Darryl Davis: Why your pricing talk is not landing with real estate sellers anymore

Here’s a truth that’s going to sting a little: if you’re still walking into listing appointments armed with the same pricing presentation you used in 2021 (or earlier!), you’re bringing a butter knife to a sword fight. The housing market has fundamentally shifted, and the agents who haven’t shifted with it are watching listings expire, price reductions pile up and sellers walk out the door to the agent who “believes in their price.”

Let me be clear — I’m not talking to new agents here. If you’ve been in this business for a decade or more, you’ve seen markets turn before. You survived 2008. You adapted post-COVID. But this current moment has a unique wrinkle that makes the pricing conversation harder than it’s ever been: sellers are armed with a lot of misinformation, but they believe every word with religious conviction.

The Zillow effect on steroids

Every seller in America now has a Ph.D. in Real Estate from the University of Zillow. They’ve watched their neighbor’s home sell for $50,000 over asking in 2021, and they’ve decided that’s the baseline — not the anomaly. They’ve refreshed their Zestimate so many times they could recite it in their sleep. And when you walk in with a CMA that tells a different story, you’re not just delivering data — you’re attacking their intelligence, and even their identity.

Think about that for a moment. When a seller says, “My home is worth $600,000,” they’re not making a market analysis based on data. They’re making a statement about their life, their neighborhood, their taste, their investment savvy. And when you say, “Actually, the data supports $535,000,” you’re not correcting a number — you’re challenging who they are.

This is why the old pricing scripts don’t work anymore. “The market determines the price” sounds logical, but it bounces off an emotional wall. “We need to be competitive” gets translated as “You don’t believe in my house.” And the classic, “We can always come down later” — well, every experienced agent knows that’s the most expensive sentence in real estate.

The doctor analogy

Here’s how I reframe it for sellers, and I’d encourage you to try this approach: Imagine you go to the doctor because you’ve been having chest pains. The doctor runs tests, looks at the results, and says, “You need to make some changes — diet, exercise, medication.” Now, you could say, “I don’t like that diagnosis. I’m going to find a doctor who tells me I’m fine.” You could absolutely do that. You’ll find one, too. But that doesn’t change the reality of what’s happening inside your body.

That’s the overpricing trap that sellers tumble into. It’s finding the agent who tells you what you want to hear instead of what you need to hear. And the agents who do that — who take overpriced listings just to get the sign in the yard — they’re not doing the seller a favor. They’re using the seller’s home as a billboard for their own business while the property sits, gets stale and eventually sells for less than it would have if it had been priced right from the start.

The shift from presentation to diagnosis

Veteran agents need to stop presenting and start diagnosing. The old model was: pull comps, put them in a fancy booklet, show up with a laptop, click through slides and deliver the number at the end like a grand reveal. That model, however, assumed the seller was a blank slate waiting to be educated. Today’s seller is anything but a blank slate. They’ve already done their research (as good or incorrect as it might be). They already have a number in mind. Your job isn’t to educate — it’s to earn enough trust that they’ll let you challenge their assumptions.

How do you do that? You lead with questions, not answers. Before you ever open your CMA, ask: “What do you think your home is worth, and how did you arrive at that number?” Let them talk. Listen. Understand the emotional architecture behind their price. Then — and only then — can you walk them through the data in a way that meets them where they are, rather than where you wish they were.

The three-price strategy

One framework I’ve seen work exceptionally well for experienced agents is what I call the Three-Price Strategy. You present three scenarios: the aspirational price (what they want), the competitive price (what the data supports) and the aggressive price (what would generate immediate activity). You’re not telling them they’re wrong — you’re showing them a spectrum of outcomes and letting them choose how they want to price their home.

Here’s the key: for each price point, you attach a timeline and a probability. “At $600,000, based on current absorption rates, we’re likely looking at 90-plus days on market with a probability of price reductions. At $550,000, the data suggests 30-45 days with strong showing activity. At $525,000, we’d likely generate multiple offers within the first two weeks.”

Now, you’re not arguing — you’re forecasting, and forecasting feels collaborative rather than confrontational. Your seller is still in the driver’s seat, but now they have a roadmap to choose the path they like best while being informed to what it means.

The courage to walk away

Here’s the part nobody wants to talk about: sometimes the best thing an agent can do is walk away from a listing. If a seller insists on a price that you know — based on decades of experience — will result in a stale listing, a price reduction, and an eventual sale well below market value, taking that listing isn’t a win. It’s a liability, and will create more headaches for you than by just walking away.

Your reputation is your business. Every overpriced listing with your name on it is a public advertisement that you either don’t know the market or don’t have the backbone to have hard conversations. Neither message serves you.

The pricing conversation has changed. The question is whether you’re willing to change with it — or whether you’ll keep using scripts from a market that no longer exists, wondering why the results have dried up. The agents who thrive in this next chapter won’t be the ones who tell sellers what they want to hear. They’ll be the ones who earn the right to tell them the truth.

Darryl Davis, CSP, has spoken to, trained, and coached more than 600,000 real estate professionals around the globe. He is a bestselling author for McGraw-Hill Publishing, and his book, How to Become a Power Agent in Real Estate, tops Amazon’s charts for most sold book to real estate agents.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners.

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