Selling

SETTING THE PRICE

What is my property worth?

One of the most important decisions you will make in the course of selling your home is to decide on its asking price, or if selling at auction, its reserve. If selling privately, your asking price will usually be treated by potential buyers as a starting point for negotiations, and you may end up accepting an offer significantly lower.

It is important to set a price that reflects the full market value of your property, yet is realistic and remains attractive to buyers. To determine how much your property is worth, you must take into account all its important features, including:

• location
• size
• age
• extras

The next step is to find homes with features similar to yours and check how much they have sold for. Check the auction results in your local newspaper and the comprehensive real estate pricing records on the Internet. Looking in real estate agents' windows, or searching the past property sales databases on the Internet will give you a good indication of how much other home owners are asking for their properties in your area. But remember, these prices may not accurately reflect the price at which the homes are eventually sold.

Remember that changes in the state of the economy and the property market may affect the value of your home. Ask your real estate agent how the sale of your home may be affected by:

• fluctuations in interest rates
• property availability
• buyer demand.

Market opinions and valuations

Not confident that you can come up with a good estimate of how much your property is worth? Your first step should be to obtain a market opinion from a real estate agent. Real estate agents will inspect your home and offer an estimate of its worth based on a working knowledge of the local property market and recent sales prices. There is no obligation to engage the agent who gives the market opinion, and many who intend to sell property obtain more than one opinion.

Sometimes, agents may overestimate the price of your property. Make sure you get them to go over their analysis of the value of your home compared with what similar homes have been selling for.

Valuations

If you're still unsure about how much your property is really worth, you may decide to engage a registered valuer, for a fee.

What’s included?

The price of your property will also depend on what fittings and fixtures are included in the sale. Think about whether you intend to sell the following with your home, or whether you want to note in the contract that they are excluded:

• curtains and blinds
• carpets and other floor coverings
• heaters, air conditioning, ceiling fans
• burglar alarm
• light fittings
• television aerial
• awnings
• refrigerator, freezer, washing-machine
• items in your backyard, such as the clothesline, above ground pool, pool equipment, and so on.