You have lived in your home for many years and you may not even think about your neighborhood, the views from your house, or what is around your home on the outside.  However buyers do consider where your home is and what is around it. How much does this affect my home value?

  When going to list your home for sale you have to take into account external influences.  What I mean by external influences I mean items such as:

• cell phone towers
• businesses or stores
• high tension electrical wires and towers
• main roads
• near by train tracks
• churches
• schools
• wetlands
• factories or industrial buildings
• backing to a freeway
• neighbors homes that look like Fred Stanford lives there

It depends on many different aspects on how much these external influences reduce the value of the Michigan home or any Metro Detroit home.  For example here are some of the vary degrees of being on a main road.

• Is it a major 4 or 5 lane road?  Or is it a smaller 2 or 3 lane road?  Is it a freeway?
• Is it a busy road with lots of traffic noise?
• Is the road to the side of the house?  Are you the first house in the sub?
• Is the back yard facing the road?  People with children don’t like that many times.
• Is the road blocked by shrubbery or a wall.   A house with a “barrier” that blocks the view and gives the security of a solid barrier is best.  Homeowners like the security of feeling protected and having a wall or separation from the road.
• Is the front of the house facing the road?
• Is the road a gravel road with lots of dust?
• Is there a hill between the road and the house?

To some people a road doesn’t bother them at all.  To others with kids it does.  One of the biggest things to remember is that a home on a road will be harder to sell in the future. Being on a main road could reduce the value of your home from anywhere from 10% to 30% of a similar home inside of the same subdivision.  You have a smaller pool of buyers for the home because some people will not even look at a home on a main road.  A heavily traveled road usually does reduce the value of your home.

It is the same way with all the other external factors I listed above.  You cannot get the same price as a nearby home that does not have these external influences.  For example there is a subdivision in Plymouth Michigan that has a huge cell phone tower on the west end of the sub.  There are about 20 homes that their values are lower than homes on the opposite end of the sub because they either back up to the cell phone tower or have a view of the tower.  

You have to be realistic when pricing your home and take a reduction in your list price otherwise you will be sitting on your home.

You may have gotten used to the big store, electrical lines, or noisy road and think it is no big deal, but to buyers it is.  You will eliminate some of them.  You have a limited pool of buyers.  Some buyers will pull up to the house see the high school next door, or the high tension wires and never even walk into your home. That is just the way it will be.  That outside influence may stop the buyer that otherwise loved your home.

Your house is most likely going to sell for less money than other similar homes in the area.  It is a very hard thing to swallow, but it is true.  Pricing your home right, will keep you from getting low ball offers months from now.

I hope these article on how external factors affect the price of your home at least opens your eyes to what you have lived with and think is no big deal to a buyer.  My goal is to get your home sold at the highest possible price.  Not to lead you on with a pie in the sky price that you have no chance of getting because of a industrial building or train track nearby.

Russ Ravary

Your local Michigan that has helped hundreds and hundreds of sellers get their homes sold at top prices.

Give me a call to go over your situation and how to prepare your home for sale

(248)310-6239