Yesterday, I called an agent who has a home listed in the Echo Lake area of Shoreline, WA. The home was listed for $249,950. It encompasses 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and roughly 2,000 sq ft with a two car attached garage. It is an older home, built in 1959, and it needs updating. However, it is in livable condition. Most comparable homes in the area go for around $350,000 to $400,000 range. It was a bold move by the seller to list it at a price that is such a steal. Sure enough, the agent confessed to me that they looked at a whopping 29 offers the day before.
The seller obviously was not willing to have his home sit on the market for six months, so he took the aggressive route. The ecstatic listing agent revealed that the winning buyers had waived basically all their contingencies, and were willing to pay up to $340,000 maximum. Luckily for them, the next best offer was only willing to bid up to $310,000. Therefore, the top buyers got away with buying the property for a mere $311,000. Most other competing offers were at list price and offered no real competition. Even though the winning bidder did not get the property at $250,000, $311,000 is still a slight bargain. Now let's hope that the home is structurally sound, since the buyer did waive his opportunity to inspect the property.So is pricing your home drastically below market a good strategy? Well, the listing agent did admit that the offers were overwhelming, and that if he had to do it again, he might want to start the bid slightly higher, to eliminate the non-serious bidders.
I would suggest $300,000 would be a good start.
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