Why did two agents give me different prices?
Two agents can look at the same house, use the same recent sales, and arrive at prices tens of thousands of pounds apart without either of them being wrong. The difference is almost never the data. It is which sales they chose and how they adjusted them.
Which means the useful question is not who is right. It is which of them can explain how they got there.
Where the difference really comes from
Four decisions sit behind every valuation, and each one can move the number.
Which sales to include. Nearby homes are rarely identical, so every agent chooses. One picks a sale a mile away that matches your layout. Another picks the house on your street that has an extra bedroom. Both are defensible and they will not produce the same figure.
Which sales to leave out. Every set has candidates that were considered and rejected. A sale that went between family members. One where the buyer was relocating and paid to be finished. A house that sold as-is after sitting empty. Excluding those is correct. Not excluding them is also a choice.
How to adjust for differences. If a comparable is smaller, older or has one fewer bedroom, that gap has to be priced. Reasonable people use different rates and the effect compounds across several sales.
How much to weight recent movement. A sale from six months ago in a market that has shifted is not the same evidence as a sale from last month, and how heavily to discount it is a judgment call.
The gap is not the problem. The unexplained gap is.
A forty thousand difference between two agents who can each walk you through their reasoning is a useful thing to have. You can see both arguments and form a view.
The same difference between two agents who simply state their numbers is not information. It is two assertions, and the only way to choose between them is to decide which person you found more convincing. That is how sellers end up picking the highest number, which is the one decision that reliably costs money.
Why the higher number is often the weaker one
Agreeing with a seller costs an agent nothing at the moment of the decision.
The bill arrives weeks later, when the house has not sold, and by then the listing agreement is signed and you have stopped comparing anyone. An agent who tells you a number you want to hear is making a promise that the market has to keep on their behalf.
This is not always cynical. Some agents are optimistic. But the incentive runs in one direction, and it is worth knowing that before you sit down.
Which agent's valuation should I trust?
The one that shows its working. Ask each of them which recent sales they used, which they considered and left out, and why. An agent who can answer that clearly has done the analysis. An agent who cannot has produced an opinion with a number attached to it, and you have no way to check it.
Should I choose the agent who gives me the highest valuation?
Not on that basis alone. The highest number is the easiest thing for an agent to offer and the hardest thing for the market to deliver. Homes that sell quickly tend to achieve more than homes that sit, so a price that stalls a listing for months can end up producing less than a realistic price would have. Ask what the number is based on before treating it as a reason to choose.
What should I ask an agent about their valuation?
Three things. What is the range rather than the single figure, because a range shows how much the evidence supports. Which sales did you leave out and why. And what would have to be true about this house for it to reach the top of the range. Those three answers tell you more than the number does.
What to do with two different numbers
Put them side by side and compare the reasoning rather than the figures.
If both agents used the same sales but adjusted differently, ask each to explain the adjustment. If they used different sales entirely, that is the more interesting difference and it is worth understanding why.
And if one of them arrived with an explanation you can still follow that evening, when neither of them is in the room, that is the number you can act on. The other one only exists while its author is standing in front of you.
The Independent Agent
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Written by Nikola G.