04/19/2026
Your agent walked into that listing appointment with actual data.
Closed sales. Same street. Same square footage. Same condition. Sold within the last 90 days.
You walked in with a Zestimate screenshot and a renovation receipt.
Here's the thing sellers never want to hear: the appraiser doesn't care about your receipts.
The buyer doesn't care about your neighbor.
And the market hasn't cared about 2021 prices since 2021.
A comp is a closed transaction. Similar home. Similar location. Recent sale.
That's it. That's the whole definition.
Not what an algorithm estimated.
Not what you need to break even.
Not what someone "across town" got in a different school district, different condition, different everything.
Your agent isn't lowballing you. They are literally incentivized to sell your home for as much as humanly possible.
They're protecting you from the worst outcome in real estate, sitting on the market so long that buyers assume something's wrong, then selling for less than you would have if you'd just listened on day one.
The comps don't lie. They just tell you things you don't want to hear.
