[5-DayForum] 5-day sale in Charlotte

[Galina Grechka]

Hi Bill and everybody.

I didn’t have time to update forum on Sunday. The final result is: the highest bid $186,500 and I didn’t accept this bid. Before Round-Robin I told bidders that I would take the highest bid only if it’s acceptable for me. 
I will try to briefly describe and analyze my experience with 5-day sale.
On current market my house worth not less than $230,000. I got offer for $231,900 couple weeks ago but buyer wasn’t qualified for financing. When I was researching other ways to sell my house I contacted several companies why buy homes for cash and they offer me $170,000.
Reading the forum I decided to put initial price for my house $99,500 to be safe for getting 25 calls.
I got 40 calls by Friday evening, but a lot of people called just under the impression that it’s impossible. For buyers who know the market the price $99,500 for my home looks the same as $1. So I think that majority did understand that this is just a catch.
I had only 4 groups of people on Saturday and about 10 on Sunday. In addition I allowed couple from Dominican Republic to participate in bidding.
By 6 PM on Sunday I had 12 bids and 11 of them were over “asking price”.
Who came to my house? 50% of those who came were serious buyers with the budget for $150,000 house. They carefully inspect my home, asking all possible questions, but at the same time most of them didn’t know if the countertop was granite or corean and if flooring was ceramic tile of vinyl. Basically they had no idea about the value of my home and were ready to pay as much as their budget allows. 25% of visitors perfectly know how much my house worth but probably though that I’m desperate, so were excepting to get a bargain. These groups of visitors were really interesting to know how low I would go. I didn’t want to play games, so I told that I am not sure how low, but absolutely sure that wouldn’t go below 200,000. This made one lady to get really angry and she asked me how I dare to put such a low price from the beginning. I just pointed her to the book.
I’ve read in forum that often bidders leave fake phone numbers. On my initial bidding sheet all phone numbers were correct and I were able to reach everybody during Round-Robin. Almost all of my “serious buyers” told me during Round-Robin that they would advance their bid, but budget doesn’t allow and they want to be honest about this. I appreciate thear honesty.
 
Basically using the price $99,500 as initial I attracted absolutely improper buyers pool. They were serious buyers but not for my home. If I could change things now I would start with price $149,500. This price still looks very low for my home but it would attract buyers from the right buyer’s pool. Probably and even very likely I wouldn’t get 25 calls until Friday, but the calls I would get would be much more valuable than those 40.
 
Galina


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