It’s tough comparing your home to other homes with an unbiased opinion. I’ve been through dozens and dozens of homes where the home owners were convinced the home down the street that is bigger than theirs and sold a few weeks earlier is nowhere near as good as theirs. They’ll come up with every insignificant reason in the world to try to justify it too. The proper list price is one of the most important decision a seller can make when listing their home.

Here’s a true story. A couple of years ago I got a call from a very nice older lady in Mississauga. She said she was a widow and her family were concerned about her living on her own, so far away from them – her family lived about 45 minutes away. Against her true wishes she decided to sell and asked me to evaluate her home. It was the Spring so the market was very active. I brought the recent comparable sales with me to the listing presentation and suggested a listing price in the $575,000 range. It was a detached bungalow on a nice lot and the price was based on a neighbour in a slightly smaller home who had sold a month earlier for $525,000. She took my advice and interviewed 3 agents and a week later she called me in for a second interview before hiring me. This is unusual but I have no problem whatsoever when sellers want to be comfortable with their decision. We talked about price again and it was at that time that she said she would like to list at $700,000 as $575,000 was way too low. I was shocked when she told me this but it’s her home, she can list at whatever price she wants, all I can do is give her advice and recommendations – it’s up to her to take that advice. I said to her if you really think the home is worth that much, I’ll agree to list the home for that price, as long as we go in with the understanding that we’ll give it a week and if there’s no interest, very few showings and no offers we’ll reduce the price to where it should be. She agreed. Another week later I stopped by her house to actually sign up the listing. A couple of days earlier a larger home down the road had listed for $650,000 so SHE decided because of this, $700,000 for her place was too low. She now wanted $750,000! My instincts told me to walk away but she was such a nice lady and I really felt bad about her situation so I reluctantly agreed to list it at $750,000, with the verbal agreement that we would lower the price as mentioned earlier. I thought we’ll let the market tell her the real value of her home as she obviously thought it was a palace.

The home stager did her thing, the cleaners came in and cleaned top to bottom, the photographer did a fantastic job and a few days later we listed. As soon as we did virtually nothing happened – a couple of showings from agents and both of them asking me if I was insane! I promoted it everywhere and did an open house the first weekend. I think only one or two people showed up at the open house and both were neighbours curious to see why the house was so expensive. A week passed and nothing. I talked to her about the price drop and she said let’s give it another week. Another week passed and then finally a MONTH later she agreed to sit down with me to discuss the sale. She was mad at me for not bringing in buyers and I had to reiterate what we had talked about previous to listing about overpricing the home. By the end of the meeting she agreed to only come down to $660,000 – still almost $100,000 over priced! The next 6 weeks went by with nothing happening and she decided to come down to $630,000. Getting closer but still too high AND I only had 2 weeks left in my contract to try and sell the home. We met just before the listing was about to expire and asked her if she would like to relist at a lower price and she said she had decided to take the home off the market and we would relist in the fall. My contract expired on a Tuesday and the next day the home was listed with a new agent. She had already met the agent while we were still under contract which is a violation of our code of ethics. The agent should have know not to do this but hey, it’s real estate so I wasn’t surprised. The big surprise was when they listed for $650,000 which was $20,000 higher than my last listing price. She must have completely thought I was incompetent! Over the next 3 months I watched the listing. The new agent did absolutely nothing to sell the home. In fact she didn’t even update the listing after the first week of her contract. The listing expired again and a new another new agent came in and listed the home for $550,000. I think her family stepped in and told her to stop the foolishness, price the home correctly and sell and move on. She finally sold for $545,000 about 6 months after I originally listed it. The ironic part was she called me after her sale to apologize to me. She said she should have listened to me from the beginning and she told me I was by far the best out of the 3 agents. Moral of the story, the numbers don’t lie!