Ok, here is a questions for you agents out there…how do you price your listings.

I personally think, no matter what the comps are, you have 5 price points:

1. $519,950
2. $529,950
3. $549,950
4. $579,950
5. $599,950

The first digit (5) doesn't mean anything, it is the $10K range that I'm focusing on.

I say this because most the home searchers out there do not set their max prices at $509,950…they usually set them at the prices above, with $549,950 and $599,950 being the most popular.

It's one of my pet peeves to see houses priced at $465,700…WHY? because of the comps? that house should be listed at $479,950 because you are going to get the same number of lookers at that higher price. I'm not saying grossly overprice homes, but you represent your sellers, you better get them more mullah.

Also, the last 3 digits, should always be 950…not 888, not 500, not 123.

Before you respond, I know what you are going to say…

Because of the advent of the internet, the traditional pricing models do not reflect the best way to price a home in today's market. This is because the internet doesn't know what you really want. So take $499,950…if someone is searching for homes with a minimum price of $500K, they will not see the home for $499,950, even though the potential buyers will probably be interested in seeing a home that is only $50 less then their minumum. The same ideas apply to square feet. NEVER SEARCH BY SQFT. there are so many homes on the market with 1,298 sqft, or 1,189 sqft. If you do a search for homes with at least 1,300, you will not see the smaller home, even though the lack of 2 sqft will not make any difference.

so why not just make home searches that make a buffer and include homes that are within a margin of the min and max price? Well if we did that the entire internet would fall apart…basically.

So how do you price your listings? 

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