Why your agent left some sales out
When an agent shows you comparable sales to justify a price, you are looking at a shortlist. Behind it sits a longer list of nearby sales that were considered and set aside. Those rejected sales are not clutter, and asking about them is one of the most useful things you can do in a listing appointment.
Why a nearby sale gets left out
Being close by is not the same as being comparable. A sale half a mile away can sit on the other side of a school boundary, a busy road, or a ridge that separates two different pockets of a neighbourhood. A house that looks similar in photographs may have been fully renovated when yours has not. A sale between family members, or to an investor buying for cash, was never priced by the open market at all.
Each of these is a legitimate reason to keep a sale out of the calculation. What matters is that the reason gets stated rather than the sale quietly disappearing.
| Why a sale was set aside | What it still tells you |
|---|---|
| It sits across a boundary | Where your local market really ends |
| It was fully renovated | What renovation is worth on your street |
| It was a cash or family sale | The lowest price a fast sale would fetch |
| It sold in days, over asking | The price point that creates competition |
| It sat for months with price cuts | The price point where buyers stop looking |
| It is a different era of construction | That buyers here separate homes by age |
The two most useful sales are often the ones nobody uses
Picture two houses on your street. One listed slightly low, drew three interested buyers, and closed in nine days above the asking price. The other listed high, sat for five months, cut the price twice, and eventually closed for barely more than the first one.
Neither is a fair comparison for your home. One sold in a competitive situation, the other was mispriced from the start. An agent who put either into the adjustment would be distorting your number.
But read together they describe your choice precisely. They show the price that attracts buyers quickly and the price that produces months of silence followed by roughly the same result. That is the most practical piece of information in the whole analysis, and it comes entirely from the sales that were thrown out.
What to ask your agent
Ask which nearby sales were considered and not used, and why for each one. A good agent will have an answer ready for every rejection, because they made those decisions deliberately and recently.
The answers tell you two things. First, whether the shortlist was chosen or simply produced by a search that returned everything within a radius. Second, where the true edges of your market sit, which is rarely where the map suggests.
If the answer is vague, that is worth noticing. It does not necessarily mean the number is wrong, but it does mean you have no way to check it. Understanding what makes a sale a genuine comparable makes this conversation much easier to have.
Why this matters more than the final number
Two agents can look at the same street and arrive at prices tens of thousands of dollars apart, and the difference usually comes from which sales each one decided to use. They are not applying different arithmetic. They started from different lists.
Which means the list is the thing to examine. A price you can trace back through specific sales, including the ones that were excluded and why, is something you can evaluate. A price presented on its own asks you to take somebody's word for it, and you will be making a large decision on that basis.
It also helps you read the market yourself when a listing looks mispriced, which is the same skill described in how to tell if a listing is overpriced.
Common questions
Why would an agent not use a nearby sale as a comparable?
Because proximity does not make two homes comparable. A nearby sale may sit across a school boundary or a major road, may have been fully renovated when yours has not, may have been sold between family members or to a cash investor, or may have sold under conditions that no longer reflect the current market. Each is a fair reason to set it aside, and each should be explained rather than left unmentioned.
Should I ask to see the comparable sales that were excluded?
Yes. Asking which nearby sales were considered and left out, and why for each, tells you whether the shortlist was genuinely selected or simply returned by a search. It also shows you where the boundaries of your local market sit, which is often not where you would expect from looking at a map.
Why do two agents give different prices for the same house?
Usually because they started from different sets of comparable sales rather than because they calculated differently. Which sales get included and excluded moves the final figure more than the adjustments made afterwards, so the list of sales is the part worth examining when two valuations disagree.
Sources: NAR buyer and seller guidance, 2026; Redfin and Realtor.com market data, 2026.
This is general information, not financial advice. A licensed local agent can assess the specifics of your situation.
The Independent Agent
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Written by Nikola G.