SF Chronicle • July 19, 2026

What Are Your Preferred Strategies for Effectively Pricing a Listing?

A: List prices are officially a seller decision, but a lot of agent advice is at play. Part science, part art, list price is a signal to buyers from sellers. In San Francisco, the signal is more, please. List price may signal:

  • The seller has no intention of accepting list — more than 65% of sold homes sell well above list.
  • The last two significant digits will likely be -95, -99, or -98. A study of the more than 4,100 San Francisco closed sales since September 2025 shows these three combinations were used more than half the time (35%, 13%, and 7.5% respectively).
  • A -95 catches buyers who’d otherwise never look: if the goal is $2.4M+, list at $1.995M and everyone with a $2M ceiling may now stretch.
  • Bidding-war agents just price at $995,000 no matter what.

In my advice to sellers, I look at comparable sales. Because these are lagging indicators, I ask other active agents for their read. Then I draw on years of intuition and experience, with the goal of being just the right amount of enticing while staying a bit mysterious (just how much under!?) — but only just so, as this art demands.

Kevin K. Ho, Vanguard Properties
415-297-7462, kevin@team-kho.com