Pricing is the single biggest lever you control when selling your own home. Price too high and your listing sits, gets stale, and buyers assume something’s wrong. Price too low and you leave money on the table. Here’s how to land on the right number.

Start With Real Comparable Sales

Look at homes that actually sold — not just what’s currently listed — within the last 3–6 months, within about a mile of your home, with a similar square footage, bed/bath count, lot size, and condition. Active listings tell you what sellers hope to get; closed sales tell you what buyers actually paid. Your local MLS data, which we can help you pull once you’re listed, is the most accurate source.

Adjust for Condition and Upgrades

A comp with a renovated kitchen or a finished basement isn’t a fair comparison to your home unless you make an adjustment for it. Common ballpark adjustments: a fully updated kitchen can add 3–5% of value, a finished basement adds a percentage of its usable square footage, and deferred maintenance (roof, furnace, windows) should be subtracted, not ignored.

Understand Buyer Psychology Around Round Numbers

Buyers filter searches by price range in $25,000 or $50,000 increments. A home priced at $301,000 gets filtered out of searches capped at $300,000, even though the difference is trivial. Pricing just under a round number often puts your home in front of more buyers.

Watch Days on Market as a Signal

If you’re not getting showings in the first 1–2 weeks, that’s usually a pricing problem, not a marketing problem. Homes get the most attention when they’re new to the market — if that window passes without traction, a price adjustment is almost always more effective than better photos or a new description.

Avoid the Two Most Common FSBO Pricing Mistakes

• Anchoring to what you paid or what you’ve invested. The market doesn’t care what you spent — only what a buyer will pay today.
• Starting high “to leave room to negotiate.” This usually backfires: it just means fewer buyers ever see the listing in their search filters.