Making a successful offer
Some buyers might have a price in mind when buying a home in Charleston while others might base their offer on what other homes are selling for. But in order to make a successful offer, buyers have to understand that sellers will have access to all of the same available information on comparable sales that they will have so bottom line, to make a successful offer, that offer has to be realistic.
Every month in the Charleston market report, one of the statistics that is tracked is sold price to list price expressed as a percentage. It's available for all homes for sale and by the 3 price ranges, lower priced homes selling for less than $300k, mid priced homes selling between $300k and $600k and luxury homes selling for more than $600k.
Now we've all heard that in some places around the country, homes are supposedly selling at big discounts to list price and rumors include discounts of 15, 20 or even 50 percent off. Now I don't know about those 50 percent off discounts but there have been some discounts of 15 and 20 percent off here in the Charleston real estate market. You see, with an average of all homes selling for almost 94 percent of list price, that's an average. Some homes have sold for full price (and in a few cases, more than list price). Some have sold for a little less than list price and some for much less than list price because 94 percent is just an average.
You have to analyze each home on an individual basis and to give you just a couple of examples, a home that has just come on the market is probably not very likely to sell at a big discount to list basically because the seller still believes in their offering price. On the other hand, a home that has sat on the market for quite a while with few to no price adjustments might very well be available at a significant discount to list. But even then, there is no guarantee because I noticed a home that was on the market for almost a year listed for sale at $300,000 with no price reductions that recently sold for $290,000 which is only 3.33 percent below list price.
So there are no hard and fast rules but suffice it to say, the best way to make a successful offer is to be realistic and base your offer on comps, not assumptions or hearsay. And remember, real estate is local so it really doesn't matter what homes in Florida, for example, are selling for.
And in general, just as you might expect, the more expensive the home, the higher the discount on average.