Pricing so nobody feels cheated

How comps set the price

A buyer will pay about what other buyers recently paid for houses like yours, and that's the whole logic of comparable sales. I look for homes near yours that closed recently, with similar size, age, lot and condition, and then adjust for the differences: an extra bathroom, a new roof, a shop building, a busy road.

Listings that are still for sale tell you about competition. Pending sales hint at direction. Closed sales tell you what buyers actually paid. Closed sales carry the most weight.

Good comps are close, recent and alike. When the best matches are a little old or a little far away, I'll say so in the CMA and show you how much that uncertainty could move the number, rather than pretending the price is more precise than the evidence allows.

What the CMA shows you

A comparative market analysis is the written version of that work. Mine lists every comp I used, with address, sale price, date and the adjustments I made, plus the homes I left out and why.

Both of you receive the same CMA in the same email, and nobody hears my opinion first. If one of you thinks a comp is wrong, say so on the shared thread and I'll answer there. Seeing the reasoning, and not just the number, is what lets two people who no longer trust each other's judgment accept the same price without feeling outmaneuvered.

It's yours to check. Drive past the comps, look them up online, ask me why one is in and another is out, and I'll put every answer on the thread so the other spouse reads the same explanation.

When you want a neutral number

I'm the listing agent, and some people will always wonder whether a listing agent's price is shaded. That's fair. If either of you wants an independent figure, hire a licensed appraiser. I'm not an appraiser, and my CMA isn't an appraisal.

Decide in writing who orders the appraisal, who pays for it, and what it's for. You might agree that the appraised value becomes the list price, or that it's a floor you won't go under, or only that you'll both read it before deciding. Each version works, as long as you pick one before the report comes back and not after you've seen the figure.

Write the pricing plan down

Price fights come back every time the house sits for a while. The cure is to decide the whole plan once, in writing, through your attorneys or mediator, before the first showing, so that a price drop is something you already agreed to rather than something one of you has to ask the other for. These are the steps I suggest:

1. Agree on the starting list price from the CMA, the appraisal, or both.
2. Pick a review date. If there's no acceptable offer by then, the price drops by an amount you name now.
3. Pick a second review date and a second reduction, so the plan keeps going without a new negotiation.
4. Name a price at or above which you'll both accept a clean offer.
5. Agree that any change to this plan needs both of you in writing.

What condition does to the number

Comps assume a house in roughly the shape of the houses it's compared to. If yours needs a roof, has a soft spot in the bathroom floor or hasn't been painted in twenty years, the price has to account for it. Buyers will.

You have two honest choices. Fix the things that hold the price down before listing, with a written budget both of you approve, or price the house as it stands and let the buyer take on the work. I'll show you both versions side by side, with the repair costs and the likely difference in price, so you're choosing between real numbers and not between two people's hunches about what a buyer will forgive.

Whichever you pick, put it in the pricing plan. A list price set for a finished house doesn't fit a house that never got finished.

Why the market gets the last word

Nobody's opinion sets the sale price, mine included. Buyers do. If the house is priced above what buyers in your town are paying, it sits, and every month it sits costs both of you another mortgage payment, another insurance bill and another month of not being able to move on.

Recent days on market for each town are on the areas pages. They help you set review dates that fit your local market rather than a guess, and they give both of you the same outside yardstick for deciding when a quiet stretch is normal and when it means the price is wrong. Costs matter too. When an Oregon court divides property, it considers reasonable costs of sale and taxes (ORS 107.105), so the price that nets the most isn't always the highest asking price.

If one of you wants to keep it

A buyout is a different pricing question. There's no buyer setting the number, so the two of you, your attorneys and possibly an appraiser set it. Whether a buyout value should subtract the costs a sale would have carried is a question for your attorneys.

I can give both of you the same CMA for that conversation, with the same comps I'd use to list the house, so the buyout figure and a hypothetical sale price start from one set of evidence. Read how a buyout price is set first.