If you're selling your house, one thing you got going against you is the declining market. It is not going to get better for a very long time (at least the rest of this decade but most likely more). Your best bet is to reduce your price well below the competition. In fact, if it is low enough, it may even spark a bidding war which will lift the price a bit. Buyers decide what they want to buy based on prices relative from one house to another; they are looking at alot of houses. If there is a house like yours that is priced a little lower, they will make an offer on the other house rather than yours. Their offer will be lower than asking and if the price is accepted, the sale will be the new comp for your house; you will most likely sell for less than this house when all is said and done. You need to understand though that your house is not worth what you think it is and this is self evident when you see how long it sits on the market. Letting your house sit while you are in denial is the worst thing you can do. Your house is losing money every day that passes and if you really want to get the best price, you have to sell quickly. If you really need to sell, make your cuts now; it will still be overpriced, but the house will stand out to the very few who are still determined to buy. You will be getting less than you expected, but a whole lot more than if you continue to stay in denial. If you don't cut the price now, you will be cutting it much more later as the buyer pool shrinks, the interest rates rise further and we head into a recession.
I understand some of you due to lack of equity don't have the luxury of lowering your price to what would be required but one thing you can do is sell it yourself! It's not as hard as you think. You can use www.mlsisland.com (thanks to a reader) which will allow you to list on MLS for a flat fee. Cutting out the Realtor you can pass that savings onto the buyer of your house. There aren't many foolish buyers out there right now, you need to get realistic before it's too late. Think of the equity in your house as a bag of gold dust that has a hole in the bottom of it and you are stuck somewhere out in a tornado; there are people there that are willing to buy the gold from you at a slightly lower price than what you believe it should be worth. You can hold out, but the gold dust is pouring out fast which means that it is losing value fast. You can take their price now or you can take it later; what do you think the smartest thing to do will be?
I know it's hard to accept that prices are going to fall dramatically. I find that many people that own a house here don't think the prices will fall much; They really believe that the prices will come down maybe 5% at most. I don't argue with these people because I know they aren't looking to sell and it would only upset them to believe that their house is losing value; they really aren't losing anything but equity that was never really there to begin with in the first place....but for those people who are selling, think about this: 6 years ago if someone told you that the value of your house was going to double in the next 5 years, would you have believed that? Of course you would have wanted to believe that, but I'm sure you would have logically doubted it. Now that it has risen that much, you should rethink the very real possibility that the value of your house will drop significantly.
If we go by what history has been teaching us, the bottom of this bust will be more than a decade away. So if you plan to sell within a fiscal decade, it's in your best interest to do whatever it takes to sell ASAP and that means lowering your price low enough to undercut the competition. The way it looks to me is that even though the inventories are so high right now, many have taken their houses off the market under the belief that come spring time, the market will come back; when it does come, the inventories will be MUCH higher and you will have to cut your price so much more! I like to look at this as "if you are greedy, you will get less".