Setting your offer price sounds simple — but knowing what a property is actually worth is where most buyers get stuck.

In this episode, Veronica and Meighan break down how to properly assess property value so you can make confident, informed decisions before you make an offer.

They explain why relying on price guides, emotions, or outdated sales data can lead to overpaying or repeatedly missing out, and how professionals actually calculate value using comparable sales, market behaviour, and on-the-ground insights.

You’ll learn how to analyse properties more objectively, adjust for key differences, and decide your walkaway price with evidence—not guesswork —so you can move forward with clarity and avoid costly mistakes.

Episode Highlights

03:52 — Why Buyers Misjudge Property Value

05:42 — Price Guides vs Underquoting Explained

07:41 — How to Use Comparable Sales Properly

10:26 — Adjusting Property Value for Key Differences

13:38 — How Market Conditions Affect Property Value

14:25 — Reading Buyer Behaviour and Competition

17:10 — Common Property Pricing Mistakes to Avoid

19:18 — The Hidden Cost of Pricing a Property Wrong

22:31 — Why Learning to Price Property Changes Everything

25:58 — Final Thoughts and Next Steps

Course Details:

• THE First Home Buyer Course is our Step-By-Step, No BS Guide to Every Stage of The Home Buying Process – It’s the next best thing to having your own buyer’s agent. With our expert guidance, you’ll know what to do at every step along the way. Become a home owner faster and easier. Click here: https://homebuyeracademy.com.au/YFHBG

If you enjoyed today’s podcast, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and share the show! There’s more to come, so we hope to have you along with us on this journey!

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It's designed to create competition.

Meighan: Professionals don't guess value. They calculate it. They analyze recent, comparable sales properly. They adjust for differences like renovation Level,~ um,~ street quality factor in real time buyer behavior. Pricing isn't emotional and it's not static. It's data patterns. Probability.

Meighan: That's exactly why we created our $99 pricing mini course. It teaches you how to assess comparable sales, step by step, interpret agent quoting, and set your walkaway number with confidence. Because when you can price property properly, you stop guessing and you start buying strategically.

~Down, ~

Speaker: Welcome to your first home buyer. Guide the podcast for first home buyers who want to feel confident, smart, and totally in control of their property journey. I'm Veronica, and that was Megan. And yes, we are probably old enough to be your mom's, which is a good thing because between us, we've got decades of experience and we've got your back every step of the way.

Speaker: You'll wanna hear this episode. I.

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Veronica: In today's episode, we're diving into one of the most misunderstood and financially critical skills in the buying process, pricing the property, and deciding on what your limit should be, right? So inside our pay system, that's the system that we teach you. Preparation, action, action, commitment.

Execution. This sits within step seven, which is evaluate, so property evaluation, and this is where you assess whether a property truly stacks up before you move forward. Pricing is only one component of evaluate, but it's the piece that protects your equity from day one. Because if you can't confidently determine value, everything that follows your offer strategy, your negotiation, your bidding strategy, your long-term growth is built on shaky ground.

Meighan: It's one of the first questions that we are. Skin, our buyer's agency business when we're doing our discovery. And that is, you know, has there been anything that you've seen, because often people come to us after they've, they've tried the process themselves. Has there been anything that you've seen that you liked?

And if the answer is yes, did you make an offer on that? Yes. Okay. And how much did you miss out by? ~And often they're,~ sometimes they don't know the answer because they didn't even check in what it sold for. And other times, you know, they, they give us an answer, go, well, that's a long way from what it's sold for.

How did you arrive at that price? And as you say, Veronica, often that blank look of, well, I just. Figured that's what it was worth, or that's how much I felt I was prepared to pay. You know, feelings and emotions don't come into data analysis because you're competing against people who are getting it.

Veronica: Oh yeah. You know, poor old Queensland buyers, you know, they, they've got other, other problems in how they work out what properties are worth. But yeah, I mean, the thing is with an agent's price guide is the amount of times that I, I talk to a buyer and they say, oh, just say at 10%. Oh, I'll just say a hundred grand.

And I'm like, guess what? If you actually track every property, you look at the sale price and the guide, you'll find that it is not uniformly 10% or a hundred grand. It varies markedly. So that is a huge mistake, right? And then there's the thing about what they feel it's worth. Now sometimes that could come down to literally, well.

