Value Range Marketing... For Home Sellers & Buyers Alike

Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage has recently embraced a concept known as Value Range Marketing.

What is Value Range Marketing?

It is an alternative way of marketing a property in this challenging real estate market.

Here's how it works:

The seller decides upon a range in which he/she would consider an offer.  In doing so, they are inviting any interested buyer(s) to make them an offer and they will in turn either accept it or respond to it (counter).

It sets up parameters for negotiation.

The theory around this strategy is that no one knows for certain what a true price for a home is until the buyer and the seller agree.  If the seller gives a range, it allows an interested buyer to know from the beginning the parameters of the seller's expectation of value.

Value Range Marketing, therefore, has the potential to attract a wider pool of buyers and invites more offers than a "fixed price".  It also has the potential to significantly reduce the number of Days on the Market (DOM).

Some real estate agents do not yet comprehend the concept or are unwilling to embrace positive change.  Their misunderstanding may be compounded by the fact that the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) only allows a single price posting, not a range as we are discussing here.  For that reason, any property listed using Value Range Marketing will have the following disclosure prominently posted in the first line of REMARKS:

"Sellers are willing to entertain offers between $________ and $________."

...and the price posted in the MLS will be the first amount, or the lower dollar figure.

EXAMPLE: Recently a home was listed in my area using Value Range Marketing ($325,000 - $375,000) and had multiple offers. Agent #1 submitted an offer at the lower dollar amount, claiming the offer was "full price".  But since the pricing was a range, any offer less than $375,000 should not have been deemed "full price".

After being faced with a counter-offer, agent #1 then admitted that she did not understand how Value Range Marketing worked.

She had clearly failed to read, or simply chose to ignore, the first line in the remarks section of the listing data.

Unfortunately for the buyers working with agent #1, they were not properly informed and so they lost the home to one of the other buyers, whose agent understood the concept right away and its value for her clients.  That agent's buyers negotiated immediately within the range posted in the listing data and came to a quick and fair agreement with the sellers. Win-Win.

Oh yes...and the Days on Market?... 6.

Value Range Marketing works.