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If you really want to be a successful seller, think like a buyer. You probably didn't buy the first house you looked at. Few folks do. On the contrary, most people spend months industriously inspecting many houses on the market. To avoid overpaying for the home they ultimately purchase, buyers are forced to become experts on property values.
It's a free country. You can ask any price you want for your house. But your house won't sell until you find a buyer who agrees that it's worth the price you're willing to accept. Smart sellers know that although only one person sets a price, two people - a seller and a buyer - make a sale.
Adverse factors outside your control (such as a flood of houses on the market, high mortgage interest rates, or dismal consumer confidence) may negatively affect your sale price. Even so, you don't have to passively let the real estate gods crush you. This chapter offers proven ideas that you can use to create demand for your house no matter how poor prevailing market conditions are.
You can pick a price for your house in a hundred different ways - visit an astrologer, poll your friends for their guesses about its worth, roll dice, pay for a professional appraisal, grab a number out of your hat, interview dozens of real estate agents until you find one with a suitably elevated opinion of your house's value, and so on. In the final analysis, however, they're all variations of the two pricing methods we discuss in the following sections.
