Brought to you by Scott P. Rogers, Funkhouser Real Estate Group, 540-578-0102, scott@HarrisonburgHousingToday.com
Brought to you by Scott P. Rogers, Funkhouser Real Estate Group, 540-578-0102, scott@HarrisonburgHousingToday.com
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
If you're looking to buy a home under $250K, should you only consider homes priced at or below $250K? Probably not - some sellers of homes priced above $250K will negotiate down to $250K.
Should you look at homes priced above $500K? Probably not - most sellers of homes priced above $500K probably will not negotiate down to $250K.
Both of those are probably obvious to most home buyers, but how do we understand the negotiability dynamics between those two mostly obvious statements?
The data above is a first look at that puzzle - with some guide rails. Basically, I looked at one year of City/County home sales, but limited it to homes with 1500+ square feet, 3+ bedrooms, 2+ bathrooms, on less than an acre, between $200K and $400K. So, not a canvas of the entire market -- but a pretty reasonable chunk of the middle of our market not likely to be thrown off by lots of investors (lower priced or attached properties) or high end buyers (high priced properties).
And - after that intro - here's (some of) what we find...
- More than a third of sellers (37%) didn't negotiate at all. Of note, this could have been new home sales where upgrades took the sales price above the list price OR it could have been full price (or higher) contracts with closing cost credits that made the effective sales price a bit lower.
- The vast majority (85%, can we call that vast?) of sellers did not negotiate more than 5% off of their list price.
- Only 2% of sellers were willing to negotiate more than 10% off of their list price.
So - hopefully that provides some guidance as to what you might expect as a buyer.
If you see a home listed for 11% above your budget -- there is likely only a 2% chance that the seller will sell at a price that works for you -- or, put another way, you might have to find 98 such properties (where the seller won't come down 10%) before you find the 99th and 100th where they will.
Happy home shopping -- and negotiating!
