Listing Specialization and Pricing Precision

This paper investigates the relationship between property pricing precision (deviation from an expected property value) and specialization in the listing process by agents. It is hypothesized that financially constrained, risk-averse sellers prefer finer gradations of pricing precision, i.e., less deviation from expected property value, and that a set of agents will rise to meet this preference. The findings in this work indicate that agents specializing in listing properties increase pricing precision. The contributions of this work are twofold: (a) it provides a unique and heretofore uninvestigated metric as its dependent variable, thus allowing for further investigation into the brokerage intermediation process beyond the scope of price and marketing time, and (b) it provides an identifiable agent trait that can allow for a better matching of sellers’ preferences with agents’ abilities.