I Sold My Home Myself. Here’s How I Set the Price

Key points

• It’s important to set the price of your home just right from the beginning so it doesn’t sit on the market too long or brings you less profit than it could.
• I kept track of other houses in my neighborhood before selling my own and considered the time it took properties to sell.
• I based my pricing on the final sale price and on what homes were priced for that sold quickly.

I sold my house recently, and I got exactly the price I wanted for it. The amount I walked away with was very close to me asking the price, and my house sold quickly.

While I didn’t have a mortgage on this house to pay off, I made the money I needed from the sale. The proceeds will provide enough to make a down payment on a new home when I find one — which is exactly what I was hoping for.

Since I sold the house without a real estate agent, I had to decide how to price the property. Here’s how I did that to make sure I was setting the right price.

1. I tracked homes for sale in my neighborhood

The most important thing I did to determine how to set the price for my house was to keep careful tabs on what similar properties were sold for. Seeing how many people are actually willing to pay for houses like mine is the best indicator of market value.

Many of the homes in my neighborhood are pretty similar, so this was easy to do. In the months prior to the time I got ready to sell my home, I set up alerts on a real estate website for every time a home in my area went on sale. I was then able to follow the progress of the house to see what happened to it.

2. I focused on the time it took to sell each property

As I watched houses for sale in my neighborhood, I looked how long each property sat on the market. The average time houses were on the market as of spring 2023 in the US was 54 days, so if a house was on the market for longer than that, I knew it was probably not priced correctly. And, when a home sold much more quickly than average, I looked at whether it was priced below market value.

I wanted to avoid a situation where I listed my home at a price that was too high and it sat on the market for a long time — both because I was eager to move and also because this usually leads homeowners to drop the price or accept a much lower offer.

Buyers often lowball sellers who have dropped the price repeatedly or who have had a property sit on the market for a while since buyers may start to assume sellers are getting desperate. I wanted to avoid this, which was why tracking the time it took properties to sell was important to me.

3. I used the final sale price to guide me

Finally, with a focus on the properties that sold quickly, I looked at what those homes actually ended up selling for and priced my house just a little bit higher than that amount so I’d have some room to negotiate.

With this strategy, I ended up being able to sell in just nine days for the price I wanted, and the proceeds were sitting in my savings account ready to help me buy a new house. It ended up working out well for me, and anyone who is selling their own house may want to devise a strategy of their own that incorporates some of the same techniques.