The agent who says your house is worth the most clearly knows the market best.
This is the assumption most sellers land on once three appraisals come back forty to sixty thousand dollars apart. It seems like straightforward logic. Greater market knowledge should translate into a more accurate figure, so the agent quoting the highest number must simply be the one who has researched the property most thoroughly.
The Gap Between Appraisals That Nobody Questions
When a seller gathers three appraisals for the same property, the results are rarely a tight cluster around one figure. The spread is frequently wide enough that at least one number cannot be close to right. Sellers seldom stop to consider which. The default is to believe the highest one, largely because it lines up with what the seller wanted to hear in the first place.
Beyond being a valuation, an appraisal always carries a second function: it is a pitch for the mandate, whether or not the agent frames it that way. Two agents can walk through an identical property, review identical comparable sales data, and still arrive at wildly different figures, because one is genuinely pricing the house while the other is pricing their own chance of winning the listing. It is a distinction worth keeping in mind before the first appraisal appointment For those wanting more context before their own appraisal round get the details offers useful local context. Either way, the pattern tends to hold regardless of which agent a seller speaks to first.
Why the Largest Quote Is Often the Least Reliable
A high quoted figure is not automatically a sign of stronger market knowledge. Just as often it signals a willingness to tell the seller what they want to hear, purely to win the listing. That is not always conscious dishonesty either. Plenty of agents believe their own optimistic number right up until the campaign runs and the market disagrees with them. Either way, the outcome is the same: an agent chosen on a figure that was never really about the genuine value of the property.
What makes this uncomfortable is that sellers rarely find out until the campaign is well underway, once the property has sat on the market for weeks without the level of interest the original appraisal implied it should get. Anyone who has watched a few of these campaigns unfold can see why Sellers still working through what to look for in an agent find more here is a reasonable starting point. Either way, this is the kind of thing worth knowing before the first inspection, not after.
What a Confident Appraisal Actually Looks Like
The appraisals actually worth listening to are rarely the most confidently delivered ones. They are the ones backed by real comparable sales, recent settlement figures, and a straightforward account of what nearby buyers have genuinely paid in recent months. An agent who can walk a seller through that evidence is doing something entirely different from one who just states a number with certainty. Delivery and correctness are two separate qualities entirely, and sellers who conflate them tend to pick the wrong agent for the wrong reason.
A simple test separates the two. An agent with a properly defensible figure can typically point to the exact sales being compared, within a reasonable window and a genuinely similar location. One relying mainly on optimism tends to speak generally about market strength, without anything specific standing behind the number they have just given.
Confidence is cheap. Comparable sales data is not.
The Questions Sellers Should Be Asking Instead
The question worth asking is rarely who thinks the property is worth the most. It is closer to: who has a defensible strategy for reaching genuine market value, and who is prepared to have an honest conversation if the campaign does not move at the quoted figure straight away. The track record of an agent on this specific point, how they have handled properties that needed a price adjustment mid-campaign, tends to reveal far more than any single number offered at the first meeting.
This is also the point where simply asking reveals the most. An agent prepared to discuss what happens if the first few weeks underperform is doing something very different to one who has only ever talked about the best-case outcome.
Common Questions About Agent Appraisals
Why do agents give different appraisals for the same house?
An appraisal blends real market judgement with the incentive to win the mandate, and different agents balance those two things differently. The variation between quotes often says as much about that incentive as it does about the property. An agent chasing new business has a reason to lean optimistic that has nothing to do with the actual comparable sales.
Is the highest appraisal ever the right one to trust?
Occasionally, but it should be trusted because of the evidence behind it, not because it is the largest number offered. A high figure backed by genuine comparable sales is a different thing entirely to a high figure offered simply to win the business, and the only way to tell them apart is to ask what the number is actually based on.
Instead of asking for a number, what should sellers actually ask?
Asking what the number is actually based on, and how the agent intends to respond if the property does not draw offers at that figure early in the campaign, usually reveals more than the appraisal itself. It also tends to expose which agents are comfortable defending their figure and which were quietly hoping the question would not surface.
Does a lower appraisal mean a worse agent?
Not necessarily. A lower, well-supported figure from an agent who can walk through the comparable sales behind it is often a stronger signal than a higher figure with no evidence attached. Sellers who filter agents purely on the size of the number they quote are optimising for the wrong variable entirely.
Rather than a true measurement of the house, an appraisal is really an opening bid for the listing itself, and sellers who recognise this early tend to choose very differently to those chasing the highest figure. Across the Gawler District and the northern Adelaide corridor, where the spread between agent appraisals can be just as wide as elsewhere in Adelaide, this distinction matters more rather than less, given how fast a mispriced campaign can lose momentum where comparable listings surface close together.