PRICING HOMES: How to Get The Right Price

Summary

How do you price a home right?

Do a good CMA. Get started with this FREE CMA Cheat Sheet. Click here to download. Don’t trust Zestimates on Zillow because they’re inaccurate.

But what do you do when there are no good comps?

1) Ask an experienced top listing agent who has sold a lot of homes in that neighborhood to help you.

2) Get help from a knowledgeable appraiser.
– Ask your lender to connect you to an appraiser.
– Call the appraiser. Explain your situation.
– Send a “thank you” note and gift to both lender and appraiser.

It’s so important to get the best information to get a property priced right. This is your responsibility to your seller. If you want to get more in-depth training on how to accurately price properties so you get all your listings sold, click here to check out our CMA Mastery Course.

Full Transcript

Hi, there. It’s Kevin Ward, the founder of YesMasters Real Estate Success Training, helping you get more YES and more successes in your business and in your life. 

In this video I want to talk about how to get the right price on a house. One of the most common questions I get from real estate agents is, “How do I price this house? I can’t find good comps. I don’t know how to get the right price. How do I do that?” So in this video I’m going to talk about one, how do you get the right price, a little bit, I’m going to overview that. But the most important thing I’m going to handle on this video is, what do you do when you can’t find good comps? How do you deal with that? So, overall, how do you get the right price?

Don’t Trust Zestimates

Now, first in terms of how to get the right price is don’t trust something like a Zestimate on Zillow. Do not trust Zillow when it comes to how much a house is worth. And it’s funny because if you’re… And some of you may be watching this, if you’re not a real estate agent, maybe you’re a homeowner and you’re going like, “What’s wrong with Zestimates? I mean, Zillow is a credible company.” And they are a credible company, but Zestimates are inaccurate. They are notoriously inaccurate. 

In fact, in their own description, Zillow’s disclaimer about their Zestimates, They’ll tell you they’re very often 5 to 10% or more off. In fact, a funny story, Spencer Rascoff, who is the CEO of Zillow, sold his home in Seattle, Washington. The Zestimate was 1,750,000, and it sold for just a little bit over a million dollars. So the Zestimate was off by over 40%. That is not that unusual. So don’t trust a Zestimate If you want to know what a house is actually worth.

Do a Good CMA

So if you’re a real estate agent and you want to know how to get the right price, number one, learn how to do a good CMA. I’m amazed at how many real estate agents are not trained these days on how to actually do a good CMA. I actually have a course on how to do a CMA. And in this video, if you’ll click down the link in the description, I will give you a free CMA cheat sheet that you can download that will help you get started on that. But now I want to focus on what do you do when you can’t find good comps? What do I do? 

How to Get the Right Price Without Comps

So there’s a couple of steps. 

One, the easiest thing to do is ask an experienced top listing agent in your office or maybe your broker to help you. Somebody who’s sold a lot of homes in that specific neighborhood where you’re trying to do the comps and trying to comp out a house, get somebody that has done a lot in that neighborhood and really knows the values and knows the prices and can help point you where to go.

Now that’s hit and miss because you may or may not be in an office where you have a lot of top producing agents that you can find a top agent that really knows that specific neighborhood. So if that doesn’t work, here’s something that will always work for you. How to get the right price when there’s not good comps. 

Number one. There’s three steps, and here’s the short answer. Find a knowledgeable appraiser who can help you. And there’s three steps to do that. 

Number one, call your lender. Call your lender. Most real estate agents don’t have an appraiser because you don’t use the appraiser. The appraiser worked for the bank. So most agents don’t really know appraisers, but they all know lenders. You know lenders because the lenders come to you because they want business from you.

So you call your best lender, and if you don’t have a great lender, if you’re watching this and you’re brand new, go to your broker, go to the top agents in your office and say, “Who’s the best lender that you’ve worked with? Who’s your best loan officer?” And then you’re going to get your best lender and you’re going to call them on the phone and say, “Hey, I’m getting ready to go list a property in XYZ community and I can’t find the comps. I need some help. Who’s the best appraiser that you know that I could ask for some help with?” And they’re going to tell you. They may give you one appraiser, they may give you two or three. Two or three is better, but at least one. They’re going to give you that appraiser’s name and number.

You’re going to contact that appraiser. Number two, call the appraiser and say, “Hi Mr. or Ms. appraiser, Bill Lender gave me your name and said you were the best. And I have a huge dilemma and need a huge favor. I’m getting ready to go list this property in XYZ community, and I’m having a hard time finding some comps and wanted to see how you had handled this.” And then you explain the situation. There’s no comps in the neighborhood, nothing is sold, or this property that you’re going to list is different in some way. It’s got a four car garage and all the other ones have two or three car garages. Or yours is on a much larger lot. Or all the other houses have a pool and yours doesn’t. Or yours has a pool and all the other ones don’t. How would you compensate for that? How would you adjust that for that? And ask the appraiser, tell them what the problem is, and ask for their help.

And 90% of the time they will be delighted to help you and they’ll give you information, answer your questions. They’ll tell you how to make an adjustment in that particular scenario and so forth. So that’s number two. So number one, call your lender, ask who the best appraiser is they know. Number two, call the appraiser, say, “My lender said you’re the best. I need your help. I have a huge dilemma. I need a huge favor,” and then explain the situation and get their help. 

And then step number three is send a huge thank you note and a gift to both your lender and to the appraiser. Handwritten thank you note. “Thank you so much for your help. Thank you so much for referring Bill to me, he was awesome. Thank you so much, Bill, for your help on how to handle that, pricing on that property.” And then send it a $20 Starbucks card or something like that is a great gift just to let them know how valued they are and appreciated they are.

And the amazing thing is that when you make somebody feel appreciated, you’re not doing an appraisal. You’re not asking them to do an appraisal for you. You’ve just asked them for some help. And when you show them appreciation, this is probably not the last time you’re going to need an appraiser’s help and insights on how to get the right price on a property. 

It’s so important that you price properties right, that you want to make sure you don’t shortcut it, you don’t make assumptions, and you don’t take a wild guess. You owe it to your sellers to make sure that you have the best information and the right price, because when a property is priced wrong, it’s going to hurt the sellers. So always make sure you get the right price and get the help that you need to make that happen.

So I hope this video has been helpful for you. If it has, make sure you give it a thumbs up. Any comments or questions you have, post them down below. If you’re new here and you like good real estate training, make sure that you subscribe to the channel. Thanks, and I will see you on the next video.