Risks on pricing your home - start high and miss the market: Mat Steinwede

Nicola TrotmanDecember 7, 2020

The first offer you receive on your home is generally the best offer and the biggest mistake sellers make is turning down this offer because it’s early days, says prominent New South Wales Central Coast agent Mat Steinwede. 

Steinwede says buyers and sellers start at opposite ends of the interest wave; a buyer starts logically and finishes emotionally, whereas a seller generally starts emotionally and finishes logically.

“When they [a buyer] see a home come on the market, they haven’t been there, they haven’t lived there, but what they do is compare it straight away logically to what else is on the market and pull up the data on anything that has recently sold. They look at it very clinically.

“If an owner is thinking of selling their house, they have to do the same and compare it clinically, forget it’s your house for a moment,” says Steinwede in a conversation with Kevin Turner of Real Estate Talk.

Steinwede says that once a buyer becomes interested in a home, that’s when price is generally built but sellers will sometimes almost miss the market because they start their price high.

“The logical part of the process doesn’t connect and then they sit on the market and end up dropping their price most of the time.

“There’s a saying in real estate: your first offers are the best offers, even though the owner might see it as low to the market place or the buyer, it might actually be the right offer or the best offer because the buyer has been looking for a while,” says Steinwede.

Steinwede’s advice is to take your time when pricing your home, research the market and don’t listen to your friends or neighbours.

“When you do find a buyer and if it’s in those early stages the biggest mistake owners make is saying it’s early days and letting the buyer go.

“Sit with your agent and know a few things; how long has the buyer been looking for? How much do they have to spend? What are their reasons for buying the home?

“If those three things are all in your favour, chances are that’s going to be the strongest buyer you’re going to find along the whole process,” says Steinwede.

Even though the price may be less than what you want, Steinwede says not to disregard it but to sit down with your agent and work through the reasons why the buyer is interested in the home.

Nicola Trotman

With a penchant for the written word, Nicola has built a career doing just this – now Creative Director at thriving Melbourne-based PR agency, Greenpoint Media.

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