Selling a home in the Long Beach Island real estate market involves several crucial steps, the most important of which is price. Regardless of the amount of staging or marketing, if a home is overpriced it simply will not sell. It is best to review the comparable sales and take an objective approach to the pros and cons for a specific house. The market will dictate the value of homes on Long Beach Island and by reviewing the comparable sales we can give fairly specific ranges for a home’s true worth.
There are a few simple steps you can take to ensure that you have set the right listing price for your Long Beach Island home.
Select the right agent for the job
Review the comparable sales-both active and sold listings
Be objective about your home in relation to comparable sales
Have a plan if the house is sitting on the market
A listing agent should have a clear understanding of the current market and be able to tell you what your house is worth without having to consult the MLS. Regardless if it is a seller or buyer market, a listing agent should have this basic information on the tip of their tongue!
Recently sold homes, no more than 3-6 months old, will be useful in establishing the baseline price for a house. The current active inventory of homes should also be consulted as these homes are the direct indication of current market pricing. Once a baseline has been established, the unique characteristics of your home can be evaluated to come up with the right listing price for your Long Beach Island Home.
. A well thought out and proven plan should be in place to market the home for sale. Equally important is gaging the reaction to the home from the LBI real estate market. This is where feedback comes into play. If the house is listed and marketed correctly and no offers have been made after a period of time, a plan should be in place to adjust the strategy.
An online home valuation is often touted as being a great way to easily find out what your home may be worth in a real estate market. The most common and well-known of these online home valuations is Zillow’s “Zestimate”. While Zestimates and other similar valuation tools may come close to the value of a home in a tract development, there are several reasons online home valuations in the LBI real estate market are largely ineffective.
The difficulty online valuation tools have in the LBI real estate market largely stems from locations and the wide different in prices between them. It is very possible to have a 2,000 sq. foot Cape Cod built in 1950 three houses off the beach and a 2,000 sq. foot new construction home in the exact same location see a nearly identical valuation even though the new construction will have more modern amenities and a far better. In furtherance of this scenario, we often see a new construction located third off the beach and a new construction mid block on the Bayside see a nearly identical valuation even though in reality, there could be as much is a 20% to 30% difference in the true market value of these homes. The only way to properly determine the true market value of the whole is to examine its unique characteristics and compare them to other recent sales. Utilizing generic tax record information simply does not paint an accurate picture of the true value of a home.
