Home Selling Step 5: Price Your Home to Sell (Texas CMA, BPO, and Appraisal Reality)

If you want to price your home to sell, this is the step where you stop guessing and start thinking like the market, the lender, and the appraisal process. Pricing is not a number you “pick.” It’s a strategy decision that determines:

• who shows up to view the home,
• how buyers behave during negotiations,
• whether the appraisal supports the contract price, and
• how much leverage you retain once you’re under contract.

Most sellers focus on the list price. The list price matters—but the outcome is decided by what happens after you go live: buyer demand, inspection pressure, appraisal constraints, and time-on-market behavior.

Step 5 Comes After Steps 1–4 for a Reason

You should not be trying to price your home to sell before you know whether selling makes sense, what you will actually walk away with, how ready the home is, and what representation structure you’re using. That’s why this series is sequenced the way it is:

• Home Selling Step 1: Deciding Whether to Sell Your Home (and Whether It Makes Sense)
• Home Selling Step 2: Understand Your Net Proceeds From Selling Your Home
• Home Selling Step 3: Prepare Your Home to Sell (Before You Hire a Realtor)
• Home Selling Step 4: Choose a Realtor to Sell Your Home (or Go FSBO, Flat-Fee, or Hybrid)

Step 5 is where the decision becomes operational. Pricing is the lever that makes everything else work—or quietly makes everything harder.

Pricing Is Not a Number — It’s How You Price Your Home to Sell

If you want to price your home to sell, pricing has to survive multiple systems at the same time: buyer behavior, lender rules, and appraisal defensibility. You are not “choosing a number.” You are choosing a position the market will accept and a price the lending process can support.

Pricing Is Where Net Proceeds Become Real

Earlier in this series, we walked through closing costs and net proceeds—including the reality that “equity” and “usable equity” are not the same thing once selling costs and potential concessions are applied.

This is the step where that math becomes operational. The list price is not just a marketing number. It becomes the starting point for:

• commission and closing-cost calculations,
• buyer expectations and buyer behavior,
• inspection leverage, and
• the net proceeds you actually walk away with.

If the net proceeds math in Step 2 only works at one specific price—and only if nothing goes wrong—then the pricing decision needs to be made more conservatively or the timing decision needs to be revisited. Pricing is not the place to solve a gap that Step 2 already exposed.

When sellers talk about pricing, they often mean “what do I want?” The market does not care what you want. The market cares about:

• what buyers can qualify for at current rates,
• what similar homes have actually closed for,
• how your home compares in condition and features, and
• what the appraisal process will support.

If you want to price your home to sell in Abilene and the Big Country, pricing has to survive three realities:

• Buyer psychology (how people react to a number in a given neighborhood and price band)
• Inspection leverage (how much pressure you face after the offer is accepted)
• Appraisal constraints (whether the lender’s value opinion supports the contract)

Texas-Specific Reality: You Can’t Recreate Sold Prices the Way You Think

Here is the uncomfortable truth that drives everything in this step:

In Texas, most sellers cannot recreate what homes are actually selling for. You can usually see what homes are listed for, but not reliably what they closed for.

Texas is a non-disclosure state. That changes the entire pricing landscape. Even when public records show something, the information can be incomplete, delayed, or distorted. Many people assume the county (CAD) “knows” sale prices. Often it does not—unless the information is voluntarily provided.

This is why sellers who try to price off public portals alone often anchor to the wrong dataset. List prices are not sold prices. Pending prices are not sold prices. And the difference between “sold” and “supported by appraisal” is where deals get painful.

What a CMA Really Is (and Why It Matters)

A CMA (Comparative Market Analysis) is not an appraisal. It is a market-based pricing model that uses comparable properties to estimate what your home should sell for in the current market, with adjustments for condition, features, and location.

A strong CMA accounts for more than a few nearby listings. It considers:

• Closed sales (what actually happened)
• Pending sales (what is likely happening)
• Active competition (what buyers can choose instead of your home)
• Expired/withdrawn listings (what the market rejected)
• Time-on-market patterns (how quickly similar homes sell when priced correctly)

If you want to price your home to sell, you are not just trying to be “right.” You are trying to set conditions where the right buyers show up, and where the contract price is defensible all the way to funding.

