Every home that sits on the market longer than it should has a story, and the story usually starts with price. Not always too high — sometimes misread, mispriced by comparison to the wrong set of sales, or listed in a way that made buyers uncertain about what they were getting. Price communicates before any buyer sets foot inside, and it communicates loudly.
In Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire, the difference between a home that generates competing offers in the first week and one that accumulates days on market often comes down to where the list price sits relative to the buyer's internal comparison set. We analyze the market with the precision that question requires — and we give you our recommendation in plain language, not in a spreadsheet you'd need a real estate license to interpret.
This is the stage where the most sellers disagree with us. It is also the stage where being right matters most.
Most agents present a price range and let the seller pick the top. We do something different. We present the analysis, explain the specific sales we weighted most heavily, walk through what happened to similar homes that were priced at each end of the range, and give you our honest recommendation — including what we've seen go wrong when sellers price above it.
A home priced correctly from day one in a town like Andover, North Andover, or Windham NH tends to generate early traffic, real offers, and often multiple competing bids that drive the final number above list. A home priced aspirationally tends to sit, collect a market adjustment that gets noticed by everyone watching, and ultimately close for less than the correct price would have produced on day seven.
The market does not reward patience on an overpriced home. It rewards accuracy. Our job is to give you the analysis that makes accuracy possible — and to give it to you honestly, even when the honest number is lower than you hoped.
A comparative market analysis is only as good as the judgment behind it. Here's how we build ours.
These are the pricing conversations we have most often — and the honest answers behind them.
That's a completely understandable position, and we hear it often. The honest answer is that the market doesn't know your number. What we can do is run the analysis and tell you clearly whether the market supports it — and if it does, exactly how to get there. If it doesn't, we'd rather have that conversation with you before you list than after 30 days on market with no offers.
Your neighbor's sale is one data point. What matters is condition, lot, interior layout, upgrades, time of year, how well it was prepared for market, and what else was available to buyers that week. We'll tell you exactly how your home compares — and whether your neighbor's number is achievable, aspirational, or irrelevant to yours.
Sometimes. Not always. In strong-demand pockets of the North Shore and southern NH, deliberate strategic pricing — listing slightly below fair market value to generate multiple-offer scenarios — produces higher final sales prices and cleaner contracts. In slower segments or at certain price points, the same strategy leaves sellers without competing offers and with a single buyer who knows the advantage is theirs. We read the current market before recommending this approach.
This is more common than sellers expect, especially in fast-moving markets where recent sales do not yet reflect current buyer competition. When an appraisal comes in below the contract price, we walk through the response strategically — challenging the appraisal with comparable data when warranted, renegotiating with the buyer, or helping the buyer bridge the gap. We have managed this scenario many times. It is not automatically something that ends a sale.
"The sellers who get the best results are the ones who price with the data, not against it. Our job is to make sure the data is right — and that we're honest when it tells us something inconvenient."— Lisa Sevajian
We'll run the comparable sales analysis for your home — specific, current, and explained clearly. No obligation to list. Just clarity on what your home is actually worth in this market, right now.
— Lisa Sevajian
lisa.sevajian@exprealty.com · 978-457-3406
Top 1.5% of over 1,500,000 Realtors · Brokered by eXp Realty