When the market shifts, the data lags behine – so Buyers beware!

Why worry?

During the negotiation process, sellers agents just might try to convince you of the homes value use entirely reasonable numbers from homes sold over the last few months. The problem is that unless you are seeing homes that sold within just a few days of your offer – you cannot count on sold data from last month or even further back to necessarily reflect todays reality! So let the buyer beware and pay even closer attention to what the real numbers are.

Why should sellers worry?

While the ‘buyers beware’ advice is good – sellers will also benefit from paying more attention during this time of change. Pricing your home correctly at the start is critical to getting the best price for your home. If you don’t, and your market is in decline, you could end up chasing the right price to a lower point than if you had priced your home right in the first place.

So how do I avoid this issue?

Get a good real estate professional on your side who can sift through the available data to determine what the real market numbers are. You can also get a feel for this by keeping up on your local real estate activity on sites like realtor.com.