The Market Doesn't Decide Your Price. You Do.

The most expensive thing a seller can believe is that the market decides their price. It doesn't. You have more say in the number than almost anyone tells you.

Here's the thing most people never hear: your home doesn't have one price. It has a range, and it's usually wider than you'd expect. The same house, in the same street, in the same month, can sell for tens of thousands more or less. Which end you land on is not luck.

Two things decide it. How well the home is prepared, and what happens in the room when the offers come in.

Most sellers fixate on the online estimate or the rateable value. Both are a computer guessing sight unseen. They've never walked through your place, noticed the afternoon light, or seen the view from the deck. They can be out by a lot.

The real number gets made in two places you actually control. Presentation gets more buyers through the door and competing. Negotiation turns that interest into the highest price one of them will pay. We've sold over 500 Wellington homes, and four of our own in the last three years. On one, the online estimate had a $95,000 range. We sold it $55,000 above that estimate, and the final negotiation alone added another $20,000 on top.

None of that was the market handing us a number. It was preparation and a steady hand at the table. We pulled apart how that part actually works in the negotiation entry of the Vendor Diaries.

One warning. The amount you want for your home has nothing to do with what it's worth. Let emotion drive the price and you'll miss the right decision, or make it too late, once the best buyers have moved on.

Newlands to Karori, Khandallah to Johnsonville, and everywhere in between, the sellers who net the most are the ones who treat the price as something to be earned, not something the market announces.

Thinking about your own place? Find out what it's really worth.