How to read a listing
the way I do.

The asking price is a strategy, not a value. Some sellers price at what they expect to get. Others price under it on purpose, so that a dozen people show up the first weekend and bid it past where it would have landed anyway. In Boston that second approach is common, and it is why a home can sell for well over asking without anyone having overpaid.

The tell is the number itself against what similar homes nearby actually sold for in the last few months. That is the comparison I run before we go see anything. If the asking price sits well under recent sales for the same kind of home on the same kind of street, plan for competition, not a discount.

The Zestimate and its cousins are computer guesses built from public records and past sales. Zillow publishes its own accuracy: about two percent off on homes that are for sale, about seven percent off on homes that are not. The two percent is not magic. Once a home is listed, the estimate leans on the asking price, so it mostly agrees with whatever the seller already said.

Seven percent on a Boston price is tens of thousands of dollars in either direction. It is fine as a rough starting point. It is not a number to make an offer from, and it is not a number to argue with a seller about.

Days on market is how long the home has been listed. In a normal Boston week, a well-priced home draws offers within the first ten days or so. Past a few weeks, something is off: the price, the condition, the building, or the photos. That is not a reason to skip it. It is a reason to ask why, and often the answer is a home with less competition and a seller who is now listening.

Scroll to the price history. Price cuts tell you how the seller is thinking. A listing that was pulled and put back up may show a fresh day count on one app and the real one on another, because the count resets when a home is relisted. Look for the earliest date, not the latest.

Active means you can see it and offer on it. Coming soon means it is not yet open for showings, and there is a window to get ready. Contingent means an offer has been accepted and the buyer is working through inspection or financing; the home can still fall back to you if that falls apart. Under agreement means the full contract is signed; in Massachusetts that is the second of two agreements, and at that point it is effectively gone.

The apps sometimes lag the official record by a day or two. If a home you love says contingent, tell me. Being second in line is a real position, and a clean backup offer has won more than one home I have worked on.

Listing photos are shot with wide lenses that make a ten-foot room look like fourteen. That is not deception, it is the industry standard, and you should simply expect every room to be smaller than it looks. Twilight exteriors are the same idea. Virtually staged photos should be labeled; furniture that looks slightly too perfect usually is.

The most useful thing on the photo page is what is missing. No photo of the bathroom, the basement, the back of the building, or the view out the main window is a choice someone made. A floor plan, when there is one, tells you more than twenty photos. So does dropping into street view and looking at the block.

The words are written by someone paid to sell the home, and they follow rules. Fair housing law means the description talks about the property, never about who should live there, and that is the right rule. What the words can do is tell you about condition and the seller's position if you know the vocabulary.

Cozy means small. Charming or full of character usually means original and untouched. Investor special, handyman special, and needs TLC mean serious work. As is means the seller will not be fixing anything the inspection finds. Estate sale often means the people selling never lived there and know little about it. Buyer to verify means the seller is not standing behind that particular fact. None of these are red flags. They are the seller telling you the truth in code.

Scroll down. The taxes shown are last year's bill and may not be yours. Boston and several nearby cities take thousands off the bill for owners who live in the home, and a listing usually shows the number without that discount, or with a discount you will have to apply for yourself. The condo fee matters just as much as the price: ask what it covers, because a fee that includes heat and hot water is a very different fee from one that covers only the hallway lights.

Year built tells you about lead paint (almost anything before 1978), wiring, and plumbing. Parking is the one to read twice: deeded means you own it, assigned or leased means you do not, and I once found a parking space on a ninety-nine-year lease on page forty of a building's documents. Heat type tells you your winter bill. None of this is hidden; it is just below where most people stop scrolling.

Massachusetts requires sellers to disclose very little in writing, so the listing will not tell you whether the building has a big repair bill coming, whether a unit above has had a leak, or what the last inspection found. It will not tell you what the seller paid or why they are selling, though the public record often does. It no longer tells you anything about how a buyer's agent is paid; that comes from me, in writing, before we tour.

This is the part that is my job. When you send me a listing, I read the page the way this guide does, then I pull what the page cannot show, and you get a short, honest readout: what the listing claims, what the building shows, and what a fair number looks like. It takes me an hour and it has saved clients from more than one beautiful mistake.