Push come to shove.

Meighan: A lot of people sort of wanna keep a little bit in their pocket for renovations, so they try and make the property worth what they wanna pay. Plus the cost of renovation to be inside what they think the property's worth. Like they're just, the thinking is just not,~ um,~ going to get them across the line at any point in time.

If they're trying to keep, oh, well I really wanna upgrade the kitchen, so therefore I'll take 30,000 off what I think it's worth. Just doesn't work like that. And it's really important to get that kind of thinking outta your head and start thinking about property the way that you need to start to think about property.

Veronica: and it what you wanna do to it is got nothing to do.

So if you think about how competition is created, it is by quoting low. There is a, there is a,~ um,~ a saying in the real estate industry, particularly in relational auctions, and it's quote at low, watch it, go quote it high, watch it die. So it, it is. It is a strategy that agents use to get people emotionally involved in the process.

Veronica: Now Underquoting is still alive and well despite. You know, new legislation, new South Wales, new legislation in Victoria in particular, and despite legislation in Queensland, that means they're not allowed to quote anything. You know, at the end of the day, there's this, you know, agents in Queensland, for instance, can give you a list of comparable sales and they might not necessarily be relevant to the property, so you've got to make.

Exactly right. You gotta make up your own mind, right? And so buyers will either, they'll panic and overpay, or they'll stay safe and they'll repeatedly miss out. You know, those buyers will go, oh, that, you know, those buyers are idiots. They're just no idea. And

Veronica: well, it's like someone just paid it and someone else was there under bidder. Look, there are times when somebody pays a stupid price. Don't get us wrong, some, sometimes people do pay. Way over. Right? But it's pricing a property accurately isn't about guessing. It's about looking and understanding and analyzing the evidence, right?

And so professionals don't price emotionally. This course that we've put together is how to price like a professional, right? We as professionals, we use data, we look at patterns, and we are looking at probability.

And ideally you want it to be reasonably. ~Um. ~But you're close in terms of proximity and in the last three months, in a rapidly moving market, you have to be a little bit more forthright in how you gather your information and how you analyze your information. You can't wait for it to appear on realestate.com or if you're using RRP data subscription or.

On the, on the house or any of the other,~ um,~ methods that you can get information from. You kind of gotta be on the front foot and getting it straight from the horse's mouth from the agent. When a property is sold so that you've got the most recent information, you wanna be looking at the same suburb or immediately surrounding suburbs with similar pricing and looking at the same property type.

So you're not gonna compare a three bedroom house with a two bedroom one

Sales to make those decisions. Because this is, you know, it's funny, like I always like to talk,~ um,~ about, where we buy like in, in Sydney. So if I look at a Paddington Terrace, you go, ah, so easy to price because there's heaps of them. There's Paddington Terrace, there's all through Paddington, right?

But. They're different wits. Some of them have got attic conversions, some of them have got upstairs bathroom, some don't. You know what I mean? Like, and it's like, so you go, oh bugger. Nothing really identical to the one I'm looking at. Pricing has sold in the last six months. So how do I then analyze all those other sales and work out where the one I'm wanting to buy, where does that sit?

So these are really important. And so I think the other thing that we really want you to understand is, you know, one standout sale. You got, you can't anchor yourself to one sale. Some people go, oh, that one's sold for that. So therefore it's worth the same. Ooh, that might've been an underlier or an overlay outlier.

So, so there's lots of ways in which people try to price property without knowing how to do it properly, that they can really get it wrong very, very easily.

Meighan: Yeah, so how do you adjust for differences? You know, Veronica, you talked about a Paddington Terrace. You know, it kind of looks the same, kind of seems the same, but it's not the same. There are so many differences and, and professionals actually adjust for level of renovation finishes the usability of the block

.Itself.

Is there potential for large scale development? Big high rise apartment overlooking it from the back. Really gotta look to the future on these sorts of things. Also, noise. So looking at,~ um,~ overlays on council plan, city plans and so forth is one way of looking at noise, but the physicality of actually being at a property is the.

