How to Handle a Seller Who Wants to Overprice Their Home (2026)

The problem: Your seller wants a price the market won't pay, and you keep losing the argument because you're the only one in the room saying no.

The fix: Stop being the one who says it. Set things up before the sign goes in so the other homes for sale do the talking.

What changes: Your listings start with a plan instead of a fight, and you become the agent who called it on day one and kept their word.

By D.J. Paris, president of sales and marketing at Kale Realty and host of the Keeping It Real Podcast. The fix is below. If you want to talk it through, there's a 10-minute option right after it.

What's really going on: you're the only one in the room saying no

When a seller names a number and you answer with comps, it's your opinion against theirs. It's their house, so they win. You take the listing too high or you lose it, and the price talk comes back later as a fight.

Their number came from somewhere. Until you know where, your comps answer a question they didn't ask. So find the source first. Then let the other homes for sale make the case. Then agree on what happens next before the sign goes in, while everybody still likes each other.

Move 1: ask where the number came from before you show a single comp

Ask this, then stop talking.

Walk me through how you got to [their number]. Before any comps

You'll hear one of four: a website estimate, what a neighbor got, what another agent promised, or what they need to walk away with.

• If it's what they need, run the net sheet backward, out loud: start with the check they need and add payoff, closing costs and commission until you land on a price.
• Then add the line most agents skip: what the house costs them every month it sits.
• If it's another agent's number, ask the question below.

Did they show you what's for sale at that price right now? If another agent promised it

A website estimate or a neighbor's sale gets its answer in Move 2. Call the net sheet an estimate, and send tax questions to their accountant. The mistake is correcting them mid-story. Let them finish.

Move 2: show them the competition, then the ones that never sold

Send the three active listings closest to their price, plus theirs, with one question.

If you had $[X] to spend this weekend, which of these four would you buy? Sent with the four listings

Then pull what most price talks leave out: the homes near them that expired or got cancelled at that price in the last 12 months. It's a status search in connectMLS.

These tried your number. Here's how long each one sat. With the expired list

You never said the price was wrong. The other listings did.

For the search, use your comp area and price range and switch the status to expired and cancelled. If they pick their own home, ask "What would a buyer who's never been inside say?" Then be quiet. Compare the houses, never the people who live near them.

Move 3: tie the price to the other three homes, not to a date

I'll list at your number. Here's my ask. These are the three homes we're up against. The first time one of them goes under contract and we don't have an offer, we go to $[Y] that week. Can I put that in an email tonight? Before the listing is signed

A date feels like your opinion. A buyer picking the house down the street doesn't.

• Add a backstop: no offer by day [X], same move.
• When one goes, you aren't asking for a reduction. You're keeping an agreement.
• The change still gets their signature on your brokerage's form.
• If no trigger can fix their number, pass.

Name the three addresses in the email. When one goes, call the same day: "The one on [street] went under contract. Like we agreed, I'm sending the change to $[Y] for your signature." Wait a week and it feels like a new ask.

Do this today

Let the other listings say it

You'll still take a listing now and then at a number you don't love. But you'll have a written plan, and the seller will have watched the market make the case. You're the agent who called it on day one and kept their word.

Who this works for, and who should read something else

Frequently asked questions

Still stuck on this one? Book 10 minutes with D.J. No strings, not a recruiting call. I'll call you, and I won't bring up Kale unless you do.