Here's a novel idea: Pre-market your home to test your list price.
Offered by online real estate brokerage Redfin, "Price Whisperer" engages a Redfin agent in your area to test your planned home selling price before 250 active buyers.
The buyers are polled with one multiple-choice question "Would you pay this price for this home?"
The allowed answers are "Yes," "No," or "Maybe."
The homeowner goes to the Redfin site to provide the desired price and the home's address.
The Redfin agent contacts the owner directly to get photos and finalize the price. Redfin then emails up to 250 active buyers asking whether they would pay that price, the exact address is not disclosed, only the neighborhood.
Two days later, Redfin provides the seller a recommendation on the likelihood of selling at the test price, including a report with the number of buyers polled, and the percentage for each answer.
Buyers are also asked if they want to tour the home.
The service is free and there is no obligation to sell the home or use a Redfin agent.
What do buyers know?
To the point, the Whisperer could be useful as a guesstimate tool for the growing volume of homeowners who were underwater on their mortgage, even six months ago, and now wonder if they can sell their home for a profit.
Quiet whispers
Whisperer alone will only give them a ballpark analysis.
"Everyone wants to get as high a price as possible for their home, without the risk of a price reduction," said Bridget Frey, vice president of engineering at Redfin.
She also said, "Price Whisperer does what a traditional agent does - asks around about what the market will bear - just with much more precision and scale using technology."
The press release also said, "With home prices increasing so fast - more than 18 percent in the past six months - comparable sales are quickly out of date."
That's not necessarily true. In a rising price market, a good comparable analysis takes into account the rate of price growth, time on the market and other factors based on current and evolving market conditions that could affect a home's selling price.
Prospective buyers, who are voting on the price, likely can't perform such an analysis on their own because they don't have the same insightful experience or market data access as a real estate agent.
Redfin says if the homeowner decides to list the property in the MLS with a Redfin agent, the company immediately alerts the buyers who expressed interest in order to facilitate a sale.
Redfin is, however, clear about multiple lising service (MLS) marketing.
It recommends that homeowners list their property with the local MLS before selling. Selling directly to a buyer without listing the home on the MLS is called a "pocket listing," and generally does not benefit the seller, except in extreme cases.
Without MLS exposure, a pocket listing does not get marketed to the masses of homebuyers and their agents who peruse the MLS. Without mass marketing sellers could leave money on the table.
Price Whisperer is perhaps best considered as another tool to use in a professional comparable market analysis.
Even then, all new and unproven marketing techniques should be used with caution.
