Is it overpriced?
Read a listing like an analyst: the public signals that tell you whether the asking price is fair.
An asking price is an opinion. It is set by whichever valuation the seller found most persuasive, and it is the one number in the entire transaction that nobody has been asked to justify. Almost everything around it can be checked. What similar homes on the street actually sold for is public record; how long this one has been listed, and what happened to it the last time it was on the market, is there on the portals for anyone who thinks to look.
These guides are about reading it. What time on the market does and does not tell you, why a trail of reductions says more than the current figure, which comparables are worth leaning on and which merely look similar, and how to tell a listing with genuine competition behind it from one that has been quietly sitting there.
Where this usually goes wrong is treating the asking price as the anchor and arguing downwards from it. Work out what the evidence supports on its own terms first, then compare the two. Sometimes the honest answer is that the price is fair and there is no discount to find — which is a useful thing to learn early rather than after three months of trying.
