Las Vegas Homes, Condos, Land and Commercial Real Estate Blog

How NOT to price Las Vegas homes, condominiums and commercial real estate for sale Part One

The most important duty of a Las Vegas Realtor or real estate agent is to put a correct selling price on the Las Vegas real estate for sale. If the property is priced too low, the market will correct this, there are many examples of homes or condominiums which have sold for tens of thousands above asking price. If the property is priced unreasonably high, the property will not sell because it will NOT be shown by other real estate agents.

Pricing a property correctly is different from hoping for a sucker to show up and buy their home, condo or commercial property; as these suckers lost all they had in the last crash, they are not showing up.

Before putting an asking price on a property the Realtor or real estate agent should look at COMPS. COMPS are calculated based on similar properties which are located in immediate area and have sold within 1month to one year depending on the market conditions. In Las Vegas residential properties, 3-6 month is good for lower price homes or condominiums since pricing have been flat lately.

Asking prices in your area are NOT COMPS, only selling prices are.

The other factor is the important momentum or market trends, if prices are dropping like a rock, then the asking price should be lower than COMPS.

Those who want to sell their Las Vegas homes should make their real estate agent explain about how they have arrived at the asking price, the same goes for those who want to sell their Las Vegas condos.

Finding a home for the Rabbi who is relocating to Las Vegas

A New York Rabbi who wanted to relocate to Las Vegas called me and told me that he is working with a well known Realtor in Las Vegas and was thinking about making an offer on the same Realtor’s listing.

The Rabbi was smart enough to know that the same Realtor should NOT do both sides of the real estate deal (Dual agency) since the same Realtor would make two commissions while representing no one.

The Rabbi, being a man of faith, warned me about wanting to go on with the same Realtor and that he wanted my help for this one home only. The home in question was a custom home in one of the Las Vegas master planned communities. Custom homes are more difficult to do comps for than tract homes since tract homes look pretty much alike except for a variation in lot size and upgrades which can be easily calculated to figure comps. This is not true with custom built homes.

I am very familiar with the master planned community in question, and the home that our Rabbi was thinking about making an offer on, is NOT one of the best or highly upgraded homes in the community. I pulled all the homes in the community that have sold in the last 360 days prior and the highest price per square foot was $170 per square foot. The asking price for the home the Rabbi was considering to buy was $45-$50 more than the highest sold price per square foot.

Absolute upper limit on the Rabbi’s desired home

I multiplied the square footage of the home with $170 per square foot and told Rabbi the same thing that this is the absolute highest of a price range, depending how badly he wanted this house.

The absolute upper limit on the price of the home was more than $150,000 below the asking price and at the low end, which was far more reasonable, was $220,000 lower than asking price.

Needless to say the deal never worked, however about a few weeks I heard back from the Rabbi and he wanted to switch Realtors and we are helping him at the moment.

This is 2010, not 2007 and we are in our third year of price corrections. You would think that some sellers and their real estate agents have come to understand this, NOT.

Listing Las Vegas for NOT selling them never made sense to me. The Realtor can show prospective clients how many listings they have, but the seller gets nothing out of his/her effort.

Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas real estate sellers should ask their Realtor how quick he/she sells his/her listings, rather than how many listings they have. Except that these Realtors often re-list their listings in order to cut down on their time on the market. I have found a very good blog post that discusses this issue from another point of view Unscrupulous Listing Practice?

Related Website pages: Sell Las Vegas homes, sell Las Vegas condos, sell Las Vegas commercial real estate

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Make sure that invite a veteran to your home for Memorial Day. We are having my very good friend and ex-customer Chief Master Sergeant Frank and his family over today.