from Scripps Howard News Service When you get ready to sell your house, you generally settle on a price and that's that. But there's another way to do it that one real estate company is offering nationally--setting a range of prices instead of a single number.
This probably will sound goofy to you at first, notes a Scripps Howard News Service real-estate columnist, but according to its backers it has a couple of advantages--it brings in more potential buyers, and it prevents the kind of hurt feelings that can be a quick deal-killer.
The program, offered by Prudential real-estate offices, is called Value Range Marketing. If the seller is interested, Prudential agents come up with a price range that encompasses the price the seller hopes to get, the likely market value of the house and the price that buyers might offer to pay.
The range might be something like $149,000 to $169,000.
One advantage of the range, according to Joe Farry, vice president of Prudential Manor Homes in Albany, New York, is that the range brings in buyers who otherwise would not look at your house.
Suppose a buyer tells the real-estate agent, "My top price is $155,000." If your house were priced at $169,000, it wouldn't even get considered. But with the value range, the potential buyer may come and look.
And do buyers go higher than their limit?
"All the time," Farry says. They fall in love with a house and that gives it more value in their eyes.
Another advantage to a price range is that it keeps sellers in the game who otherwise might drop out in a huff instead of making a counteroffer to a buyer who comes in with a low-ball offer, according to Nancy Creech, marketing director for Prudential Carolinas Realty in Raleigh, North Carolina.
"It takes the hurt feelings out of the process," Creech said. "People can be so sensitive... 'Well, my house is worth more than that.'"
"It kind of takes the emotion out of making an offer," she adds. "It opens up that negotiation."
Prudential has been offering the price range as an alternative for about three years and it's much more popular in some places than others. Farry says between 50 percent and 60 percent of his customers use it, but for Creech it's less than 25 percent.
The idea, Farry said, came from Australia, where it has been popular for years.
