What a home is worth and what it sells for can be two completely different things. Right now, we’re seeing a market with a really high demand for homes and a very low inventory. The inventory is down by almost 30%, and the pending sales are up close to 20%. Homes are selling as fast as they are being listed.
An appraiser is going to look at past sales data to come up with your home’s worth. They’ll take info from past sales and give you a market value. There is a disconnect between what an appraiser does and what an agent does, however. While an appraiser uses past sales data on its own, an agent like myself looks at everything, including inventory and pending sales data, to figure out how to market the property in order to get the highest possible offer.
“What a home is worth and what it sells for can be two different things.”
Let me tell you a short but exciting story about how having different opinions of a home’s value can help you. I recently took a listing in north Irvine. The home was probably worth between $510,000 and $515,000 as far as the appraiser was concerned. However, we knew that we could price a little aggressively in this market, so we decided to list it for $520,000.
The end result was that we had more than 250 people come to the open house, we received nine offers, and ended up selling the home within three days for $550,000. Is the home worth that much? To this buyer in this market, it sure was.
The message out there for all you homeowners considering selling is that you need to talk to an agent to understand not only what your home is worth now, but what it could sell for based on all of the external factors.
If you have any questions for us or you’re interested in buying or selling a home in Orange County, don’t hesitate to give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you.
