If you are looking for a bargain on a home, it might pay to search for some key phrases in the “for sale” listing.
For example, listings with the words “priced to sell” or something similar can get you an average discount of 8.5%, or around $38,000, off the purchase price of a median-priced home, according to recent research from Realtor.com.
Here are the phrases that Realtor.com identified as more likely to indicate a lower listing price on a property compared with what you would pay for other homes with similar configurations in similar neighborhoods:
- “Priced to sell”
- “Bargain”
- “Under valued”
- “Fixer upper”
- “Contractor special”
- “Handyman special”
- “Under priced”
Homes in the South and Midwest offer the biggest bargains when the phrase “priced to sell” is in the listing. The biggest average discounts are to be found in:
- Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway, AR: 23%
- St. Louis, MO-IL: 18.7%
- Charleston-North Charleston, SC: 15.9%
On the other hand, discounts are much more modest in Florida and the West. The phrase “priced to sell” nets you the following price breaks in these areas:
- Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL: 3.2%
- Seattle-Bellevue-Everett, WA: 3.7%
- Salt Lake City, UT: 3.8%
Overall, Sarasota, Florida, has the highest share of listings with the phrase “priced to sell,” at 6.7% of listings. Long Island, New York, has the lowest share, at 1.9%.
Strangely enough, the fewer listings that use the phrase “priced to sell” in a given market, the larger the discount is likely to be for properties that do employ the phrase.
Realtor.com says it is unsure why this is true, but one possible explanation is that when buyers see the phrase rarely — as opposed to seeing it regularly — they might expect an especially big discount when they do see it, believing such a price break is likely to be especially justified by the property’s condition.
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