Why does every agent give me a different price?
How to read an agent's pricing recommendation
Three agents will give you three numbers. The number is not the useful part. The reasoning behind it is.
September 21, 2026 · about a 3 minute read · Keighbor Research
You will get three numbers and they will not agree. The temptation is to pick the highest one, and the reason that is a trap is well known enough that most sellers have heard it. What is less discussed is what to do instead, because "pick the middle one" is not a method either.
A pricing recommendation is an argument. It has evidence, a set of adjustments, a read on the current market and then a choice. If you can follow all four, the number at the end is worth something. If any of them is missing, the number is a guess wearing a report's clothes.
One: which sales did they use, and why those?
The evidence is , and the whole job is which ones. A useful set is homes a buyer would genuinely have considered instead of yours: close by, similar in size and type, sold recently, and on the same side of whatever boundary matters where you live. School attendance lines, a river, a rail line, a edge.
Ask why each one is in the set. An agent who has actually done the work can tell you in a sentence each. Comparative market analysis is the name for the whole exercise. An agent who pulled the first six results will find that question harder.
Two: what did they change, and for what?
No two houses are the same, so each comparable gets adjusted up or down for the real differences: a newer roof, a smaller lot, a finished basement, no garage. The adjustments are where judgement lives.
What you are looking for is adjustments for things buyers actually paid for, and a consistent size for the same difference across the set. A garage worth $18,000 on one comparable and $4,000 on another is a sign nobody wrote the numbers down first.
The question is not "what is my house worth". It is "can I follow how you got there".
Three: what is happening right now?
Sold prices are history. They describe deals agreed weeks or months ago. A recommendation should also say what is happening this month: how long similar homes are sitting, how many are competing with yours, whether the last few went above or below asking.
That read is what turns a range of past sales into a price for today, and it is the part most likely to be missing.
Four: where in the range, and why?
The evidence gives a range. Choosing a point inside it is a strategy, and different strategies are defensible. Pricing at the top of the range is a bet on a particular buyer turning up. Pricing at the bottom is a bet on attention. Neither is wrong, and an agent who presents a strategy as a fact has skipped the interesting part of the conversation.
What this is not
It is also not an estimate of what you keep, which is the price minus eight or nine small ones and is worked out separately. It is not an . An appraiser works for the lender, reaches their number independently, and their job is asking whether a price can be supported by the loan. An appraisal coming in low is one of the five common ways a contract ends. Those are different jobs with different audiences, and a recommendation is not a prediction of what one will say.
Asking all three the same questions
The reason three recommendations are hard to compare is usually that three different things were presented. Asking the same questions of each one makes them comparable, which is all our agent comparison tool is: one set of questions, three columns, and a button that emails an agent the ones they left blank.
The answers are the comparison. The numbers on their own never were.
An underlined word opens what it means, here, without losing your place. Every word a sale uses is a page of its own.
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Everything above happens to one house on one set of dates. A Room keeps that house's steps, papers, people and numbers together, and tells you what needs you today.
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