A comparable sale from February is not worth what it was in February. That sounds obvious written down, and it is still the single most common error we see in pricing — from owners and, frankly, from agents.
Why stale comparables mislead
A sale tells you what one buyer paid, on one day, under one set of financing conditions. Move the rate half a point and that buyer’s budget shifts by tens of thousands. Pull four sales from a six-month window and you are averaging four different markets.
We weight recent closings heavily and treat anything over ninety days old as context rather than evidence.
What we look at, in order
- Closings within half a mile in the last 60 days
- Pending sales, which show where the market is now rather than where it was
- Active competition, because your buyer is choosing between you and them
- Expired and withdrawn listings, which show where the ceiling actually sat
The number that matters more than price
List-to-sale ratio. If homes in your bracket are closing at 97% of asking, pricing 8% above the comparables does not buy you a negotiation — it buys three weeks of silence followed by a reduction that signals weakness.
A reduction in week four costs more than pricing correctly in week one, because the reduction is public and the mispricing is not.
What we do differently
We bring the file. Every valuation includes the comparable sales, the adjustments we made and why, and the range we think is defensible. You are free to disagree with it, and some clients do — but the conversation is about evidence rather than optimism.