Brad, I hope you have time to reply to this.
We just interviewed our first realtor for selling our house and, as I suspect a lot of home sellers are doing, I'm questioning whether the realtor is right about pricing.
In February of 2008, our home appraised for $170K for a refinance. After that we remodelled the upstairs bath ($5K), put on a new roof ($4500), had new interior drain tile and sump pump installed ($4500), had new furnace and AC put in three weeks ago ($5K), had the chimney rebuilt ($1K), upgraded electric ($1200), and a whole slew of cosmetic things that ran another few thousand.
In August of last year a neighbor's house sold for $166K from an asking price of $169,900. The house is smaller than ours, doesn't have a formal dining room as does ours, and has two bedrooms instead of the three that we have. The realtor brought that one along as one of the comparisons. The other homes he brought were comparable in size, but were in neighborhoods not as desirable as ours.
Our neighbors have been saying we should be able to get $200K or better for our place, but I thought $180K would be about right. The realtor says the market has gone downhill since August of last year when our neighbor's house sold.
Is he right on that? He's suggesting we price it just below $170K. He said we could try $178K or so for a week or two, but no longer than that.
I'd sure appreciate your input.