Every detail in an MLS listing carries marketing weight – everything counts – but nothing matters more than the price. If a house is priced wisely and well – if it is priced to market using a number that makes sense to the buyer – it should sell at, near or above list price in single-digit Days-on-Market.
I favor numbers that break evenly on $20k boundaries, because that’s the way six-figure homes tend to close in ARMLS – the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service, the Phoenix-area MLS. I call them wise numbers, because all other numbers – stupid or sleazy prices – induce delay, at a minimum, and are therefore inherently UNwise.
But there is another piece to this puzzle: Lender pre-qualification tiers. How much is the buyer qualified for? Is it $344,850? Or is it more like $350k? Lenders like round numbers, too, but they often work in $25k increments.
This matters why? If you’re priced at $305k, you might be missing some or all of the buyers who are qualified only to $300k – which you would gleefully take – since they are only searching to their pre-qualification number. If you then reduce the price to $279k, you’re still fishing with your bait out of the water with respect to the buyers qualified to $275k.
That’s a sad but true story, as seen here:
These are yesterday’s price changes from my Sun City hotsheet. None of the prices, before or after, is wise – which is typical, alas. But note how many of them are or were fishing just above the nearest $25k boundary.
The Imputed Value is just an expression of the Sun City Over-Pricing Effect: If a price is not at least $15k over the nearest $20k boundary, it is not that number that is being defended but the next lower value. In other words, $279,900 and $275,000 are both defending $260k, but $269,900 is defending $240k. There’s no substitute for CLOSED comps, but peering through the SCOPE lets you read the listing agent’s mind.
There’s more, of course: You have to price wisely and well with respect to the closed listings while keeping your price lender-friendly – all while undercutting your Active competition, such that yours is the house that closes next.
Everything counts – but nothing counts more than price.
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