Only way you can and at different times a day because the noise can be different near a school at drop off time to,~ um,~ maybe,~ uh,~ you know, if you're in a transport sort of area where people are coming and going just at peak hours. So you, you really need to be looking at properties at different times and understand that

Veronica: So if you're near a school on a Saturday. Ain't no noise from the school

Meighan: unless they have sport, right, so they might be a sport location.

So noise is a really difficult one. You've got to go there yourself to experience it.

Meighan: And of course we're talking about the comparable properties when you're doing your, your sales analysis. So you've got to have really been to a lot of properties to make these comparisons to your subject. Property aspect is of course, one of the. Big things because in Queensland, if you've got a Western facing rear, you can't really do a comparison to a north facing rear western, undesirable priced, differently northern, highly desirable, priced differently.

So you gonna understand that and how, how to factor that in. Layout functionality. ~Um, ~if your living rooms towards the front of the place and doesn't connect with the backyard or, or, or, you know, if it's around the wrong way, your bedrooms aren't connected to the bathroom. ~Um, ~these sorts of things are really important.

There's more of those that can be, be built and units of course. ~Um, ~scarcity factor. If there are a lot of similar things being, they call 'em cookie cutters. If there's a lot of cookie cutters and similar properties being built, then there's not a lot of scarcity factor there.

Veronica: So this is where amateurs really struggle. You know, they look at two pro properties and they assume they're equal when they're not, or they look at two, they assume they're really different and they're not necessarily that different as well. So it's around how to assess them and how to judge them in relation to the property that you are.

Looking at. And so that's what we teach you in this course, right? And then you've gotta understand market conditions because you know, in a rising market, then you have to work out, well, should I be paying at the top of the range or not? You know? And then a flat market, like if it's a level market, then you know, how confident can I be that's gonna sit within a sort of.

If you don't understand that, you've got nowhere to start on this right, and pricing is dynamic. It's not a static number. But again, everything we talk about is a process. You get this process right? You will confidently move forward in this whole process of buying a property.

Meighan: Can also look at buyer behavior because your competition is the other buyers and, and we always talk about. Standing,~ um,~ early market indicators of a, of a changing market conditions. And for us, it's very much about different numbers of people at open houses. If you go to an open house and there's only a smattering of people, but you go to another s.

Is gonna be and how much you need to push yourself. It can also, in private treaty negotiations, it's how many offers are being made,~ um,~ whether those offers are verbal, depending on the agent's process or on a contract,~ um,~ subject to conditions, number of building and pest inspections that are being booked now,~ um,~ depending on The way that the property's being sold, This might be pre auction. ~Um, ~building a pest inspections or building a pest. Inspections often happen after the contract is formed, so keep an eye on that. But sometimes the owner provides a building a pest inspection. Be really careful about that. We've talked about that in previous episodes.

You wanna make sure that that inspector has done the job properly, licensed appropriately.

So you sort of can factor in,~ um,~ these really important bits of intel for when you are comparing them to the property that you are, you are working out the price for, right? So we're just giving you some of that background intel. You aren't always able to get it and you aren't always able to interpret it correctly.

'cause agents might tell you that four contracts are out, but that's their standard answer. They say that for every property that they, that you ask them, right? When I was a selling agent, that was my standard answer. Four contracts. So, so when you familiarize yourself with an area and you start building out your own market intel, that's gonna help you price property better, and we, we show you sort of where that's really important, you know, in the course basically, but. You know these, these are little bits of intel that actually layer and help you and give you the nuance to help you work out the price of the property you are about to go for.

Meighan: Check out your competition as well, because they're the people who are going to be making offers on. ~Um, ~now let's have a look at the biggest pricing mistakes that first home buyers make. This is really important. We talked about anchoring to the price guide. The price guide is irrelevant. It just tells you what the agent and the owner have agreed to put out to the market.

You have to do your own work for Annika.

Veronica: and you know, we mentioned it earlier at the, at the outset, you know, falling in love and then reverse engineering the value that just doesn't work. ~Um, ~using outdated, comparable sales or irrelevant comparable sales. That doesn't work. We teach you how to find the information. How to, how to work out whether it's relevant or not in, in ignoring micro location differences.

I'm gonna throw the kitchen sink at it.

Meighan: Yeah, I can afford this month much. Therefore, I'm gonna pay it just to end the paying.

