February 6, 2000
Don't Let Sentimental Feelings Influence List Price
By Ellen James Martin

It's a barn-red house, built more than 100 years ago on a large lot in what has become a posh suburban area. Still, Susan Hudson-Wilson and her family are planning to sell their property in the spring of 2001.

That's when her younger son will graduate from high school. Together with her husband and 14-year-old daughter, she has decided to take up quarters in an urban townhouse, closer to her job. They're also building a spacious weekend retreat that will be ready for use early next year.

Given their meticulously timed plans, Hudson-Wilson is determined to price the barn-red house correctly from the outset. She vows not to attach a "sentimentality premium" to the price, as many do, despite the 10 happy years her family has spent there.

Sentimental buyers hurt themselves because they lose control of the timing of their move. Even in communities where property values are ascending, overpriced homes will go unsold month after month.

"You may be in a hot-hot-hot market. But if you go into too high water, no one will buy your house," said Hudson-Wilson, founder and chief executive of Property & Portfolio Research, a national real estate research firm that advises large property investors.

Ready access to property value data means buyers can more easily spot an overpriced home.

"Nowadays it's awfully hard to fool buyers. That's because home value information that used to be hidden in the dusty basements of courthouses is now available in a timely fashion around the globe on a 24-hour basis," said Steve Kropper, president of Inpho Inc., which tracks actual selling prices in the top 50 United States markets.

Here are some pointers for potential home sellers to avoid pricing a home out of the market:

Be alert to Internet or newspaper reports on property sales in your area.

Phyllis Rudnick, the co-owner of a Century 21 office, urges prospective sellers to monitor the prices homes recently have sold for in their neighborhood, beginning well before they put a property on the market. Local newspapers now put out such real estate transaction information routinely -- in the paper or on their Web sites, or both.

In addition, there are specialized Web sites loaded with free information on home sales. Inpho Inc., for instance, maintains a Web site (www.homepricecheck.com) providing the prices at which homes changed hands for an area covering 78 percent of the United States.

Chances are good you can find a sale-price history for your home, your street and your neighborhood, going back five to eight years.

Granted, your real estate agent will check statistics of comparable recent sales in your area before you sell and recommend a price. But ultimately it's the owner's decision, and one worthy of some homework.

Kropper suggests you check prices around your area at least 90 days prior to putting your house on the market. Hudson-Wilson and her family already are taking careful note of transaction prices more than a year before they plan to move to new urban quarters.

Visit open houses in your neighborhood to gain a handle on local values.

One way to make the pricing of your home more an objective than a subjective exercise is to put on the glasses a buyer looks through.

Sellers who visit other properties being marketed in their communities will expand their general feeling for neighborhood value trends. More important, they'll sense how buyers bring a detached view to the purchase of a home.

Besides suggesting that her sellers visit open houses in their own neighborhood, Rudnick will sometimes arrange appointments so that her sellers can get a feeling for pricing.

Be careful not to put a sentimentality premium on a property you've upgraded.

Those who have spent years lavishing attention on improvements to their home and are proud of the outcome are especially vulnerable to a self-defeating surcharge for their positive feelings about the place, says Hudson-Wilson.

Whether you've invested sweat equity, or hired a contractor, the reality is the same. You're not going to be paid back for the pride of ownership alone. In fact, you may not even fully recoup the money you've invested -- unless your dollars went for such highly valued improvements as kitchen and bathroom renovations.

Review your personal history to help ascertain your attachment level.

Some homeowners have so much emotion tied up in a property they have great difficulty parting with the place, even after their family size and space needs have become smaller.

There's nothing wrong with nostalgia. But no matter how rich your home is in happy memories, buyers will not pay for them.

If you have years of positive memories stored in your home, come to terms with your degree of attachment before it's time to sell. When you look at the dining room, do you think of a dozen formal holiday dinners? Does your smallest bedroom bring back precious recollections of rocking your babies to sleep?

Prospective owners of your home didn't join you for Thanksgiving. And when they look upon the place where you rocked your babies, they see another bedroom -- perhaps a space that could be converted to a home office.

If you make peace with your emotions, you'll be in a better position to take a businesslike approach to pricing your home.