If you could control the demand for your home, wouldn't you want to? Well, that is somewhat of a rhetorical question because any homeowner who could would want to turn on a buying frenzy for their home. What many home sellers don't realize is that they truly can control demand for their home with one simple factor.

This one simple factor is price. This is probably not a surprise to you because basic economics dictates that there is one thing that affects demand more than anything else- and that one thing is price.

How you price your home is the most important factor in how much demand you'll have for it. For example, some folks take the tactic that they should always start their price high knowing full well that the home is overpriced. They think that it's fine to start high; they think to themselves, "We can always come down on price later."

The problem with the high-price, maybe-we'll-get-lucky scheme is that the amount of time to sell the home can be several times longer than it would be with a home that was priced right in the first place. The main reason for this is the supply and demand of your home. Each home has its own supply of buyers. Another way to look at it is that the demand for your home is directly proportional to how closely you price it to its Fair Market Value.

You can effectively control the demand for your home and how quickly it sells with the right asking price. If you price the home at fair market value, you'll be attractive to 60% of the available buyers for a home in your range. On the contrary, if you price it above fair market value, you'll reduce the number of buyers for your home to 10% or less of the available pool. Over pricing your property shrinks the prospective buyer pool by more than 50%. A property priced just 15% over the market value appeals to no one in your property pool.

So, is a high price more important to you than selling your home quickly (or at least in a reasonable amount of time)? You'll have to be the judge of that. It is absolutely imperative that you price your home at Fair Market Value from the beginning of the listing. This strategy will almost guarantee that you'll sell your home for the highest price in the least amount of time.

What most home sellers don't know is that, often, 80% of the effectiveness of marketing a home is linked to what you price your home from the very beginning. You set a precedent to an extent.

The true Fair Market Value of your home is subjective and determined by what a buyer is willing to pay and you (the seller) are willing to sell for in today's market conditions. That's the true Fair Market Value of your home, and it is based on the needs and wants of both parties involved in the transaction.

With the Internet available to most people, today's buyers have all the information that you have. They will base their offer on a comparison of your property to other sold (or available) properties in your area. They will evaluate your home against the others, comparing the cost verses the value, based on their needs.