Pricing your home

The asking price is the first thing a buyer learns about your home. It sets who walks through the door and what they expect when they arrive.

What the number is built from

Price starts with the homes near yours that have already sold. Recent sales close to you, in homes built like yours, tell us what buyers have actually paid. We read the current listings alongside them, since those are the homes yours will be compared against on a Saturday afternoon. Then we account for what makes yours different. The addition off the back, the corner lot, the year the roof went on, the kitchen nobody has touched since it was built. Every adjustment gets shown to you with its reasoning attached, and you should be able to repeat the argument for your own price to a neighbour over the fence.

What the first weeks tell you

A listing is never busier than in its first weeks. That attention arrives whether or not the price is right, and it does not come back. Showings that turn into second showings mean the price is where the market agrees. Showings with no return, and traffic that thins after the first weekend, are the market answering in the one language it has. We watch the pattern with you and say what we are seeing while it is still early enough to act on.

The cost of starting high

A high price is tempting because it looks like room to move. What it buys is time spent on the wrong buyers. The people who would have bought your home never see it, because it sits above the band they searched. The people who do see it compare it against homes carrying more, and yours loses that comparison every time. Meanwhile the days on the listing accumulate in public, and a home that has been available a while gets read as a home other people have already declined.

When a price changes

Sometimes the market moves under a listing. Sometimes the price was set wrong at the start. A price change is an ordinary instrument and there is nothing to apologise for in using one. It works when it happens early enough to reach a new set of buyers, before the listing has gone stale, and when it moves far enough to cross into a different search band instead of trimming an amount nobody notices. We will tell you when we think that moment has arrived, and we will tell you why.

Where to begin

A pricing conversation starts with a walk through the home and a look at what has sold around it. Start a home evaluation, or tell us about the home below. The number comes out of that, and so does the reasoning behind it.