Real Estate Agent Adelaide: The Highest Appraisal Is Rarely the Most Honest One

The agent quoting the highest figure must simply understand the market better than the others.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.Why the Appraisal Spread Rarely Gets ChallengedWhen 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 sellers wanting a clearer picture of how this plays out locally helpful information is a reasonable place to start. The specifics change from agent to agent, but the underlying pattern rarely does.Why the Highest Number Is not the Most Accurate OneA 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. Recent examples from local campaigns make this easy to see Sellers wanting to understand this dynamic in more depth learn about this helps explain what to watch for early. The details vary by campaign, but the underlying lesson tends to repeat.The Difference Between a Confident Number and an Accurate OneThe appraisals worth trusting are rarely the ones stated with the most enthusiasm. They are the ones supported by specific comparable sales, recent settlement data, and an honest account of what buyers have actually paid for similar properties nearby in recent months. An agent who can walk through the evidence behind their number is doing something fundamentally different to one who simply asserts a figure with confidence. Confidence of delivery and accuracy of number are not the same thing, and sellers who cannot tell the difference tend to select for the wrong one.There is an easy way to test this. An agent whose number genuinely holds up can usually name the specific sales it is based on, within a sensible timeframe and a genuinely comparable location. An agent leaning mostly on optimism tends to talk in vague terms about a strong market, without ever pointing to anything concrete behind the figure just quoted.The property is not the problem here. The appraisal process is.What Sellers Should Be Evaluating InsteadThe 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.Questions Sellers Often Ask About ThisWhy does the same property get such different appraisal figures from different agents?Every appraisal mixes genuine market assessment with an incentive to secure the listing, and agents weigh those two elements differently. Much of the spread between quotes comes down to that incentive rather than the property itself. An agent under pressure to bring in new business has every reason to lean optimistic, regardless of what the comparable sales actually show.Is the highest appraisal ever the right one to trust?Sometimes, but the trust should come from the evidence supporting it, not from its size. A high figure grounded in genuine comparable sales is an entirely different thing to one pitched purely to win the listing, and the only reliable 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 evidence sits behind the figure, and what the agent plans to do if the property does not attract offers at that price early on, tends to reveal far more than the number ever could. It also tends to separate the agents willing to defend their number from the ones hoping nobody asks.Should sellers be wary of an agent who quotes a lower number?Not really. A lower figure backed by an agent who can clearly walk through the comparable sales is often a far stronger signal than a higher one with nothing behind it. Sellers who choose agents based purely on the size of the quoted figure are optimising for the wrong thing entirely.An appraisal is not a valuation of the house. It is an opening bid for the listing itself, and sellers who understand this early tend to make a very different decision to those who simply follow the biggest number to the door. Across the Gawler District and the northern Adelaide corridor, where appraisal spreads between agents can be just as wide as anywhere else in Adelaide, this distinction tends to matter more, not less, given how quickly a mispriced campaign can lose momentum in a market where comparable listings appear close together.