What actually determines my home's asking price?
Comparable sales. Recent closed transactions of homes genuinely similar to yours in size, condition, age, and location, with dollar adjustments for the differences.
That's it. What you paid, what you owe, what your neighbor thinks their house is worth, and the town's assessed value all sit outside the calculation. Buyers and appraisers work from closed sales, so a price built on anything else eventually collides with that.
The word doing the work is comparable. Two houses of identical square footage in the same town can be genuinely different properties. One backs to conservation land and the other to a commercial lot; one has a 2024 kitchen and the other a 1998 kitchen. The adjustments between them are where pricing is actually done, and they're the part an automated estimate cannot see.
Why isn't my assessed value a good starting point?
Because it was set for a different purpose on a different timeline. Your town assesses every property at once using mass appraisal, frozen to April 1 of the tax year, and updates that only every few years. The NH Department of Revenue Administration measures the resulting gap through an annual ratio study, and in most towns assessments run below market.
Assessed value works as a sanity check. It works poorly as a pricing tool. It has no way to know what's been renovated, what the lot backs onto, or what buyers did in your neighborhood last spring.
How much does overpricing actually cost?
More than most sellers expect, because the first cost is time and the second is price.
The pattern is predictable. A home listed above what the comps support gets its strongest exposure in the first two to three weeks, when it's new to every buyer with a saved search. If the price is wrong, those buyers pass. Showing traffic thins. The listing accumulates days on market, which every buyer can see, and that number starts reading as a signal that something is wrong with the house.
Then come the price reductions, which tell the remaining buyers to wait for the next one. Homes that follow this path frequently sell for less than they would have with an accurate price on day one, and take months longer to do it.
This matters more in 2026 than it did in 2021. When inventory was at its tightest, an overpriced home could still get rescued by a buyer with no alternatives. With homes taking meaningfully longer to sell than they did two years ago, that rescue is less reliable.
Not sure where your house actually sits? I'll pull the real closed comps near you and show you the adjustments and the reasoning behind the range. Two business days, no obligation, no pressure to list.
What do sellers actually want from an agent?
National Association of Realtors research is consistent on this: sellers' top priorities are help marketing the home to potential buyers, pricing the home competitively, and selling within a specific timeframe.
Those three are connected, and the order matters. Marketing determines how many buyers see the home. Price determines whether the ones who see it act. Timeframe is the outcome of getting the first two right.
Most of what sellers get pitched is the first item: photography, video, social reach, and open houses. That work is real and it matters. But marketing can only bring buyers to a house; it can't make them pay above what the comps support. An excellent marketing plan on an overpriced listing produces a lot of showings and no offers.
What is a comparative market analysis, and what should it contain?
A CMA is the analysis behind the number. A useful one shows you:
- The actual closed sales used, with addresses, close dates, and sale prices, so you can look them up yourself
- Why each one was selected, covering proximity, size, age, style, and condition
- The specific adjustments made and the reasoning for each, in dollars
- Current active and pending listings, since those are your competition right now
- A range, with a view on where in that range your house sits and why
A valuation that arrives as one number with no visible reasoning is an opinion. You should be able to check the work.
What determines the range within a price band?
Once the comps establish a band, a handful of things move you within it:
- Condition and updates. Kitchens, baths, roof, heating system, windows. Buyers price deferred maintenance harshly and pay less for updates than they cost.
- Location within the town. Assigned school district, road traffic, what the lot abuts, distance to a town center.
- Timing. New Hampshire has a real seasonal rhythm. Spring is the deepest buyer pool; late fall and winter are thinner.
- Competition. What else is actively listed in your band right now, and how yours compares to it.
- Presentation. Photography, staging, and how the home shows in the first two weeks.
Should I price low to start a bidding war?
Sometimes, in the right conditions, though it's a strategy rather than a default. Underpricing works when a home is likely to draw multiple simultaneous buyers. That usually means a well-presented property listed in spring, in a price band with thin competition.
It works less reliably when buyer traffic is thinner, when the home has a feature that narrows its audience, or when comparable inventory has recently increased. In those conditions, a low list price sets an anchor rather than starting an auction.
The honest version: this decision depends on your specific house, your band, and what's competing with you the week you go live. Anyone who recommends it before looking at your comps is guessing.
