Several times recently I’ve been in the position where I have either turned down listings or not “gotten” them because I’ve refused to list them too high.  While we may be in a bizarre competitive ”Buyer’s market” in much of the Phoenix market right now, buyers still aren’t willing or able (we’ll talk about appraisals later) to pay too much for a house.  Sometimes, I’ll if push comes to shove I’ll allow a seller to list the property higher than I think the market will allow for as long as we have an automatic price reduction in place.  Now, all you purest REALTORS who are up in arms that I just said that, I do know that the first couple of weeks is when we’ll get the most showings and activity and I make sure a seller is fully aware of that.  But if they still persist and I think more reason can be seen later I’ll allow for it.

So once the house is listed how do we tell if a house is over-priced?

That’s when I use what I call the Rule of Tens.

• If the house is on the market for 10 days with no calls or showings…it’s over-priced
• If the house has 10 showings and no offers…it’s over-priced

That’s it.

Plain and simple…my Rule of Tens.

On a totally personal note:  10 is my youngest daughter’s favorite number.  Her name is KiersTEN and this year she’ll be 10…on 10/10/10.

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