Look at the market: same district, same type of building
Look at your home through a buyer's eyes. A buyer does not care how much you spent on renovation. They look at what else they can buy for that money in the same district. So the first job is to find the listings most similar to yours. Keep the district the same, the type of building too (new building or old building), and the number of rooms and area close.
If you compare a new building with an old one, or a renovated apartment with an unrenovated one, you will reach the wrong conclusion. Take a few of the most similar listings and compare not the total price but the price per square meter. When the areas differ, the square meter puts everything on one scale and shows which listing is really expensive.
Remember one thing: the number in a listing is the price the seller wants, not the price the home sold for. Most listings that stay up for a long time are exactly the ones that found no buyer at their number. Look at the median price for the district and category on the site's prices page. It shows not one listing but the whole market, so you can trust it more.
What raises the value and what does not
What a buyer pays for and what is dear to you are not always the same. The main advantage for a buyer is tidy paperwork: a title deed (kupcha) in your name, no debts and no pledge. The reason is simple: people who buy with a mortgage usually will not look at a home without a title deed. A neat renovation, middle floors, a sunny side, an open view, a parking spot in the yard and being close to the metro also really affect the price.
Expensive furniture, a design to your own taste and your memories of the home do not raise the price in a buyer's eyes. An outdated or very personal renovation is often not counted at all, because the buyer will redo it anyway. An apartment in a building that the developer has not yet commissioned is also valued below a home with finished documents.
- Raises: a title deed in your name, no debts or pledge, the document package ready
- Raises: a neat renovation, a middle floor, a sunny side, a view
- Raises: parking, a working elevator, being close to the metro and a school
- Does not raise: expensive furniture and appliances
- Does not raise: a renovation to a very personal taste
- Lowers: problems with documents, the first floor, the top floor with a problem roof, a listing that has been up for a long time
The hidden cost of an inflated price
Many owners deliberately set a higher price, saying "I will lower it later." Later is expensive. Most buyers use the price filter when they search. If your home does not fit their budget, they simply do not see the listing. Most views come in the first days of a listing. If you miss those days with the wrong price, it is hard to win back what you lost.
Over time a listing goes stale. Buyers who follow the market every day and agents have already seen it and passed. A new person looks at a home that has not sold for a long time with suspicion: what is wrong with it? Several price cuts in a row also tell the buyer that the seller is in a hurry. Then the buyer prefers to wait a little longer.
A listing priced near the market or slightly below draws interest from the first days. When several buyers want the same home, they start competing, and the deal often ends better for the seller than a sale that began with an inflated number. And you can keep the room for bargaining small, because the buyer can see for themselves that the price is fair.
How to present your listing
The price does not work on its own; the listing itself has to justify it. Take photos in daylight and tidy the rooms beforehand. Take several shots of each room, and do not forget the building, the entrance and the yard. If the photos are dark, the apartment is messy or there are few photos, the buyer mentally lowers the price themselves.
State the area as it is written in the title deed. The number of rooms, the floor and the number of floors in the building must be correct too. Write the renovation, gas, heating and elevator as they are. A person who comes to a viewing and sees something other than what the listing says only asks for a discount, and no longer trusts you.
Do not hide a flaw; build it into the price. A listing that says "needs renovation, price reflects that" gets calls from more serious buyers than one with empty promises. In the headline, briefly write the district, the number of rooms and the home's main advantage. Words like "excellent" and "super" say nothing, so do not write them.
Room for bargaining and negotiation
Here, haggling over the price is normal, and most buyers treat the number in a listing as a starting point. So it is fine to build a small margin for bargaining into the price. But the margin should not be so large that the listing looks clearly more expensive than the market and the buyer does not even call. Know two numbers in advance: the price in the listing and the floor below which you will not go.
A concession is not only a price cut. You can leave the furniture in the apartment, give the buyer extra time to move, or split the notary costs with them. The buyer values this, and you keep the main number. When you take a deposit, put the agreement in writing and have it certified by a notary: when selling an apartment the law requires this, and both sides also know exactly what was agreed.
If several people show interest at once, do not rush. When buyers learn about each other, the price holds by itself. But inventing a buyer who does not exist, or creating such a situation artificially, does not work: trust is lost, and the serious buyer walks away too.
When you need Premium and Bump up
A paid service does not fix a wrong price. It simply shows a listing with the right price to more buyers. And it helps most in the first days of a listing. If you promote a freshly posted listing with good photos and a market price with Premium, more people will be interested from the very start. Promoting a listing with no photos, an unfinished one or one priced above the market is just an extra expense.
Bump up returns the listing to the top of the list and puts a stale listing in front of buyers' eyes again. Doing it at the hours when buyers are most active helps more. But if you bump a listing many times and it still does not sell, the problem is not visibility but the price. Then go back to the very beginning and compare with the market again.