The most common trick in the Australian real estate playbook — and the single biggest reason honest sellers end up selling for less than they should.
The pitch
Three agents appraise your home. Two of them quote a range of $1.3M to $1.4M. The third one confidently quotes $1.55M. You pick the third.
Four weeks into the campaign, with two open homes done and no written offers, the third agent suggests a price adjustment. "The market's not where we hoped. We should reset at $1.42M." Six weeks in you've dropped again. Eight weeks in you're at $1.35M, your listing has "new price" badges on the portals, and every buyer who looks at it assumes it has a problem.
You sell at $1.32M, with a stale listing.
What happened
The third agent never actually thought your property was worth $1.55M. The purpose of that number was to win the listing. Once your contract is signed and the property is on the market, the agent's incentive flips — every day on market costs them money, so they need to bring you down to the realistic price they knew all along.
This isn't a rare event. In most major Australian markets, surveys put the rate of significant over-quoting of vendors in the 30-50% range. The Gold Coast is no exception. If three agents appraise a property, at least one of them is quoting high to win.
Why it costs you more than just the difference
Over-quoted listings sell for less than honestly-priced ones, not the same. Three reasons.
Launch momentum is everything. The first 10 days on a portal produce the largest buyer audience any listing ever gets. If the asking price filters you out of the searches that real buyers are running, you burn that audience on nobody. By the time the price has been dropped twice, the most active buyers have already seen and dismissed the listing.
Multiple price reductions signal weakness. Buyers are extremely good at reading "new price" badges and days-on-market counters. A listing that's been on for 75 days with three reductions will attract only bargain hunters.
The psychological anchor moves the wrong way. A vendor who started at $1.55M and has been walked down to $1.35M will often accept an offer at $1.32M — because the distance from $1.35M to $1.32M feels smaller than the distance from $1.4M (the real number) to $1.32M would have felt from day one.
How we appraise
We give you a range backed by three to six genuinely comparable recent sales — same suburb, similar size, similar condition, sold in the last 90 days. Not auction clearance rates from two years ago, not "my gut feeling", not what the agency needs the number to be.
If you tell us you want a higher number than the comparables support, we will tell you so — and we'll tell you what the statistical likelihood of getting that number looks like based on the recent data. If you want to price optimistically with eyes open, that's your call. But the number isn't a winning-the-pitch fabrication, and you'll always know which part is realistic and which part is reach.
What to ask any agent you're interviewing
Ask for their three comparable sales in writing. Ask when each of them sold and what condition it was in. Ask what the median days-on-market is for properties in your bracket in your suburb in the last 90 days. Ask what price reduction strategy they'd recommend if the first two opens don't produce serious enquiry.
If you can't get specific, written answers to those four questions, you're being pitched a number rather than offered an appraisal. That's a warning, and it has nothing to do with what commission the agent charges.