Pricing Your Home to Sell: Let Market Trends Guide You

Pricing your home to sell is a complex calculation that aims to hit the sweet spot: not so high that you dampen buyer interest and sit on the market for months, and not so low that you undersell its value or inadvertently telegraph there’s a structural problem or other reason it’s priced to move.

That means knowing which features drive value and which factors might not — not exactly crunching numbers. In fact, 67% of top agents recently surveyed by HomeLight said ineffective pricing strategies are one of the top marketing missteps sellers make, and another 28% of agents say that overpricing is the top reason buyers walk away from a deal.

Agents say sellers often struggle with whether they’ve set the right price, and the housing market’s current state only adds to this confusion. That strong seller’s market where homes sold within a week at full asking price is no longer the case for most parts of the country. Conditions have changed, steadily transitioning from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market. Existing home sales in June 2023 dropped 18.6% compared to 2022, and sales dropped another 5.4% in June 2024, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

That translates to a whole different playing field. In a recent survey of roughly 1,000 top HomeLight network agents, 65% said price reductions are becoming more common, with only 26% reporting that bidding wars are on the rise. According to the NAR, inventory is also back on the rise at 4.1 months, an increase from 3.1 months in June 2023.