The Expectation Gap: Why Buyers and Sellers Keep Missing Each Other
If you’ve been house hunting lately, you’ve probably felt it. That gap between what you thought your money could buy and what’s actually out there.
Or if you’re selling, that quiet sting when you see your neighbor’s home sold last year for more and wonder, why not mine?
It’s easy to think this is about prices. But most of the time, it’s about expectations, and the distance between how buyers and sellers see the same market.
In a competitive market, list price isn’t what it seems. It’s often a tactic to get eyeballs, not a reflection of true market value. Buyers see it as a promise. Sellers see it as validation. But in reality, it’s just a starting line.
And that’s where the gap begins.
Everyone’s living in a different market
Buyers are anchored to the list price, assuming it represents what the home is “worth.”
Sellers are anchored to last year’s comps, assuming appreciation is linear.
Neither is fully tuned in to what today’s market is actually saying.
So deals don’t fall apart because of price. They fall apart because of expectation misalignment.
The emotional side of expectations
This isn’t about being unrealistic. It’s about attachment, to numbers, to narratives, to a sense of control.
Sellers are attached to what their home should be worth.
Buyers are attached to what they should be able to afford.
Both are holding on to the story of what once felt possible.
When the market challenges that story, people don’t always adjust. They dig in.
I see it all the time.
A buyer decides to wait until the market changes, but it keeps moving in the opposite direction.
A seller lists high “just to test the market,” then chases it down, week after week.
No one’s being unreasonable. They’re just trying to protect what feels fair.
The hardest part
The hardest part isn’t accepting where the market is.
It’s accepting that it’s no longer where you thought it would be.
That gap between what was and what is can feel personal, like the market is moving on without you. But it’s not. It’s just doing what it always does: evolving.
And the sooner you evolve with it, the easier it gets.
Closing the gap
You can’t control the market.
But you can control how quickly you adapt to it.
The market doesn’t reward what’s fair.
It rewards what’s real.
Because your best decisions aren’t rooted in the story you told yourself yesterday. They’re rooted in the reality you can see clearly today.
The smartest buyers and sellers close the gap by meeting the market where it is.
And the sooner you do, the sooner it starts to work with you, not against you.