What decides what you net
The findings behind the pricing conversation — sell-through, days on market, and what separates a listing that sells from one that doesn’t.
1. The market pays about 95% of your asking price. Asking more doesn’t move it.
This is the finding that should govern every pricing conversation, and almost nobody in this market has the data to state it.
Across 6,205 waterfront listings in Units 1–6 since 2000, sellers achieve close to the same share of whatever they are asking at the time: 95.5% on a first listing, 95.6% on a second, 95.3% on a third, 95.9% on a fourth. The market has a price. Asking above it does not raise what you get.
What asking more does is push the sale into the future. A home that sells on its first listing closes 76 days after coming to market. One that takes four attempts closes 9.1 years after it first came to market.
2. Whether that wait costs you money depends on the direction of the market
Averaged across twenty-six years, relisting looks neutral. Split by the market a seller first listed into, it is anything but.
| First listed into | Sales | Final price vs original ask | Lost over 25% | Years to sell |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A falling market (2005–08) | 575 | −31.6% | 56% | 8.1 |
| A rising market (2012 onward) | 391 | +17.3% | 5% | 3.1 |
Same behaviour, opposite result. In a rising market you can overprice, wait, and let the market catch up to your number. In a falling one you are chasing it down — and a price reduction only helps if it outpaces the decline. Most sellers cut in increments large enough to feel like a concession and small enough to stay above the market, so each new price is overpriced again by the time it goes live.
One property in this dataset first listed above $1 million in 2006 and went under contract at $1,050,000. The deal collapsed when the market did. It was relisted and cut repeatedly for six years, and closed in April 2012 at $420,000.
Today supply sits at 6.4 months — neither clearly rising nor clearly falling. That is precisely when the cost of being wrong is asymmetric, and when pricing right the first time matters most.
3. Half of listings fail. Nine in ten properties succeed.
Only 51% of waterfront listings since 2000 ended in a closing. But of the 2,070 distinct properties behind those listings, 90% eventually sold. Just 209 never did.
The gap between those numbers is owners who failed, came back, and tried again. A failed listing is rarely a failed property. It is almost always a mispriced one.
4. Expensive homes do not sit longer. Large ones do.
Median days on market barely moves across a five-fold price range — 48 days under $400,000, 40 days at $600–800,000, 49 days above $2M. But by size it climbs steadily: 40 days under 1,500 sq ft, 51 at 2,000–2,500, 71 above 3,500.
What price does change is the discount. Above $2M, sold-to-list falls to about 94%. If your home is large or built around one owner’s specific requirements, expect the calendar to be the constraint rather than the price.
5. Your buyer is comparing your lot to lots you have never seen
Two houses on the same street can differ by more than half a million dollars in land value. Canal width, usable seawall, lot position, the measured run to the river, overhead clearance, water depth at the seawall. A CMA built on square footage and bedroom count misses all of it — in either direction.
I hold those measurements for every parcel in Units 1–6. That is what your pricing is built from.
6. Get the inspection before the buyer does
The highest-return thing a seller can do, and the one most skip. A buyer’s inspector finding something expensive after you have accepted an offer inverts the leverage completely — and you will have to disclose it to the next buyer anyway. Disclosed problems get priced into offers. Discovered problems get renegotiated, usually for more than the repair is worth.