Vancouver house sells for $567K over listed price

A Vancouver real estate agent who has just sold a home for $567,000 over its published listing price says that underlisting is an accepted selling strategy in the real estate market.

"If the product's right, the timing's right and the inventory is right, it's the right strategy," Paul Eviston told CBC News.

Nevertheless, Eviston said, he would hesitate from using the term "underlisted" in the case of the home at 65 E 26th Ave., originally listed at $1.6 million, which sold for $2,167,000.

"I wouldn't call it underlisted," he said. "I would call it strategically listed to garner the interest level that we wanted to get the result that we got."

Sitting two blocks west of Main Street — both a physical and psychological divide — the home is in an area where prices often exceed $2 million, but the selling price was still a record high, Eviston said.

"It was the highest price per square foot ever achieved for an East Vancouver home," he said.

"We did some very significant marketing on that home. We did a lot of different things to get the buzz going on it."

The listing price attracted around eight interested buyers, Eviston said. That quickly dropped to three serious buyers when it became clear no one was going to secure the house at or near its asking price.

Eviston stands by his strategy on the property, and in the end, he said, it's the market that dictates price.

"We definitely felt that the value was somewhere between where we listed it and where we sold it," he said. "Pricing it where we did was a strategic position to take in the market, and [we felt] that the market would no doubt dictate what the value of the home was."