Cape Coral Florida's Real Estate Guide

When selling your Cape Coral home, you will have many decisions to make. The most important decision you will face is choosing the right Cape Coral realtor to sell your home for you. The next biggest decision will lie in choosing the appropriate price for your home. In today's real estate market, you cannot afford to choose the wrong price for your home. Price your home too high and it will sit on the market forever. Price it too low and you will lose money in the transaction. This is what makes home pricing a true art form. 

Employing the right realtor in the sale of your Cape Coral home will make a huge difference when pricing your home. A knowledgeable realtor will perform a CMA (Comparative Market Analysis) on your property. A CMA contains information on active, pending, sold and cancelled listings in your area.

• Active listings let you know what properties you will be competing with when your home officially goes on the market.
• Pending listings aren't really good for property price comparison but they do indicate the direction of the market.
• Sold listings are really where the comparison comes into play. Look for sold listings that have comparable features to your home and you can see what price they sold for.
• Cancelled listings can give you an indication of what not to do when pricing your home. Most of the time listings are cancelled because they were priced too high, but there are other reasons like seller's remorse and unfulfilled repair requests.

Using this information, you can compare your home to homes that are like yours. Take into consideration the age, square footage and location of your Cape Coral home and find recently sold listings that are similar to it. This will indicate a good price point for your home.

Be realistic when choosing a price for your home. A CMA is an important tool and it is wise to use this information to your advantage, even if you think you could get more money for your home. Like I mentioned before, if you price your property too high, your home will sit on the market. Instead of eventually taking your home off the market because it didn't sell or selling your home for much less than it is worth, heed the CMA and price your home competitively to other homes in the area. You will be glad you did!

Home Pricing Resources:

Pricing Houses to Sell by Elizabeth Weintraub, About.com

FREE Online Property Value Wizard

Yahoo! Real Estate Pricing Checklist