Whichever agent names the biggest number is obviously the one who has done the most homework.
That is what most sellers believe when three appraisals come back forty to sixty thousand dollars apart. It feels like common sense. More market knowledge should mean a more accurate number, and the agent who arrives at the biggest figure must simply be the one who has done their homework properly.
The Appraisal Gap Sellers Do not Question
When 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. Trust tends to default to the biggest figure offered, largely because it lines up with what the seller wanted to hear in the first place.
An appraisal does double duty. It functions as a valuation, but it is also, whether the agent admits it or not, a pitch for the listing itself. Two agents can inspect the same property, look at the same comparable sales, and still land on figures tens of thousands apart, because one is pricing the house and the other is pricing the chance to win the seller over. It is a distinction worth keeping in mind before the first appraisal appointment For those wanting more context before their own appraisal round Gawler East Real Estate can help fill in the gaps early on. Either way, the pattern tends to hold regardless of which agent a seller speaks to first.
Why the Highest Number Is not the Most Accurate One
Quoting a high number is not evidence of deeper market insight. More often it reflects a readiness to say whatever secures the mandate. That does not require deliberate dishonesty from the agent. Many genuinely believe the optimistic figure, at least until the campaign gets underway and the market tells a different story. Whatever the intent behind it, the seller still ends up appointing an agent on the strength of a number that was never really about the market.
The hard part is that this rarely becomes clear until well into the campaign, once several weeks have passed without the interest that the initial appraisal had implied would show up. Recent examples from local campaigns make this easy to see Anyone weighing up how much to trust an early appraisal go here gives a clearer sense of what actually matters here. Either way, this is the kind of thing worth knowing before the first inspection, not after.
What a Confident Appraisal Actually Looks Like
The 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 a simple test for this. An agent with a genuinely defensible number can usually name the specific sales they are comparing against, within a reasonable timeframe and a comparable location. An agent relying mainly on optimism tends to speak in generalities about the market being strong, without pointing to anything specific that supports the figure they have just quoted.
Confidence is cheap. Comparable sales data is not.
The Questions Sellers Should Be Asking Instead
The 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 where a direct question tends to teach a seller the most. An agent willing to talk through what happens if the opening weeks do not go to plan is behaving very differently to one who has only ever discussed the upside.
What Sellers Usually Want to Know
What explains the gap between appraisals on an identical property?
Appraisals combine genuine market judgement with an incentive to win the listing, and different agents weigh those two things differently. The spread between quotes often reflects that incentive as much as it reflects the property itself. An agent under pressure to secure new business has a reason to lean optimistic that has nothing to do with the comparable sales in the area.
Does the largest appraisal figure ever turn out to be accurate?
Occasionally, but it should be trusted because of the evidence behind it, not because it is the largest number offered. A high figure backed by genuine comparable sales is a different thing entirely to a high figure offered simply to win the business, and the only 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 the number is actually based on, and how the agent intends to respond if the property does not draw offers at that figure early in the campaign, usually reveals more than the appraisal itself. It also tends to expose which agents are comfortable defending their figure and which were quietly hoping the question would not surface.
Does the size of the appraisal reflect the quality of the agent?
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.