How I Decide What a Home Should Actually List For

Market value is the price a buyer is willing and able to pay for your home. My job is to figure out where that number is likely to land, then build a strategy around it without leaving money on the table.

That sounds simple. But this is where sellers can get pulled in the wrong direction.

They might be thinking about what they paid, what they spent renovating, what a neighbour sold for two years ago, what BC Assessment says, or what they need to walk away with. I understand all of that matters to the homeowner. It doesn’t necessarily matter to the buyer.

So when I sit down with a seller, I’d rather show them what the market has actually been doing and work forward from there.

I Want to See Three Different Market Outcomes

I usually start with three groups of properties:

• homes that sold
• homes that are still active
• homes that expired or were terminated

Each group tells me something different. The sold properties tell me what buyers actually agreed to pay. The active listings tell me what buyers can choose instead of your home right now. The expired and terminated listings show me where sellers asked the market for something it wasn’t willing to give them.

I’m not interested in handing a seller twenty listings and calling that analysis. I’d rather pick a few useful properties and explain why each one matters. If I can show you a similar home that sold, another one currently sitting on the market, and another that failed to sell, you start seeing the market much more clearly.

Then I can ask a simple question:

Which outcome do you want?

A Comparable Has to Be Comparable in the Ways Buyers Care About

Bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, age, and lot size matter. But that’s not the end of the comparison. Two homes can look similar in the MLS data and feel very different when you’re actually standing in them. I see that across Fleetwood, Fraser Heights and Tynehead, where a quieter interior street, a more usable lot, better frontage or a functional mortgage helper can separate properties that look very similar on paper.

I look at things like the street, traffic exposure, frontage, lot shape, fencing, privacy, quietness, layout, condition, renovation quality, basement utility, mortgage-helper potential, and how the property will actually function for the buyer who’s likely to purchase it.

This is also why I walk the house before I get too confident about a pricing recommendation. Condition matters. Cleanliness matters. How the property presents in real life matters.

The data gets me into the range. Walking the property helps me understand how confidently I can position it within that range.

Renovation Is Where Sellers Can Get Confused

A good renovation helps. No question. If I have two genuinely similar properties and one’s nicely renovated while the other’s dated, I’d expect buyers to notice the difference.

The problem is when the renovation starts getting treated like it overrides everything else about the property.

I recently looked at two properties that made this obvious. One was a fully renovated, non-conforming duplex on roughly an 11,000-square-foot lot. The other had roughly 15,000 square feet of land and was conforming. The renovated property was asking more than $200,000 above the other one. The second property sold.

That doesn’t mean renovation has no value. It means the renovation doesn’t change the dirt underneath the house, the legal use, the lot, the street, or the other fundamentals buyers are comparing.

You can’t isolate the kitchen and price the whole property from there.

I Look for What Buyers Have Actually Been Choosing

I don’t want to invent a theoretical buyer profile. I look at the homes that are selling and ask what they have in common.

Are most of the successful properties offering mortgage helpers? Do they tend to have a certain number of bedrooms or bathrooms? Are buyers consistently choosing a certain type of lot, layout, condition, or housing configuration?

Then I compare the seller’s property against what the market has actually rewarded.

Sometimes that pattern is obvious. Sometimes it isn’t. And if the subject property is unusual, there may not be a clean answer.

That’s where judgement comes in.

I can make the best recommendation the evidence supports, but I’m not going to pretend an unusual property can be priced to the dollar from a spreadsheet. We make our best call, launch the property, and pay attention to what the market tells us.

The Active Listings Matter Because Buyers Can Buy Them Instead

Sellers sometimes focus almost entirely on sold properties. I care about the solds too. But I also want to know what your buyer can purchase today.

If another home is genuinely similar to yours and priced better, that matters immediately.

A buyer doesn’t care that we think your property should be worth more. They can go buy the other one. That’s why pricing has to be competitive in the market that exists now, not the market we wish existed.

Expired and Terminated Listings Can Be Just as Useful

A listing that didn’t sell can teach me a lot. I want to see what they asked, how long they sat, whether they changed the price, whether they terminated and relisted, how they presented the property, and what happened after.

From the buying side, I look at exactly this history.

If I see a seller has been chasing the market, relisting, reducing, or sitting for a long time, I know there may be leverage there for my buyer. I don’t forget that when I’m representing the seller.

I don’t want to hand the other side ammunition they can use against us.

I Usually Give the Seller a Range

I don’t walk into the kitchen pretending there’s one magic number. I usually present a range. Then I look at what comparable homes are actually selling for relative to their list prices, what the current competition looks like, and what kind of market we’re in.

From there, we decide how to position the listing. Once an offer actually arrives, the question changes, because I evaluate the whole offer beyond the price.

Staying reasonably close to market value is normally the safest approach. In a faster market, there may be a reason to position slightly lower to generate more attention. There may also be situations where I think we can position slightly higher and still have the market take us seriously.

But I don’t like getting too far from the evidence in either direction. Once we start experimenting just to see what happens, we’re gambling with the listing.

