When it comes to selling your home, price is everything. It’s not about throwing out a number and crossing your fingers, it’s about making sure your home grabs attention and gets buyers through the door. There are several common mistakes sellers make that put them at a disadvantage out of the gate.
Mistake #1: Pricing from emotion instead of comparables
Sellers naturally focus on what they’ve invested into the home in the form of renovations, sweat equity, and even family memories. Buyers don’t look at homes that way. They compare your home to what else they can buy right now in the same area, with a similar size, lot, condition, and finish. A true comparative market analysis (CMA) should anchor pricing to recent solds, current competition, and realistic adjustments.
Mistake #2: Using assessed value as your pricing benchmark
In Manitoba, assessed value is primarily a taxation tool and is updated through reassessments to better reflect market conditions. It can be a helpful reference point, but should not be a foundation for your pricing strategy. At the end of the day, your home is worth what a buyer is willing to pay for it.
Mistake #3: Overpricing “to leave room to negotiate”
This is one of the most expensive myths in real estate. Overpricing can reduce showings, shrink your buyer pool, and cause your home to sit stagnant on the market, which will in turn lead to the detrimental question, “What’s wrong with it?” CREA’s Winnipeg market data shows how quickly properties can move in the right conditions (for example, single detached homes spent a median 13 days on market in quarter 4 of 2025). In a fast-moving environment, the best negotiation leverage often comes from strong early interest, not from starting high.
Mistake #4: Pricing too low “to spark a bidding war”
Underpricing can work sometimes, but it can backfire fast. If the price is too far below fair market value, you may attract the wrong buyer pool, create unrealistic expectations, or even raise concerns about what’s “wrong” with the home. Worse, if competition doesn’t materialize, you’ve anchored your listing low and may end up negotiating from a weaker position than if you had priced accurately from the start. A bidding-war strategy only works when demand, location, condition, and timing all line up, and when your marketing and showing schedule are built to support it.
Mistake #5: Chasing the market instead of leading it
Some sellers start too high with the assumption that they can always lower the price if they don’t get any bites. The problem is your listing gets the most attention in the first couple of weeks, and if it’s overpriced during that window, you can miss your best chance. By the time the price comes down, buyers may assume something is wrong or wait for another reduction. In many cases, pricing correctly from the start creates stronger early interest and puts you in a better negotiating position than trying to chase the market downward.
What works instead
Great pricing is a blend of local data + hyper-local context: street-by-street differences, school catchments, lot quirks, basement quality, and finish level. The goal is to price where your home looks like the best option in its “comparison set,” so buyers act.
Our pricing strategy starts with gathering market evidence. The Winnipeg Regional Real Estate Board (WRREB) publishes monthly market analytics, including sales, new listings, days on market, and price trends across the Winnipeg Metro Region. That data matters because it tells you whether buyers are moving quickly, hesitating, or gaining negotiating power. In a market where homes can sell fast, being “close enough” on price is often the difference between multiple offers and a listing that sits.
Selling is a big move, and pricing is one of the most important decisions you’ll make along the way. Our job is to take the stress and uncertainty out of that process by using real market data, local expertise, and a proven strategy to position your home for success. If you’re considering selling in Winnipeg, we’d be happy to walk you through what your home could sell for — and how to get the best result.
If you’d like to have a no-pressure conversation on what your home may be worth in today’s market, reach out to Bryan at 204.817.1849.
