You’ll get the real number, not the one that wins the listing.

Almost every seller has heard the same story, or lived it. An agent comes in with a number that sounds wonderful, wins the listing, and then the price reductions start. Three months later the house sells for less than a realistic price would have brought in week one, and it now carries the stink of having sat.

The reason that happens is simple. For a lot of agents, the valuation is a sales tool. It costs them nothing to be optimistic on the way in.

It costs me something. Alongside my work as an agent, I run Flipside Investments, buying and renovating homes across Southern California with my own capital. When I get a number wrong there, I pay for it personally. That habit is hard to switch off, and it is the same discipline I bring to pricing your house.

Practically, it shows up in three places. Pricing is built the way an investor underwrites a deal rather than the way a listing presentation is designed to win business. Repair advice is specific about what returns more than it costs in your price band and what does not. And if a traditional listing genuinely is not right for your situation, I will say so rather than take the listing anyway.

Yuan Escusa is a licensed California real estate agent (DRE #02268183) with Real Brokerage. The areas he works most are the West Valley: Woodland Hills, West Hills, Canoga Park, Winnetka, Chatsworth, Northridge and Tarzana, plus the rest of the Valley and over the hill into Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks and Moorpark.