Looking at the prospect of selling your St. Cloud home from a purely business perspective, it has some odd sales attributes. Pricing is definitely one of them.

Consider how manufacturers arrive at a selling price for the things they make. Before even beginning to lay out their production line, the target sales price for their product is usually pretty well pegged. First, the cost of production is taken into account, determined by the quality of the raw materials, the amount of labor that will be needed, the outlay for equipment, rent, etc. (etc.=all the overhead costs of running the business).

The dollars are tallied, a target profit margin selected, and that’s it—so long as the manufacturer judges that selling price will be competitive. Later, the buying public (the “market”) will determine if the sales price should be adjusted, up or down.

Selling your St. Cloud home, on the other hand, weighs in with only one of those factors: the one about being competitive. If a home costs $500,000 to build—but similar homes are priced (and selling) for $900,000—the original cost of construction won’t factor into the asking price. If substantially similar homes are currently listed at $400,000, the same applies—it’s highly unlikely that the property will bring in anything close to that $500,000.

So it might seem that determining the asking price for a home puts the homeowner in a terribly passive—even weak—position compared with other business propositions. In one sense, that’s true. But in the vast majority of cases, the competitive asking prices are eminently reasonable. They’ve been arrived at by negotiation—and the other neighborhood sellers are seldom prone to underestimating the value of their own listed properties. If one seller has been overly accommodating, that “comp” will stand out like a sore thumb. Oddball comps never have undue influence on subsequent sales.

One of the most important elements of a successful sale is developing an on-target asking price from the get-go. When it’s time to explore how your own property stacks up, I hope you’ll give me a call!

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