Here’s how to accurately determine the value of your home and how to sell it at the best possible price. 

There are 3 key resources that you should visit to gather information before you decide to list them:

1. Real Estate Agents

Whether you’ve hired an agent to sell your home or whether you’re directly listing it yourself, it is important that you determine the right price at the time of listing your property. Starting off by reaching out to multiple real-estate agents and requesting them for an accurate or estimated valuation on your home. This will help you make an informed decision on setting the optimal initial offer price. The more opinions you gather, the more comprehensively you will understand the buyer decision-making criteria. 

2. Your Neighbors

Take into consideration the opinions of those closest to you. Even though there’s no substitute for expert opinion, talking to your neighbors or someone who has recently sold or bought a home in or around your vicinity will definitely give you key insights on what to expect before entering the real estate market. Actively seek feedback from others who have recently experienced the market either as a buyer or sellers in your area. Try to gauge the experiences from such personal sources to ensure that you make your listing decision on the basis of impartial and unbiased information. 

3. Yourself

Don’t discount what you already know. There probably is no one else who has a more accurate understanding of your home and your surrounding neighborhood. You can complete plenty of your own research online with real-estate listing portals, like Dealty, which has a comprehensive database of houses listed all over the US along with the median listing prices of properties near you.

Once you have an understanding of the market, you’ll be in a better position to formally start determining a listing price. The key is to ensure that your asking price is optimally geared to be as high as possible without being too high to dissuade the interest of prospective buyers. Through observational psychology, experts approach determining such an optimal price point by evaluating the “zone of negotiation”, as mentioned below. 

Any listing price within this zone will be open for negotiation. Be ready to be flexible enough to readjust your expectations as per the information you receive. Remember, even experienced real estate professionals who’ve sold hundreds of homes gauge the opinions of their peers and re-evaluate their calculations and conclusions on a particular property if the feedback they receive is compelling enough. 

Furthermore, you must understand that the dynamics and the nature of the real estate market are continually evolving. Understanding the context in which you’re positioned to sell in your market may enable you to make the most out of your current market. 

Some people believe that in a seller's market it is best to price it high, after all with a shortage of supply someone may be willing to pay an exceptionally high price. Others however believe there are a lot of advantages to pricing a property competitively even in a seller’s market, as a reasonable list price will attract more buyer inquiries, garner a greater market response, enlist multiple offers and eventually even drive the listing price well above what you initially hoped for.