🏡 Beyond Zillow: The 3 Secrets Your Real Estate Agent Knows (That You Should Too)

When you start thinking about buying or selling a home, the internet is flooded with information. Apps like Zillow and Redfin are powerful tools, giving you a peek behind the curtain at listings, prices, and neighborhood stats.

But the data you see online is only part of the story.

As your dedicated real estate team, our job is to go beyond the screen and translate raw market data into a winning strategy for your specific goals. Here are three critical secrets we use to ensure you get the best outcome in any market:

1. The Power of "Median," Not "Average"

When you look up home prices, you often see an "average sales price." While helpful, the average can be easily skewed.

Imagine a neighborhood where 10 homes sold for $300,000, and one very large mansion sold for $3,000,000. The average sales price would jump dramatically, making the $300,000 homes seem like a bargain, or making you overprice your own listing!

The Secret: We focus on the Median Sales Price.

The median is the true middle point—the price where exactly half of the homes sold for more and half sold for less. It gives you a much clearer, more stable picture of what homes like yours are actually selling for.

💡 Tip for Sellers: If the median price is rising, we know there's strong appreciation. If it's flattening, we may need a more aggressive pricing strategy right out of the gate.

2. "Days on Market" Needs an Asterisk

You see a home has been on the market for 60 days and think, "It must be a bad listing, let's lowball it." Maybe. But maybe not.

The Days on Market (DOM) can be misleading without context.

The Secret: We track two key numbers that hide within the DOM:

• Initial Pricing Strategy: A home that sat for 50 days, dropped its price, and then sold in 10 days, actually tells us that the initial price was wrong, but the final price was correct.
  
  
• The Season: Is the home listed during the slow winter holiday season? A longer DOM then might simply be due to fewer active buyers, not a problem with the property itself.
  
  

We analyze the history of a listing, not just the current DOM, to advise you on the right offer or the perfect time to drop your price strategically.

3. Supply and Demand: It’s More Than Just a Feeling

Every agent talks about whether it's a "Buyer's Market" or a "Seller's Market," but what does that really mean?

The Secret: We use a metric called Months of Supply (MoS).

MoS tells us, at the current rate of sales, how long it would take to sell every single home currently on the market.

• Low MoS (e.g., 1-3 months): Seller's Market. There are few listings, lots of competition, and we need to move fast with competitive offers or expect multiple bids on your listing.
  
  
• High MoS (e.g., 6+ months): Buyer's Market. There are plenty of homes available, giving buyers leverage for negotiations and sellers time to prepare for longer market exposure.
  
  

We use MoS to give you an objective, data-backed assessment of your negotiating power before we even write the first contract.

Your Trusted Data Interpreter

The market is constantly changing, but having an expert guide to interpret the data ensures your strategy is always sound. Don't rely solely on the apps—partner with us to turn raw numbers into the keys to your new home.

Ready to translate the market data into your home success story? Contact us today for a personalized market analysis of your neighborhood!