Vancouver Real Estate: Where Priced Right Really is Half Sold
December 2, 2008 by Mitch Canton
Filed under BlogFeed, Market Statistics, Popular, Pricing Data, Real Estate, Selling
If you’re going to have go there eventually, why put off the inevitable?
I’m talking, specifically, about those two words sellers fear and buyers expect “Price Reduced”.
It doesn’t HAVE to be that way though. I’ve recently had the chance to dig deep into some data. I did a dissection of some Real Estate stats from the Vancouver, Clark County real estate market during September, 2008 that puts a huge exclamation point on the old adage “Priced right is half Sold!”
I took a detailed look at the sold Single Family Residential homes in September, 2008, specifically looking for correlation between Sales Price and Days on Market. The results were nothing short of startling.
Of these sales transactions, 27.4% sold in less than 30 days, I found this to be a surprisingly high number, based on the current state of the market. Additionally, nearly one-third (32.7%) of the transactions took 100 or more days to sell, a number I thought would be higher. But then I remembered: this data was based on the now-modified concept of “Current Days on Market” – which only defined market time based on the most recent active listing for that property (vs. Total or Cumulative Days on Market – which is, get this, based on the cumulative days on market…). Anyhow, I recently dissected this change and what it means to time on market.
More to the point, however, was the Pricing aspect of all this. Get this:
Of the homes that sold in 30 days or less, the Sales Price was, on average, a miniscule 0.44% discount to the original asking Price… in other words, over 99.5 Cents on the Dollar to their asking price. Wow.
But, as always, there are folks who start out high, hoping for the best, before the reality of the market pulls the rug out from underneath them. Of the folks who sold with a “Current” Days on Market time of over 120 days, their selling price was, on average, a whopping 14.61% drop from their original asking price. And with an average current DOM for these folks of 193.3 days (yes, almost seven months)… well, I bet they wish they had just priced it right to start with.
Again, it seems a house – priced right – is half sold. Especially houses for sale in today’s Vancouver and Clark County real estate market. Assuming you had already eliminated dart-throwing or pulling a number out of a hat as the best way to price a house for sale, for more in-depth analysis and a well-thought out selling strategy I know a guy who can figure out how to put two halves together and get a house sold.
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Hi, your data re: home pricing was especially intriguing in this market. Can you tell from your data if it holds across all price ranges? In other words, is a well priced home in the $400k range as likely to sell reasonably quickly as a well priced home in the $250k range?
Hi Kimberley,
Thanks for your question. I had sent you an email separately, but I also wanted to mention some primary points here in the comments.
Also, I was so intrigued by the numbers that came out of my analysis that I will be expanding on this question in an upcoming blog post.
First, subjectively speaking, its likely more important to price it right in the higher price range, as there are fewer buyers in that price range. The data analysis bears that out and I’ll go into detail in the upcoming post.
But as a appetizer, an initial data review also shows that its true, as sellers in the 400K+ price range with a minor price adjustment sold AS QUICKLY as those in the 200-400K range; but those in the 400K+ range that had to make larger (>6%) adjustments took over 78% LONGER to actually sell than those making the same (>6%) adjustment in the 200-400K range.
Thanks again for your question.