When you list your home for sale on the MLS, please do yourself and your realtor a favor and price it right from the beginning.  It should be competitively priced in comparison with similar type homes in your neighborhood and community.  The more it stands out the faster it will sell.  A faster sale will generally net you more money than one where the home languishes on the market and becomes shop worn.  Pricing a home out of its own market only serves to help sell the other larger more expensive homes in the neighborhood.  Pricing the home right will bring the highest number of potential buyers to your home within the first 2 -3 weeks of the beginning of the listing when buyer activity peaks.  If you have very little activity and no offers after that, you should discuss with your realtor about lowering your price.  The key idea in today's buyer's market is pricing ahead of the market.  Because other home owners and their realtors face similar hurdles once a house goes on the market, if you follow the same or similar strategy by just lowering your price, you may face the dilemma of merely moving along at the same pace as your competition, yielding limited results.  Pricing ahead of them by lowering your price below theirs will enable you to get the attention of the limited buyers out there.  This may seem counter intuitive to some people but you have to remember that your goal is to sell the house and this requires an aggressive realistic strategy.  You have to get out of your own way and trust the advice of your realtor. If you wish to make a profit on the sale, you may wish to put off the sale until  the return of a seller's market.  However, if you need to sell the home within the next 1 to 2 years, I advise you not to put off the sale because the market could go lower than it is today.  That strategy would net you less money and with so much precious time gone by.  What other things might you have done with that same time and money had you sold the home earlier rather than later.  As I've written before, waiting for a future more opportune time to sell is more often a vain attempt to time the market and I don't really know anyone that's ever done that effectively, not even experienced investors and fellow realtors.  Oh, there is the occasional lucky person, but if you feel lucky why not go to Vegas instead?

By Bernie Christian