The Seller’s Timing Changes How Much Room We Have

I need to know what the seller is actually trying to accomplish. Are you right-sizing? Moving up? Cashing out? Do you have somewhere else to go? Do you have time to wait? Do you need the equity from this sale for the next purchase?

Those answers can change the strategy.

If the seller has plenty of time, we may have a little more room in how we position the property, but I still do not want to drift far from what the market evidence supports.

If the seller needs the property sold within a tighter window, I’m going to be much more careful about wasting the strongest part of the listing.

For most properties, I pay close attention to the first couple of weeks. That’s when the listing is fresh, and serious buyers in that category are most likely to notice it. I don’t want to casually burn that exposure.

What You “Need to Get” Does Not Establish Market Value

This is one of the hardest conversations sometimes. A seller may tell me they need a certain number. I understand why. Maybe there’s a mortgage to clear, another purchase coming, a retirement plan, or simply a financial target they’ve built their next move around.

But a buyer doesn’t pay more because the seller needs more.

If the market doesn’t support the number today, one possible answer is not to sell today. Sometimes the market has to catch up. That can be a completely reasonable decision.

My job isn’t to force a transaction. My job is to understand the seller’s problem and see whether there’s a solution that actually works.

BC Assessment Does Not Decide What a Buyer Will Pay

I don’t put much weight on assessed value when I’m deciding what a home should list for. BC Assessment reflects a uniform valuation date, while I need to understand what buyers are doing in the current market. What matters more to me is what comparable buyers have actually paid, what they can currently buy instead, and how the subject property compares.

The market is fluid.

An old sale can still be useful, but it has to be understood against what’s changed since then. The same goes for almost every number a seller brings me. I want to know what happened in the actual market.

The Sale Should Be Looked at Together With the Next Purchase

Sometimes sellers get too focused on squeezing every possible dollar out of the sale and lose sight of the bigger move. In a slower market, there can be real opportunity for someone right-sizing.

If you’re moving into a more expensive home, the gap between what you sell for and what you need to pay may be more favourable than it was in a hotter market.

If you’re downsizing, you may be able to price your existing home realistically while negotiating aggressively on a stale listing on the purchase side.

That’s why I want to know what happens after the sale. Selling for the highest theoretical number isn’t necessarily the same thing as making the best overall move.

Once We Launch, I Listen to the Market

The original pricing recommendation isn’t something I defend out of pride. If the market gives us a workable offer, I also look at whether another round of negotiation actually improves the seller’s position. Once the listing is live, we start getting new information. The first thing I watch is showing activity.

If nobody is coming through, I go back through the listing itself first. Are the photos good? Is the home clean? Is it easy to show? Is the presentation strong? Would a floor plan help? Is anything in the marketing making the property harder to understand?

I want those questions answered before I blame everything on price.

But if the listing is being presented properly and buyers still aren’t coming through, price becomes very hard to ignore.

On the other hand, if we’re flooded with serious showings immediately, that can tell me we may have positioned the home too aggressively. The response matters.

Not All Feedback Deserves Equal Weight

Someone saying, “It’s too expensive,” isn’t enough for me. I want to know why. What are you comparing it with? Which other property would you buy instead? Why do you dislike the layout? What exactly made you hesitate?

Buyer feedback becomes much more useful when there’s reasoning behind it.

One buyer’s personal preference isn’t the market. But if several serious buyers make the same comparison, or choose the same competing property instead, now I have something worth paying attention to.

Second showings matter too. Offers matter. The behaviour behind the feedback usually tells me more than the comment itself.

I Do Not Want an Overpriced Listing Just to Have the Listing

Sellers sometimes say, “I’m not in a rush. Let’s put it high and wait.”

That’s not automatically a strategy I want to participate in. I know what I do when I’m representing the buyer.

I pull the property history. I look at the original price, reductions, relists, terminations, and how long the seller has been trying.

If that history tells me the seller has been chasing the market, I use that information when I negotiate.

So I’m very aware of what we may be handing to the other side when we overprice a listing and let it sit.

If a seller wants to test higher than I recommend, and there’s a clear agreement upfront about when and how we’ll move toward the range I believe the market supports, I may consider it.

What I don’t want is an open-ended experiment with no plan.

The Seller Still Makes the Decision

I present the data. I explain what I see. I show the sold properties, the active competition, and the listings that failed. I explain how the subject property compares and where I think the market is likely to respond.

Then the seller decides.

That’s an important distinction.

I’m not there to pressure someone into listing at my number.

My job is to find out what problem they’re trying to solve and figure out whether I can offer a strategy that realistically helps solve it.

Final Thought

Market value is the price a buyer is willing and able to pay for your home.

Our job is to find out what that is and do everything we reasonably can to avoid leaving money on the table, by being realistic and confident in the strategy.

There will always be some uncertainty. There will always be judgement involved. But there’s a difference between making a property-specific decision from the evidence and simply experimenting with the seller’s biggest asset.

When you start experimenting, you are gambling.

Frequently Asked Questions

Trying to decide what your home should actually list for?

If you have a property in mind, we can look at the solds, current competition, failed listings, the property itself and what you are trying to accomplish before deciding how to position it.

Talk through the pricing