Veronica: I don't need to do the work. Right. And of course, these mistakes, they lead to overpaying often by a significant amount of money, or they lead to repeated failure to close the deal. Like people that go to auctions are never ever in the hunt because they're not even looking at the right properties and they haven't priced it property properly.

And they, they're hang, they're anchoring their idea on what they should pay to all the wrong things. They're never. In a million years gonna be able to buy that property and how much wasted time and energy effort. And then they can sometimes actually do themselves outta the market. Entirely. They give up.

It is so hard, and then you might end up going, bugger it. I'm just gonna throw the kitchen sink at it. We don't want you to do that. We want you to be smart and strategic, and that's why we want you to do the pricing properly. Now, there are hidden costs of not knowing how to price a property.

Veronica: I'm astounded the amount of people who are going to buy their, the biggest decision and the biggest financial. Decision that you're gonna make in your life is to buy your first property, and in fact, any property, because they usually get more expensive as you go on. So it is the biggest decision you're gonna make, and then without actually knowing what it's worth and what you are prepared to pay for it.

And if the market is flat, you've got a much bigger risk because you could have negative equity, and that means that where it's actually worth less than you paid for or worth less than you pay for it. Or if you did ever have to sell it, you owe the bank more than you, more than you paid for it. but like these, these are huge costs. The other thing too, what if the valuation doesn't stack up? You know, if the bank valuations are done after you've made the offer, after you've gone and signed a contract I mean, if you go to finance clause, great, but if you go to auction, you can't back out, right?

You gotta find that extra money somewhere. So there, there's so many important reasons why you need to not overpay.

Meighan: Absolutely. I guess the other thing, the other, the flip side to that, Veronica, is if you're so cautious and you're not using the correct pricing,~ uh,~ framework, then you could risk under offering repeatedly. Let's be really clear. Usually to buy a property, you have to be the person who pays the right the highest amount of money, okay?

Veronica: Yeah, that's true. So you need to know when to walk away for different properties. And again, pricing properly and, and doing this research teaches you when to walk away versus when to be the highest offer. You know, it's a really critical difference.

Meighan: is, but it gives you the confidence to be the highest offer and be prepared to, to sit comfortably with that. Under offering repeatedly can actually cost you as well because you've got a lot of time that you're investing. If you're doing your due diligence properly, you're doing all your inspections properly, it is gonna cost you time because you should be putting investing time and effort into this process.

Oh, you know, oh no, I never would've paid that, or it's not worth that. If you, if that's your mindset around things, then you are what you can afford. In a rising market is gonna become less and less and less, so your purchasing power is going to decrease. But it's also, you know, in flat market, it, it has, it has,~ um,~ costs as well.

So missing out can cost you more money or lead to you only being able to buy something of inferior quality or at a lower price point.

Veronica: So this mini course is super valuable. Honestly, we are teaching you the process that we as professionals, each of us, with well over 20 years experience. In fact, I've got 26 years experience now. I think we, I think we've cracked 50 years between us. ~Um, ~we teach you, walk you through this process step by step, how to analyze comparable sales.

And how to disregard it when necessary. How to assess market momentum and how to decide your walkaway number with evidence as a foundation for it rather than wishful thinking.

Meighan: It's practical, it's tactical, and it's designed specifically for first home buyers to build your knowledge base. Okay, it's $99. It's an insurance policy against overpaying or sitting on the sidelines for another 12 months and watching your purchasing power erode away.

It's powerful on its own as a standalone, but if you really want. burger with the fries, you need to get the whole course and that will teach you everything from go to woe.

But look, in all reality,~ uh,~ you know, this, this pricing course, it's such an essential skill. We see buyers going to negotiate and go to auction without this skill time and time again. If it's the only thing you master, you really need to crack this skill.

Meighan: Yeah, it's one of the things that we get in in campfire, which of course. Is, uh,~ uh,~ the, the weekly mentoring that we do with our students in the first home buyer course. It is one of the things that they say gives them the absolute utmost confidence when they're standing up to bid at an auction. They know what their price limit is.

They know they've done the work, they know when they're prepared to walk away, and they know that they can confidently celebrate if they buy that property within their limit because they know it was worth it.

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We hope to see you there soon.