or another Charleston real estate agent.
And as I've said for at least a hundred times, pricing your home for sale is important but what is even more important is that when there is some interest by a buyer in your home, you have to be flexible when negotiating.
Here's why.
A look at the chart shows you that the average selling price is lower than the average price for homes that are currently available for sale and for homes that have come on the market in the current month (in this case, July 2010). And the average selling price is also lower than homes that have expired unsold and homes that have been withdrawn from sale.
And very interestingly, homes that are under contract (contingent and pending) that haven't closed yet have very similar sales prices to homes that have sold.
My buyers just closed on a home Friday and the sellers had to come down in price quite a bit in order to get the contract accepted. In fact, I was surprised how motivated to sell and how flexible they were because it was priced very well from the start. And proof of that is that the home appraised for more than 7 percent over the sales price.
But the sellers knew that they had an interested buyer and they wanted to sell so they made sure that they got an agreement. They didn't want the buyers looking at other available homes leaving their home still on the market and waiting for another buyer to materialize.
And at higher price points, there is simply a lot more competition for fewer buyers, or in other words, it would be an understatement to say that a lot of inventory is available.
Chart courtesy of the Charleston MLS, information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.