What’s It Worth? FAR LESS Than You Thought
by Osman Parvez
About a month ago, I told you about a 5325 Hickory Avenue. I asked you to play a game: What It’s Worth.
Here are the results.
17 people provided their best estimates of the eventual sale price. Estimates ranged from a low of $549,000 to a high of $698,700, a spread of nearly $150,000. The average estimate was $616,517.
The house closed on January 8th. The actual sale price? $565,000 or about 6% BELOW the asking price. In a market with record low inventory and intense buyer demand, this is shocking. What happened?
A Couple of Possibilities
1. Structural Issues
As recommended in my original blog post, read the Seller’s Property Disclosure. Pay particular attention to Section A: Structural Conditions. The Seller checked YES to 4 of the 9 areas.
Structural issues tend to scare buyers. Even though the seller provided a reassuring structural engineer’s report, most buyers are going to think twice about a house with known structural issues.
2. Cold Hard Cash
Paying cash removes two key areas of uncertainty for the seller: the buyer’s credit risk and the home’s appraisal value.
Paying cash is one way to strengthen an offer in a competitive bidding scenario. As was the case here, even in this crazy market, sellers may even be willing to accept less than asking if a buyer is paying cash.
We’ll be discussing this and other techniques for writing winning offers at our meetup this week. The topic: Best Practices for Bidding Wars. Space is limited. Sign up HERE.
Back to the Contest
Jeff H was the winner with a low ball of $549,000.
Jeff, I owe you beer at the Southern Sun. Let’s call it a pitcher, shall we? If you can wait until Stout Month, I’ll join you.
In case you forgot how much you bid, the rest are below.
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As always, your referrals are deeply appreciated.
The ideas and strategies described in this blog are the opinion of the writer and subject to business, economic, and competitive uncertainties. We strongly recommend conducting rigorous due diligence and obtaining professional advice before buying or selling real estate.
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We can highly recommend Sophie. Her attention to detail and communication skills are great. Our home was in area that most realtors are not familiar with, but Sophie took extra time to get to know the neighborhood in order to give us quality service. She also brought in a professional photographer to make our home look its best. Even though the listing was in winter, the house sold quickly. With Sophie’s business and people skills, we have no doubt she will be a top realtor in the area.
Osman was a refreshingly honest realtor. He stressed through the entire process that his goal was to make me happy with my home purchase. I greatly appreciated the fact that he never shied away from pointing out the negatives as well as the pluses of different places while leaving the final decision up to me.
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More about the author
Osman Parvez
Owner & Broker at House Einstein as well as primary author of the House Einstein blog with over 1,200 published articles about Boulder real estate. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal and Daily Camera.
Osman is the primary author of the House Einstein blog with over 1,200 published articles about Boulder real estate. His work has also appeared in many other blogs about Boulder as well as mainstream newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal and Daily Camera. Learn more about Osman.
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