Sunday’s NY Times real estate section has an encouraging (for sellers) article on multiple bids resuming for city apartments . Before you raise your price and call in the movers, though, read the fine print:
Brokers say that bidding wars are almost always set up by listings that are “priced well,” and by that they mean 20 to 30 percent below the high-water marks of early 2008.
Jonathan J. Miller, the president of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel, estimated that two-thirds of the roughly 4,000 apartments for sale in Manhattan are priced too high for the current market.
“So,” Mr. Miller said, “you have this weird situation right now where you have above-average inventory, but people are fighting over the ones that are priced correctly.”
I’ve preached pricing for probably eight years now, but it’s even more important in this market than during the boom. Read the entire article (use Google News, search “New York bidding wars”” if you aren’t a registered Times user and want to skip the hassle of becoming one) and then perhaps sit down with your agent and plot a new pricing strategy for next year.