Pricing By Range Newsday – July 20th, 2007

I’ve seen this range pricing on several homes that have popped up on MLS and I was wondering what the hell was going on. Now I see, it’s some new thing.

 Rather than listing the home at a fixed price of $329,000, what if Katen listed her home in a price range, from $299,000 to $329,000? That way, Katen wouldn’t miss out on buyers searching for properties under $300,000, but who might be willing to creep up a little bit if they fell in love with the right house. “It got the house a lot more exposure,” Buckridge says.

But, what’s the point really? Are you trying to get into people’s searches by putting the low part of the spread into their max price? What is that going to do for anyone?

I don’t know what other people do, but ,when I search, my max price is still way more than I want to pay. As you can see from my MLS reports, I search with a max of $600K. My actual max is really around $400K. There’s no way I can swing a $600K, but setting my max there opens up the search a bit. I can see houses that may be way overpriced and I can watch them if they come back to earth. Plus it gives me a baseline for comparison.”Ranging” a home price so that it just falls beneath my max isn’t going to draw me in.

In the same vein, Guardino says floating the low number can leave prospective buyers feeling stung when their offers aren’t accepted. “You run the risk of leaving prospective purchasers very disappointed, feeling like there was a bait and switch,” he says. “If there is a price range, people are going to feel like an offer within that price range should be accepted. Someone could put in what they felt was a high bid within the range, and not get it, and be very upset with their brokers.”

Quite frankly, if I’m interested in a home with a price range, I’m bidding at or below the low part of the range. Putting a price range out there and then not accepting a price that’s in that range when there are no other bidders strikes me as false advertising.