Your price isn't a number. It's a position.

"Let's just list high and find out."

I hear it at almost every kitchen table, and I understand why. Nobody wants to leave money on the table. Listing high feels like protection: start there, see what happens, come down if you have to.

The data says the opposite. In the National Association of REALTORS® 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, homes that sold within two weeks got a median of 100% of their asking price. Homes that sat 17 weeks or more got 94%. NAR's own conclusion: the longer a home is on the market, the bigger the discount when it sells.

Six points of asking price on a $600,000 home is $36,000. That's the money listing high was supposed to protect.

Starting high doesn't just cost you time. Your home spends its first weeks, the weeks with the most buyer attention it will ever get, as the overpriced house. Then you chase the market down, every cut shows in the history, and buyers start asking what's wrong with it.

The bracket you price into decides who you're compared to

Buyers don't search for a number. They search in brackets. The price filters on the major home search sites move in steps, commonly $25,000 at a time, and most buyers set a maximum and never look above it.

So every price puts your home into a lineup. Price at the top of a bracket and you show up for every buyer whose search stops there, but you're also the most expensive home on their screen. Every other home in their results costs less. If yours isn't clearly the best one in that lineup, it becomes the one they compare everything against, and then skip.

Drop into the bracket below and the same house can become the best value on the screen. Same home, same buyers, completely different first impression.

How I find the right position

First: what your ZIP code actually sells in your price range. Forsyth County isn't one market. Each ZIP code sells differently in each price range: how many homes sell, how fast, and how close to asking. That tells me how much room the market really gives your home.

Then: where your home fits. Condition: the updates, the wear, what a buyer notices in the first five minutes. Competition: what else a buyer will tour that same weekend, room for room.

Then: the bracket. With both of those in hand, I choose the bracket where your home looks like the best one there, not just a number that sounds good.

What starting too high actually costs

I once worked with sellers on a home near $2 million who chose to start well above the number I recommended. That's their right, and I respect it. It took four months and four price reductions. That's four months of keeping a house show-ready, leaving for every showing, waiting for the phone, and then cutting the price again. It closed almost exactly at the price I'd recommended on day one.

What you see before you list

Before we set a price, you'll see what your ZIP code has sold in your price range, the homes you'll actually be competing with, where yours fits among them, and the bracket I'd put it in and why. You decide. You'll just decide with the same numbers I'm looking at.