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Selling Your Own Home And The CMA
For sellers on their own and those sellers who use the services of real estate agents in transacting their business, the CMA (comparative market analysis) is regarded as the lynchpin of real estate deals. In some ways, it is the driving document that can seal in or unravel a transaction. Buy and sell tool The CMA is both a selling and a buying tool, utilized both by the seller and the buyer. As a selling tool, it needs to be interpreted by a professional person in the real estate business. Sometimes, a seller or a buyer does the interpretation, but with utmost objectivity. As one expert declares, it works like a double-bladed sword, and can cut both ways. As a buying tool, the CMA is respected by the buyer and the buyer's agent. As the seller will use the CMA to look for the highest price for his property, the buyer will also use it to find reasons to decline the offer or to wrangle for the lowest possible price. The seller and agent will use the CMA (and other tools of the trade) to find out where the property (home) stands in comparison with the others on the market, and those that had been recently sold. This exercise is to determine the highest possible asking price of the house. At the same time, the buyer and his agent will use it to find ways to reduce the amount of the offer. Information Inside the CMA are facts and figures that can be qualified or quantified. It has capsule information like number of bedrooms and baths, square footages, sizes and dimensions of rooms, amenities such as fireplaces and pools, home age, taxes, agent contact information, and many more. They also include information on houses currently listed and those already sold in a given area. They can include data back in time as long ago as a month or a year. It can cover just the area around the house or the whole subdivision. However, the CMA used for public consumption does not list every piece of information obtained by sellers agent. The CMA has the what, when and where data but does not give out information on who (sellers identity), and why (reason for putting up the house for sale). The reason is mainly for the sellers privacy and giving the buyer undue advantage. Perception The things not included in the CMA are the intangible things a buyer perceives on seeing the home itself. It could be the drive-up appeal, the colors, the d‚cor, the ambience, and many more. This is the reason why houses with identical features on their CMAs may have different prices offered on each. Perception sometimes is crucial to the decision of the buyer. In the end, when all things are equal in selling your own home, a personal touch you did (and definitely not found in the CMA) may spell the difference between a sale or an outright rejection. |
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