BPO vs CMA: Similar Tools, Different Purpose

A BPO (Broker Price Opinion) is typically ordered by a third party as a standardized value opinion. For most sellers, the key distinction is simple: a CMA is built to help you price and negotiate in the current market; a BPO is built for third-party risk decisions. Neither is an appraisal.

The Most Important Principle: The First Price Is the Most Important Price (When You Price Your Home to Sell)

Sellers often think they can “start high and come down later.” In practice, the opposite tends to happen:

• Overpriced homes sit longer.
• Time on market creates buyer skepticism (“what’s wrong with it?”).
• Weaker buyers show up later (or buyers get more aggressive).
• Price cuts come after leverage is lost.
• Final sale price often ends lower than if it had been priced correctly from the beginning.

To put it plainly: overpriced often sells for less—eventually. Not because the house got worse, but because the market re-anchors around “stale listing” psychology and negotiation pressure increases.

Why Overpricing Persists (Even When Everyone Knows Better)

Sellers often ask: “If overpricing is such a bad idea, why does it happen so often?”

The answer is uncomfortable—but important.

Many REALTORS®, including experienced and high-producing ones, will take a listing they know is overpriced. Not because they believe it will work, but because:

• if they don’t take the listing, another agent will,
• listings generate buyer calls and future business, and
• no transaction means no one gets paid.

This does not mean agents are dishonest. It means incentives exist.

From the seller’s perspective, this creates a quiet risk: an agent may agree to a price they know will fail simply to secure the listing—fully aware that the price will be reduced later, after time-on-market has already weakened your position.

This is where the quality of representation actually shows. A REALTOR® who is willing to push back early, risk losing the listing, and force a hard conversation about price is protecting your outcome—not their ego.

Underpriced vs Overpriced: The Myth Sellers Need to Drop

Many sellers fear being “underpriced.” In a normal market, “underpriced” usually does not mean you lose money. It usually means you create competition:

• more showings
• more offers
• stronger terms
• fewer inspection games
• a faster, cleaner path to closing

“Overpriced,” on the other hand, does not create upside. It often creates delay, concession pressure, and a weaker negotiating position.

If you want to price your home to sell, your goal is not to “win the list price contest.” Your goal is to price in a way that produces the strongest buyer behavior and holds up during appraisal.

What You Owe — or What You Need — Does Not Set the Price

This is one of the hardest truths for sellers to absorb, and it needs to be stated plainly:

What you owe on the house, or what you need from the house, has no bearing on what the market will pay.

Those numbers matter—but they belong in Step 2. Here, the only question is what the market and appraisal process will support.

If you need substantially more than the market will support in order to:

• pay off debt,
• walk away clean, or
• buy an aspirational next home,

then the correct conclusion is not “price higher.” The correct conclusion is that the timing may be wrong.

That reality should already have surfaced in Step 1 and Step 2. Pricing is not the place to fix a math problem that already failed earlier.

Why Time-on-Market Is a Cost (Even When the Home Eventually Sells)

Time is not neutral in residential real estate. Longer time on market often leads to:

• more aggressive negotiation from buyers
• more inspection pressure (“they’ll take it because it’s been sitting”)
• more price reductions after the strongest buyer pool has moved on
• more carrying costs and life disruption for the seller

Some sellers interpret a fast sale as “we underpriced.” Sometimes that’s true. But in most cases, a fast sale reflects correct pricing and good positioning—especially when the market responds with multiple offers or strong terms.

Appraisal Reality: Pricing Must Survive a Third-Party Review

Appraisals are not designed to reward ambition. They are designed to manage lender risk. An appraiser may never have seen your home before. They are working under time constraints. They are forced to support value with comparable sales and defensible adjustments.

This is why pricing strategy cannot be separated from appraisal strategy. If you want to price your home to sell, you should assume the appraisal is a hurdle you must clear—not an afterthought.

