Reston Real Estate: Just Listed

This is a sponsored post by Eve Thompson of Reston Real Estate.

As we roll into the holiday week there are almost no “new” listings. Most folks will wait until the holidays are past before listing their homes for sale. I thought we’d take a quick look at some of the older listings on the market.

When a seller engages an agent to sell their property what they are hiring is (hopefully) expertise in finding the sweet spot of price vs. property condition. Condition of a property is one of the largest drivers of property value, I would say second only to location.

It’s the agent’s job to analyze sales and condition and to provide a comparison of those sold properties against the seller’s property. It’s the seller’s job to pick the price, hopefully based on the data provided.

It can be hard for sellers and buyers to accept that the market is its own thing — we can’t force it to do our bidding. The buyer who comes in with a super low offer thinking they can force a sellers hand will be just as disappointed as the seller who overprices their property with the “I’m not in a hurry, I’ll wait to get my price” strategy. Rarely is either successful.

Here are a few great properties that have been hanging around a while along with their current list price:

• Condo at 120oo Block of New Dominion Parkway, 1 BR/1 BA, 375 Days on Market — $414,000
• Single-Family Home at 12000 Block of Walnut Branch Road, 5 BR/ 4.5 BA, 353 Days on Market — $1,245,000
• Condo at 1800 Block of Fountain Drive, 2 BR/2 BA, 238 Days on Market — $461,000

For the past year I’ve been saying that the market is very price sensitive. What I mean is that properties that are within 10-20k of their best price are hanging on the market — buyers are not aggressively pursuing these “slightly” overpriced properties, they’re letting them sit.

This of course is bad for sellers because the longer they sit the more it costs them (both in carrying costs and in lost opportunities, etc.) what they might have done with the cash had they gotten the house sold.

A seller’s best strategy is always to be the best priced and best presented home in their particular market — stand out by being a market of one, rather than one of many.