How to Price Homes in 2025’s Market (According to Zillow & Redfin Data)

Hey guys, lots of news around home prices happening right now. New reports are showing a massive imbalance between home buyers and home sellers:

There are roughly 500,000 more home sellers than buyers in the marketplace today.

What that means is there's a lot of pressure for sellers to get their prices right, attract buyers, and offer incentives.

Zillow is predicting prices will decline this year by 1.9%. Redfin is also forecasting a 1% decline. So, we’re starting to see price adjustments already—especially in the major metro markets. 11 of the 50 metros across the country are already seeing price declines.

This is not going to be an easy year for sellers, but you can still sell your home—as long as you're doing the right things and guiding your clients properly.

One thing I like to discuss with my sellers is “search engine pricing.”

What is search engine pricing? It means understanding how buyers search for homes online.

Here's what they don’t do: They don’t sit down and say, “I want to look for a house priced between $312,369 and $411,850.”

What do they do instead? They're guided to set price points through whatever portal they’re using—whether it’s Zillow, Realtor.com, or Homes.com.

These platforms use sliders or dropdowns. A buyer might set their search for $300,000 to $400,000, or $400,000 to $500,000. Very rarely—less than 1% of the time—does someone type in a specific number.

Knowing buyers are guided to these price brackets, here's something we see all the time but doesn’t make sense: Pricing a home just under one of those key thresholds. For example, let’s say you list a home at $399,900. That’s a “Walmart” price for one of the most expensive assets someone will ever buy—and it’s a mistake.

Sure, buyers searching $300K–$400K will see it.

But here’s the important question: Who won’t see it?

Buyers who start their search at $400,000 and go up to $500,000 will completely miss that listing—just because of a $100 price difference.

So, by simply pricing at $400,000 instead of $399,900, you can instantly double your buyer pool.

That’s the magic of hitting a major price point.

Now, I get it—it’s not always possible to hit an even number. But just understanding this concept and aiming to price in that “sweet spot” between two key price brackets can significantly increase traffic to your listing.

These are the types of strategies we need to be discussing with our sellers.

This ties into the difference between “competitive pricing” and “comparable pricing.”

Competitive pricing means pricing to attract the maximum number of showings possible.

And we’ve all heard the urban myth: “My friend raised their price and suddenly sold their home.” You’ve probably heard that story. It sounds like the worst strategy ever—but here’s why it sometimes works:

That seller may have been listed at $389K or $399,500. Then they raised the price to $400,000—and doubled their buyer pool. That’s what actually happened. You see the situation now.

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