Picked the agent with the highest number. About $28k.
Sold my starter house last year to free up cash for the investing side. Three agents came through. Two of them said 428 to 442 and walked me through six comps each. The third said 455, told me the other two were leaving money on the table, and I believed him because I wanted to.
Listed at $455,000 in June.
Week 1: 6 showings, no offers. Week 3: 2 showings. Day 34: cut to $442,000. Three showings that weekend, one lowball at 405 that I rejected because I was angry. Day 51: cut to $429,900. Day 66: offer at $424,000 with a $6,000 concession and a $4,300 inspection credit after they found a failing water heater and some deck rot I knew about. Closed day 94 at an effective $413,700.
Carrying cost was $2,240 a month for the three extra months, call it $6,700. So against the $434k midpoint the other two agents predicted, I'm out somewhere around $20k on price and another $6,700 on carry. I know the counterfactual isn't clean and maybe it sells at $428 in week two, but it's not a rounding error either.
The part that actually failed was step one. I never asked any of the three for their own list-to-sale ratio or the price history on their last ten listings. If I had, I'd have learned that the guy who said 455 had a habit of buying listings high and grinding them down with cuts, which his sellers paid for and he mostly didn't.
The second thing I'd change: I rejected the 405 offer at day 34 out of pride. Net of everything, I closed 8 grand under it four months later.
Next time I ask for original list, every reduction, final sale, and days on market for the last ten listings, and I treat the highest suggested price in the room as the least reliable number I heard.