If the appraisal comes in low, the only solutions are some combination of price reduction, buyer cash, or a dispute/reconsideration process—and every option affects timelines and leverage.

Transparency Helps the Appraisal Hit the Target

Here is a step most sellers and many agents skip—and it is a missed opportunity:

Your CMA and a clear improvement list should be provided to the buyer’s agent (and made available for the appraisal process) to support the contract price.

In theory, the buyer’s agent should be doing their own CMA. In practice, agent skill and diligence vary. Even when the buyer’s agent is strong, they do not live inside your home and may not know what has been improved, replaced, or upgraded unless it is clearly documented.

A well-prepared pricing packet helps because it:

• anchors the comp conversation around the most relevant comparables,
• documents material improvements that affect buyer perception and market positioning, and
• reduces the chance that the appraiser selects weaker or mismatched comparables due to limited context.

Suggested items to include:

• A concise list of material improvements (roof, HVAC, major plumbing/electrical work, windows/doors, insulation, foundation repairs, sewer line work, etc.)
• Dates completed and receipts where available
• A brief “why these comps” explanation (not a manifesto—just a rational pricing narrative)

This is not manipulation. It is information symmetry. It reduces appraisal volatility and makes it more likely that the deal closes on the terms originally agreed.

The goal isn’t to tell an appraiser what to conclude—it’s to make sure they don’t miss relevant comps and documented improvements.

Pricing Is Not a Zero-Sum Exercise

Home sales work best when everyone is aiming for the same outcome: a clean transaction where the buyer values the home and the seller receives fair market value without unnecessary friction.

This is not a zero-sum game.

Sellers often think of pricing as a contest—how much can I extract? Buyers sometimes approach it as a battle—how much can I push back? In reality, the strongest transactions happen when pricing reflects reality clearly enough that both sides can move forward with confidence.

You loved your home. You want to be paid appropriately for it. And in many cases, you also care deeply about what happens next.

I’ve seen sellers turn down higher offers because the intended use didn’t align with their values—homes being converted to rentals, land being developed into uses they didn’t want to support, or properties losing the character that mattered to them. End use matters to a lot of sellers, and that matters more than most market commentary acknowledges.

Good pricing doesn’t erase those considerations. It supports them.

A price that is defensible, well-documented, and aligned with condition attracts buyers who want the home for what it is—not buyers who are trying to squeeze value out of misalignment later through inspections or appraisal pressure.

That alignment makes the appraisal easier, the negotiation calmer, and the closing more likely to happen on the terms originally agreed.

“Realtors Get More Money” — The Only Version of That Claim That Matters

You will sometimes see industry claims that agent-listed homes sell for more than FSBO homes on average. Even when those comparisons are directionally true, the “why” matters. The value is not magic. The value is process:

• access to better closed-sale data,
• pricing discipline,
• negotiation experience under inspection and appraisal pressure, and
• transaction management when the deal gets uncomfortable.

In other words: representation helps when it produces better decisions. The point of this step is not to sell you on a model. The point is to help you price your home to sell in a way that survives reality.

What Comes Next

If Step 5 is done correctly, pricing becomes a stabilizer instead of a gamble. Once you price your home to sell based on a defensible CMA, Texas data reality, and appraisal constraints, the next step is execution: how to launch the listing, manage showings, handle feedback, and protect leverage once offers start coming in.

That’s where we go in Home Selling Step 6.

About Me — Doug Berry, MBA, REALTOR®

The Bow Tie Agent

I’m a REALTOR® with Better Homes & Gardens Senter, REALTORS® who focuses on helping clients understand the real-world side of homeownership—especially the decisions that affect long-term stability. With an MBA and experience as a lender with USDA Rural Development’s mortgage programs, I approach the process the same way I do with clients: clearly, calmly, and without sales pressure.

If you have questions, want a second set of eyes before you make a move, or want help pricing and positioning a home in Abilene or the Big Country, feel free to reach out:

📧 Doug@senterrealtors.com

📞 325-338-9734

🌐 www.dougberry.realtor