When it comes to pricing condos or multi-family units the difficulty often arises from a limit on the amount of data that is available when it comes to recent sales. Often times a development may only have 20 - 30 units total or less, so when agents are looking for information to price against, they find themselves stuck. This is a problem that we at Focus 1st have heard asked quite often so we wanted to share the solution in this readily available blog post. The solution is pretty simple and actually makes pricing your listing to compete on the open market simpler than the traditional competitive market analysis.
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​Before we dive into the solution however we want to make one thing crystal clear. Do not mix single family and multi-family properties together in your pricing! We have seen many stats websites and agents alike do this and we cringe every time. If you want to be wrong, combine these properties. They don't price the same and they don't mix when it comes to home valuation.

So if you have a multi-family development that doesn't have enough data to accurate price against sold properties in the same development what do you do? 

You can see from the images above that the condo developments look very similar. If we were to look at a street level you'd find they have the same siding style, similar design and were built only a few years apart. This really lets us have relevant comparisons. Now I'm not adding in a multi-family built 30 years ago because that's a totally different style, inclusion list and feel to these. 
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​Rule #2: Look for these similar year builds in a broader area that a buyer would also consider, but not so wide that you're adding condos that different buyers would be looking for.
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​The goal of this to keep your expansion as on point with what actually matters as possible. Many times you don't need to expand that wide to find more developments. There are times when you'll have to expand further, but be careful to not accidentally include condos in an area that is a different buyer profile. This often happens when you cross school zones, areas of a city or major natural boundaries such as roads or railroad tracks.
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​Below you can see how close the similar condo developments were in this example. This means the data is super relevant and gives us great comparisons for pricing.

Now that you've expanded your search and found the relevant information you needed, now you simply complete your competitive analysis process. The only difference from this point forward is that you'll want to keep a keen eye on the floor level of the units when you're pricing as well as number of bedrooms. There are times you'll find patterns that make the key difference. For example, the graph below created by the Focus 1st - Visual Home Values software you can see that there is still a clear relation to key features like floor level and view.

Pricing multi-family homes usually relies on getting your search right and getting enough data, then all you have to do is follow the competitive positioning mindset and you'll find yourself on track. Remember the three steps: