Selling
What your house is worth, not what you want to hear.
Plenty of agents win a listing by naming the highest number. That number is the cheapest thing in this business to say and the most expensive thing to get wrong. Here is how we set a price, what happens after the sign goes up, and when we would tell you to wait.
Pricing
The highest number is not a favor
Naming a big price costs an agent nothing. Your house goes up, the showings are thin, and six weeks later the same agent comes back and asks you to cut. By then you have already spent the only real advantage you had.
Buyers and their agents can see how long a listing has been sitting. A house that has been on the market for two months reads as a house with something wrong with it, even when there is nothing wrong with it. Showings slow down. The offers that do come in start low, because the buyer can tell you are stuck. An overpriced house usually sells for less than it would have if the price had been right on the first day.
So we start from what has actually closed near you in the last few months, then adjust for square footage, lot, condition, and what a buyer will have to spend after closing. You see the comparable sales and the reasoning, not just a figure on the last page. If your number and our number are far apart, we say so before you sign anything, and we tell you why.
How it goes
From the first walkthrough to the closing table
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Walkthrough and pricing conversation
We walk the house with you room by room and look at what a buyer notices in the first minute. Then we sit down with recent closed sales nearby and set a range. You get the comparable sales in writing, so you can check our work instead of taking our word for it.
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Getting the house ready
We tell you which repairs are worth doing and which ones you will never get back. The list is usually shorter than owners expect: fix what looks broken, clear out what you can live without for a few weeks, and clean well past the point that feels reasonable. You do not need to remodel a kitchen to sell a house.
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Photography and listing
A professional photographer shoots the house once it is ready, on a day with decent light. The photos and the description go into the local MLS, which is what feeds the national search sites buyers actually use. Most buyers decide whether to tour your house while looking at a phone.
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Showings and feedback
Buyers tour with their own agents, often on a few hours notice. We ask every one of those agents what their buyer said, and we pass it to you unedited, including the parts that sting. Two weeks of showings with no offer is useful information, and we act on it rather than waiting it out.
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Offers and negotiation
When an offer arrives we read it with you line by line: price, how the buyer is financing it, what they are asking you to pay toward their costs, the inspection and appraisal deadlines, and the closing date. The highest offer is not always the best one. We tell you which terms are worth pushing on and which ones are not.
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Inspection through closing
The buyer inspects, and there is almost always a repair request afterward. We help you decide what to fix, what to cover with a credit, and what to refuse. After that it is the appraisal, the buyer's loan, title work, and a final walkthrough before you sign.
Where the money is
What actually moves the price
- The roof and the HVAC. Buyers ask the age of both early, and the inspector confirms it. A roof near the end of its life comes off your price one way or another, either in the negotiation or at the inspection when the deal falls apart.
- Kitchens and bathrooms. These are the rooms buyers price in their heads while they stand in them. Clean, working and dated beats half finished. We will not tell you to remodel right before you list, because you are unlikely to get the whole cost back.
- The photographs. Buyers scroll. Dark, crooked, cluttered photos cost you showings you will never know you lost, and showings are the only thing that produces offers.
- The first two weeks. This is when your listing is new to every buyer already searching your price range. Attention is highest before anyone has seen it. If the price is wrong, that window gets spent and it does not come back.
- What you clear out. Empty counters and half empty closets make rooms read larger. Buyers have to look past your things to see the house, and that is harder than it sounds.
- The price itself. It is the one thing you control completely and it outweighs everything above it on this list. The right price brings buyers through the door. No amount of marketing fixes a wrong one.
Sometimes the honest answer is not yet
We would rather lose a listing than take one we do not believe in. If we think you should wait, we will say so and explain the reasoning, and you can decide from there.
Reasons we would raise: you owe more on the house than it will bring today, a repair you could finish in six weeks would change what buyers offer, you have not settled where you are going next and a fast sale would leave you without a place to land, or the calendar is working against you. Tallahassee buyer traffic follows the school year and the legislative session, and a house that would draw a crowd in April can sit in late December.
None of that requires a commitment from you. There is no listing agreement until you sign one, and nothing about the first conversation obligates you to anything.
Next step
Start with a walkthrough
Tell us the address and roughly when you want to be out. We will come look at the house, pull the comparable sales, and give you a range with the reasoning attached. If you decide to wait a year after that, no hard feelings.
Contact
Tell us what you are trying to do
Buying, selling, or still working out which. Send a note and you will hear back within one business day.
- Phone561-627-8619
- Emailestate@estateallegiance.com
- HoursMonday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. Closed Saturday and Sunday.
- Office2241 North Monroe Street #1160, Tallahassee, FL 32303