[2BNTV]

Originally Posted by Bill-n-Brillo

To me, "asking price" is fairly irrelevant - it's "what is the going rate for similar houses is similar neighborhoods" that really matters when it comes to attempting to determine an appropriate purchase price.

When we bought a resale Patio Villa last fall, it was pretty easy to figure out what the going rate was since, to a reasonable degree, all the PVs in the neighborhood are in generally the same ballpark price-wise. Granted, corner lots should bring more, lots backing up to a wall will do the same, etc. But they're all priced in a fairly narrow band when sold new.

When trying to figure out if the owner's asking price was "fair", I went to the Sumter County Property Appraiser's web site http://www.sumterpa.com/ , clicked on 'Record Search' on the left, entered the for-sale property's address, then clicked on the resulting page on the 'GIS Aerial' satellite view map at the right. That will open an expanded version of the map, showing a small white box noting the current owner name(s) and the date and price of the most recent sale. Move your cursor to any other rooftop (again, you're seeing a satellite view), then click, and it will show you the same info for that particular property. Look to the right of the map (under 'Sales Info') and you will be able to see the sales history on that house - date and price are noted. I spent a bit of time looking at all the other PVs in this grouping, noting the ones that had sold within the last 12 months - and at what price - to get a feel for the "going rate".

So there's a way to gather current pricing info - there are other methods to do accomplish the same thing as well. Granted, it's a fairly simple process for a Patio Villa given the relative 'sameness' of them price-wise. But if you were looking at a Designer home, for example, you could tour the neighborhood via car/cart, noting addresses for identical models then come back and go to the Property Appraiser's web site to find out the info on them.

Turns out in our case that the seller's pricing was right on the money in comparison to other sales considering all the factors that were of value to us - the particular location of this house, extras the sellers had done since they bought it, etc. They'd dropped their price several times (fairly dramatic amount in total) over the course of the many months they'd had it on the market and finally hit the "sweet spot" with their pricing when we stumbled across it. We paid them their final asking price and it was done!

Incidentally, this was a FSBO deal so it was up to us to do our own research - no realtor to fall back on. No big deal.......

Bill

Bill:

Thank you for your excellent information. Great post