When you want to sell your home, you cannot set a price that is too high in relation to the market. Overestimating a property is already taking the risk of not selling it right away. You have to be reasonable and compare with other types of goods. Details from Charlie Cailloux, legal counsel for Particular to particular and the PAP.fr website.
franceinfo: What method should be followed to set the selling price of your property?
Charlie Pebbles: I’ll start with what not to do: often when you sell a property, it’s because you have a project, buy bigger for example. And, we can tend to fix the selling price to stick to the new project, and that does not work. You risk overestimating the value of your home, you will waste time, it’s not a disaster, but it’s a shame! You have to try to be objective.
Agreed, but it’s not easy to be objective!
This is possible because for several years, there has been a database which lists all real estate transactions, this database is accessible to all on taxes.gouv.fr. You connect to your personal space, and you can consult all the sales that have taken place in your building, in your district, in your village for real estate comparable to yours (apartment/house, surface area, year of construction, etc. ). You will quickly get a price range.
How do we refine this price range?
Once we have 5 or 10 examples of comparable sales, we refine with the strong points and the defects. It is essential to take into account the state of the accommodation, its services and its particularities, if there are any. To put it simply, in the worst case, a property that really needs to be renovated, you will apply a discount of around 20%. And in the best case scenario, a refurbished property with great benefits, you will apply a premium of around 20%.
We can give other examples of these capital gains or losses: a ground floor on the street side is around -20%, on the courtyard side it is rather -15%. A beautiful view goes from +5% to +20% depending on the exceptional nature of the view. I cannot make the whole list, but on pap.fr, we offer you an exhaustive table. The interest of building your selling price by following this method is that you will have arguments to present to the buyer, in particular you will be able to rely on sales that have taken place to justify your price.
And we add a margin of negotiation?
Yes it is the custom, but be careful not to exaggerate. If you are in a very dynamic market, you can add around 10%. In a classic market, add about 5%. And if you are in a difficult market where there is little demand, add only 2-3%, or nothing at all, to stick as closely as possible to reality.