The Results of a Real Estate Study

There is an interesting article in today's Seattle Post Intelligencer about the results of a real estate study undertaken by Redfin. They compiled data to determine what's the best way to sell a house in this market. Here are the highlights:

TACTICS FOR SELLING A HOME

# Don't shoot too high -- homes priced right to begin with often sell for more than those that have to come down from an unrealistic initial price.

# Price for the Web -- prices just over a certain threshold, such as $350,000, will be excluded from Web searches capped at that amount, cutting potential viewings by as much as 7.1 percent.

# Debut on Friday -- a study showed that listings debuting on Friday got an average of 7.7 percent more visitors in their first week than those hitting the market on Thursday, which was the worst day.

# Stay engaged -- studies show engaged sellers tend to sell their homes faster and for more money than typical sellers.

# Market online -- post listings to sites that do not get automatic feeds from multiple listing services. A study showed each Craigslist posting, for instance, generated 11.9 visits to a listing's Redfin page.

# Don't move -- a study found vacant homes were 9.5 percent more likely to cut their prices than occupied homes.

# Wait to sell until nearby foreclosures are off the market -- a study found a foreclosure cost neighboring sellers an average of $5,000.