How Comparable Sales Actually Work

The house down the street sold for a certain price, so why is yours not worth the same? Comparable sales are more nuanced than a simple price per square foot comparison, and here I walk through what a comp really is, why condition, lot, and timing change value, and how adjustments work in practice.

"But the house down the street sold for [a certain price] — why isn't mine worth the same?" I hear some version of this question regularly, and it's a completely fair thing to ask. The short answer is that comparable sales — "comps" — are more nuanced than a simple price-per-square-foot comparison, and I want to walk through why.

What a comp actually is

A comparable sale is a recently sold home that's similar enough to yours — in location, size, age, condition, and features — to serve as a reasonable reference point for pricing. The idea is sound: if a buyer recently paid a certain amount for a genuinely similar home nearby, that tells us something real about current market value.

The challenge is that "similar" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and two homes on the same street can differ in ways that matter more than they might seem to on the surface.

Why the house down the street might not apply directly

• Condition and updates — a home with an updated kitchen, newer HVAC, or a recently redone roof is not the same product as one that hasn't been touched in twenty years, even if the floor plans are identical.
• Lot and view differences — proximity to South Mountain views, lot size, corner lots versus interior lots, and backyard orientation can all shift value meaningfully.
• Timing — a sale from eight months ago may not reflect today's market conditions. Markets shift, sometimes more quickly than people expect.
• Terms of the sale — a sale price can be affected by concessions, a fast closing timeline, or unusual circumstances that aren't visible from the public sale price alone.
• True square footage and layout — public records aren't always perfectly accurate, and layout usability (number of true bedrooms, functional flow) matters beyond the raw square footage number.

How adjustments work

When I put together a comparative market analysis, I'm not just listing recent sales — I'm adjusting for the differences above to get a more accurate picture of what your specific home is likely worth. That might mean adjusting a comp's price upward or downward to account for a feature your home has that it doesn't, or vice versa. It's part data, part professional judgment grounded in knowing the local market and recent transactions closely.

Why this matters for pricing your home

Pricing too high based on an outlier sale can mean sitting on the market longer than necessary, which can itself work against you — a stale listing often raises more questions for buyers than it answers. Pricing based on an incomplete or outdated comp set can mean leaving money on the table. Getting it right requires looking at the fuller picture, not just the single most convenient data point.

The bottom line

A specific sale price you heard about is a real data point, but it's rarely the whole story. If you're curious what your home might be worth in today's market, I'd rather walk you through a proper, adjusted comparison specific to your property than give you a number based on one comparison that might not actually apply.

A quick example of how this plays out

Say two homes on the same street are both three-bedroom, similar-sized single-story homes built the same year. One has an updated kitchen and a recently replaced HVAC system; the other has its original kitchen and an aging unit nearing the end of its typical service life. Even with nearly identical floor plans and lot sizes, those two homes are not the same product to a buyer, and treating their sale prices as interchangeable would give you a skewed picture of what your home might actually sell for.

This is exactly the kind of nuance that a quick online estimate tool can't fully capture, because it's working from limited public data without knowing the specific condition of either home.

You can get a sense of current market activity on our Ahwatukee Foothills Market Update page, or if you're considering selling, visit our Sellers page or reach out directly and I'll put together a real analysis for your home.