I watched her pull up that comp herself on her phone. The 2022 sale was a full reno, corner lot, finished basement. Hers has the original kitchen and has been sitting 61 days. I don't know how you handle this without her feeling like you're just pushing her toward a lower number so you can close faster.
Stale comps are the most common pricing mistake in luxury, where comparable sales are sparse enough that sellers can almost always find one number that feels like evidence.
The 2022 sale is doing all the work here, and three things have changed since then: rates, buyer pool depth, and the finished basement adds roughly 10 to 15 percent of above-grade value in most luxury markets, conservatively. The corner lot premium is real but local. Her original kitchen in a 3M price range is a genuine discount item because buyers at that level price in the renovation cost and then add friction and inconvenience on top, so the actual haircut is larger than the contractor bid.
The 61 days is the number she should be looking at. In luxury, days on market compress perceived value faster than price does, because serious cash buyers at this level track listings and know exactly when something has been sitting. A $3.4M counter on a 61-day-old listing signals either inflexibility or a problem with the property, and it will filter out precisely the buyers who could close at $3.35M if the presentation were right.
The conversation she needs is about what the $3.1M offer tells her, which is that a real buyer with real cash has decided this property is worth $3.1M today, in this condition. The neighbor's 2022 number tells her what a different property was worth in a different rate environment.
What does her carrying cost look like per month, and does she have a timeline pressure you can use to make the math concrete for her?
I'm not an agent but I sit on the other side of this constantly, watching units sit because an owner priced off what their neighbor got eighteen months ago in a completely different condition. Sixty-one days on a $3.1M cash offer is already telling her something she doesn't want to hear. The buyer is not going anywhere, but they are also not in a hurry, and a cash buyer who waits this long before offering usually has three or four other properties they are watching.
The 2022 number is dead, that market does not exist anymore. What does her neighbor's place look like right now, today? Is it still appreciating or has it been marked down in a refinance assessment? That is the question I would put to her directly, because it shifts the conversation from "you are wrong about your price" to "let's see what that benchmark is actually worth in this market right now." People respond differently when they feel like they are doing research instead of being corrected.
