Question:
“Hey Gary: We stopped in at an open house at the home at XXXX XXXX. It’s listed at $700,000. We weren’t impressed with it compared to ours. We assume the main draw for that house is location and it’s on a bigger lot. Have you seen it? What’s your opinion? It makes us think we should try a little higher price for ours to start. But we’ll talk about it. Please get back to me.”
Answer:
Thanks for the email.
I understand why you would feel that way as it’s very common. I call it the “Open House Syndrome.”
Because open houses by their nature are homes that have NOT sold yet, they only tell you what price the seller wants and not what a buyer will pay. So they can give an inflated idea of value.
In a nutshell, I want to be sure you’re comfortable with the price we ask, but that home doesn’t really give us any data supporting a higher price.
By the way, a close cousin to the Open House Syndrome is the “Online Listings Syndrome.” The same thing happens — someone looks at homes online for sale, using the prices of these unsold homes to price their home.
