You are thinking of selling your house?  Great!  Let me work up a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) for you.

You don't like the price I'm thinking that your house will bring?  (Or maybe you do.)

No matter.  You can set whatever price you'd like.

"What?", you say.  "Really?! Cool!"

What I'm saying is that you can set any price you'd like.  I AM NOT saying it will sell for it.

Here's the thing:  When you have a real estate expert review the market for your neighborhood, that expert is looking at sales in the recent past most similar to your own property.  That real estate expert can offer you a RANGE that your house is LIKELY to eventually sell, based on this recent data.  The price you set, with or without the input of your expert, is just a number.

Have you tried on shoes lately?  Or clothes?  Have you noticed how in some lines you are a certain size, while in other manufacturers products you are some other size?  Guess what:  Size is just a number!  Ha!  It really doesn't matter what the number size is--what fits is what fits!  Why would you settle for a size 2 shoe when your feet are much more comfortable in a size 8?  Or visa versa?  When you try on shoes or clothes or hats, the size you choose to try on first is just a starting place.  You size up or down depending on how that particular product fits your body.

At the end of the day, pricing a home is just like this.  You price it too high, and not only are you not likely to get any offers, you may not even get any lookers.  Price it too low, and you may give your equity away.  However, if it is a really good deal, you may end up with just the right price if your property gets proper exposure and you end up with buyers in a bidding war.  What happens in a bidding war?  You get pretty close to a perfect price because buyers offer the max of what they think your house is worth to them.  And what is the title of this article?

Listen to your agent.  They have your best interests at heart.  There are too many stories of sellers holding out for that too high sales price and months later settling for something much lower than the range discovered by the agent originally.  The agent surely wants you to get the best price for your house--their livelihood depends on it--and the agent's marketing dollars are tied up in marketing your property whether it sells at your too high price or not.

Or maybe not.  You may be interviewing agents to choose who will represent your property and get you the best price, but depend on it that those same agents are interviewing you, too, to determine if you are worth spending their marketing dollars on.  Marketing a house is an expensive endeavor, and the seasoned agent has learned to "take a pass" on spending hard-earned dollars on a pipe dream.