"My job is to get you the best possible outcome — not to make you feel good for 30 days while your listing goes stale."David DonovanSarasota & Manatee Counties
Sellers Hub / Pricing Strategy
Selling With David · Pricing StrategyYou can have the best photos, the best staging, and the most aggressive marketing in Sarasota — and if the price is wrong, none of it matters. This is exactly how I build the number, and why the early days of a listing matter most.
You can have the most beautiful photos, the best staging, and the most aggressive marketing in Sarasota — and if the price is wrong, none of it matters. Buyers today are sophisticated. They're watching the market, they have access to Zillow and Realtor.com, and they know when a home is priced above what the data supports. The moment your price feels off, they move on.
The early days of a listing are often the most valuable time you have. That's when buyer attention is typically highest — agents have you on auto-alerts, buyers have been waiting for something to match their criteria, and the market pays attention. If your price is right, that early attention can generate competition and strong offers. If it's wrong, that attention fades and you're left with a stale listing and increasingly nervous price drops.
A home that lingers on the market and eventually sells at a discount often started above what the comparable sales supported. I've seen sellers "try" a higher number and end up netting less than they would have with correct pricing from day one — because the stigma of a long days-on-market follows the home into every negotiation.
You can always come down, right? In practice, every price reduction signals to buyers that something is wrong. Why has this been sitting? Is there a problem with it? What aren't we seeing? That skepticism is hard to undo, and it gives buyers leverage they wouldn't have had if the home was priced correctly from the start.
Underpricing has its own risk — though in a well-marketed listing, a strategically low price can generate multiple offers and bid the final price up above asking. When market conditions support it, this is a deliberate pricing strategy I discuss with sellers directly — the difference is that it's intentional, not an accident.
The foundation of every pricing conversation is a Comparative Market Analysis — but a defensible number is built from six inputs, not one.
What similar homes in your neighborhood actually sold for in the last 60–90 days. Not list prices. Not Zillow estimates. Actual closed sales pulled directly from the MLS — square footage, bed/bath count, lot size, age, condition, and location.
The homes your buyers are comparing you to right now. If three similar homes are listed at $390,000 and yours is at $420,000, buyers will tour them first — knowing what's active and pending tells me where buyers are actually pulling the trigger.
I calculate the average and median $/sqft for recent comparable sales and overlay your home's condition and upgrades to determine where you should land on that spectrum.
How long homes are sitting before they sell in your neighborhood right now. If the average is 12 days and a listing has been up for 45, that's a pricing problem — a direct read on how hot or cool your specific micro-market is, and how much cushion to build in.
If your buyer is financing, the home has to appraise at or near the sale price. I price with the appraisal in mind so a deal doesn't fall apart three weeks before closing.
Many buyers filter searches by price range, and portals often offer preset price breakpoints. A home priced just above a common breakpoint can be left out of some searches, so I check where nearby thresholds sit before setting the number.
Some agents tell sellers what they want to hear on price to win the listing — a tactic the industry calls "buying the listing." They price it high, knowing you'll be excited, then chip away at the price over the following months. It's one of the worst things that can happen to a seller.
I'll give you the honest number, backed by data, even if it's not the number you hoped for. My job is to get you the best possible outcome — not to make you feel good for 30 days while your listing goes stale.
Urgency creates competition among buyers from the first showing.
Competition is what creates the best possible outcome for you as a seller — not a theory, what I see in the data every time.
"My job is to get you the best possible outcome — not to make you feel good for 30 days while your listing goes stale."David DonovanSarasota & Manatee Counties