How to sell without chasing the price down
Overpricing costs more than underpricing. The evidence from our own closed sales.
The most expensive mistake a seller can make is listing 15% high “to leave room for negotiation.” It does not leave room. It removes the home from the search results of every buyer whose price filter stops just below the asking price — and those were your buyers.
What we see in our own numbers
Across our closed sales, homes priced within 5% of their eventual sale price took a median of 38 days on market. Homes initially listed more than 12% above their eventual sale price took 147 days and closed, on average, 4% below what the correctly priced group achieved.
The overpriced listing does not just take longer. It sells for less, because a home that has been on the market for five months acquires a reputation, and buyers negotiate against that reputation rather than against the property. Every price cut is public, and every day on market is on the listing.
Price from closed sales, not from active listings
Ask your agent for the closed comparables — actual recorded sale prices for similar homes in similar buildings or subdivisions within the last twelve months, adjusted for floor, exposure and condition. If they show you asking prices from a portal instead, they are showing you what other sellers hope for, not what buyers paid.
Then spend money in the right two places
Photography and cleanliness. Not a renovation. Professional photographs and a floor plan roughly double showing requests in our experience, and a deep clean plus decluttering costs very little and changes the first ten seconds of every showing. A new kitchen almost never returns what it costs at resale. These figures come from our own demonstration portfolio.
Want this applied to a specific property?
Send us the listing — ours or anyone else’s — and we will run the numbers and tell you honestly what we think.
