Quote:
Originally Posted by kstew43
ZILLOW or TRULIA can give you a very close idea, without the sales pitch from a Realtor
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While the cited websites are useful tools for obtaining ballpark guesstimates they are not suitable for actually pricing a home to be marketed. Many times their data on a particular property is incorrect and/or incomplete. I use them both as well as Redfin and Realtor.com as general guides.
A good Realtor will identify and utilize valid comps of actual sales and provide information on the direction the market is taking. Of course a Realtor hopes to land the listing.
BTW, I agree with retiredguy123's assessment that FSBO's are almost always overpriced. I rarely look at them although I recall buying a FSBO house once. I did overpay maybe 3% but I had a very tight time constraint to buy a house in order to avoid paying a relatively large capital gain tax on a house I had sold (under the tax law back in 1976).
I also sold a house myself as a FSBO from a one weekend newspaper ad in 1972 up in Rochester, NY to a fellow patent attorney. No problem, great guy; it was fun.
So you just never know. The main thing as I see it is to not initially overprice a FSBO so that it stays on the market a long time, thereby becoming "stale". If it remains for sale too long buyers tend to think there is a problem with it. Also carrying costs such as mortgage payments, taxes, insurance, maintenance and utilities, not to mention the time value of money, add up over time. A slightly lower price right now to get an actual sale may net one more than waiting it out for a higher price - if you can even get one.