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The first strategy when selling a home is pricing, sometimes called positioning.

In a seller’s market, my wife and I often recommend competitive prices, with a few exceptions. Our only goal in competitive pricing is to start a fight for the house and hopefully a big fight to get the highest possible sales price in a timely manner and reduce the inconvenience to the seller.

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To get this fight going, we need to get a lot of attention and create a lot of excitement for our clients’ ad within the first three days the ad is active.

Before recommending a list price, we will conduct a detailed assessment of active competition. We evaluate not only the competitor’s list price, but also what we determine to be the true value, that is, the competitor’s market value.

In a seller’s market, active competition is more relevant to pricing and therefore should be weighted more heavily than recent sales data.

We will offer a list price that will make our client’s ad appear to be the best perceived value compared to current competition. A competitively priced listing will immediately grab the attention of active buyers, create a sense of urgency, and drive many visits within the first three days.

This urgency is generated by the fear of missing out, which we call FOMO in real estate circles. The fear of missing out is an incredibly powerful motivator, especially for buyers who have already missed out on two or three deals.

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To start a real fight, we need multiple buyers writing simultaneously.

We had considerable success listing a Thursday evening and advertising an open house on Sunday to attract as many eyes as possible to our listing in just three days. Booking an open house on the day of the listing gives interested parties time to view the home.

Our goal is to present several offers on Sunday evening. We will communicate this in real estate agents’ private remarks to set expectations appropriately up front.

Listing on a Thursday evening will trigger almost all search notifications from buyers matching the home’s criteria within 24 hours and allow them to view it over the weekend with their real estate agent or by attending the open house themselves .

This strategy works best when we launch all of our marketing simultaneously. This marketing would include out-of-province marketing to Ontario and British Columbia. Many homes are sold in Edmonton by out-of-province buyers who purchase a home without viewing it in person.

Buyers from Ontario and British Columbia see our homes as bargains and will often be happy to offer more than a local buyer.

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The other benefit of this pricing strategy is that a seller can receive several great offers in just three to four days, significantly reducing the inconvenience of showings that might otherwise last weeks.

We rarely recommend that our clients accept an offer on the first day of a listing without giving the market more time to trigger a bidding war.

Other pricing strategies can also work well, provided your real estate agent is a skilled negotiator. And in some situations, competitive pricing isn’t the best option. I talked about this in a recent article called Ask Less, Get More. Feel free to check this out.

Our second preferred strategy is timing. In addition to the Thursday evening quote, we sometimes recommend postponing a quote.

A typical example is a half-duplex that we listed in the spring. Our seller purchased his new property with possession for three months. In this case, we had a four-week window to list the home and confidently align our seller’s sale with their purchase.

There were two other active half-duplex listings of similar size, same year built, on the same street. There were no other competing listings in the entire neighborhood.

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We recommended to our client to delay triggering the listing, hoping that the competition would soon be on hold. We delayed registration for almost three weeks until both were pending. This meant that if a buyer was looking for this type of property in this area and in this price range, they had the choice between our listing and nothing.

With our listing being the only option in our category, we increased our asking price to $10,000 more than the recently pending competition.

Within days, we received three offers and sold our client’s home above our client’s higher list price.

Our third strategy is marketing. I see marketing as a big umbrella. Under this umbrella I include preparing the home for photos and showings, digital tours, written descriptions, advertising and networking. Effective marketing will identify and reach the demographic most likely to see the greatest property value and pay the highest price.

The article will guide or introduce the reader to how we want them to view the property. A typical example is a client’s house located in an unusually shaped crescent in which it is a little difficult to navigate. However, it offered more parking spaces because it had a rectangular green space in the middle.

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In this case, we want the buyer to see this unique croissant as an advantage. You could call this reader or buyer priming. The text would look like this: “This improved home is nestled in a quiet crescent with a grand boulevard that offers more trees, green space and parking for visitors. This isolated crescent has fostered a greater sense of community where neighbors know each other, feel more connected and look out for each other.

Regarding optimally preparing your home to maximize the sale price, check out my most recent article, Seven Most Profitable Home Improvements Before Selling.

Marketing will also include the showing and offering process as well as communication between potential buyers who attend our open house or contact us directly. This also includes our communication with buyers’ real estate agents. We want the process to be transparent with thoughtful and timely communication.

We want to give active buyers every reason to write an offer. A seller’s sale price is often correlated to the number of offers received. Again, our goal is always to start a big fight.

In our experience, these strategies have helped us sell our clients’ homes at full market value, which is the most the market is willing to pay.

Your trusted and knowledgeable real estate agent can help you formulate your home’s unique listing strategy and reach more suitable buyers who see more value in your home and offer more.

Dennis Faulkner, BA Economics, works as a real estate agent at MaxWell Challenge Realty. He can be reached to answer your real estate questions at [email protected]

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