Marilyn Messenger, a broker with Andrew Mitchell and Company, knows her market in Sudbury and other suburbs. She sees the homes that are available there, she goes inside them and she can pretty much pin down what will sell and how much a buyer will pay for it. Still, sometimes the process of pricing a home can be fraught with tension.

“What’s difficult is that sellers are generally about six months behind what’s really going on because by the time the media reports on this stuff, it’s already over,” Messenger said. “They’re working with past history and reading about bidding wars and this and that and it’s like, that was in March when there wasn’t any inventory. Now there is more inventory, and July is a slower month, but they are still very skeptical of the idea that if you price it correctly, it will sell quickly for top dollar.”

Messenger often encounters sellers who are afraid that they’re going to leave money on the table by pricing their property too low. They expect that if they price their home for more, a buyer will pay more for it. She handles those situations by sitting down with clients and calmly going over the numbers, the comparables and the particulars of their own property that factor into her price.