Pricing
A defensible price band, floor to target to stretch, anchored in fresh comps and in what the location itself is telling you.
What it weighs most
Competitive gravity
35% of the score. The rest is on this page.
01 / The problem
Price set by gut and defended by anecdote. Everybody in the room has a view, the comps are in somebody's spreadsheet, and the number that comes out has no way of being wrong until it is.
02 / The decisions it serves
Not a report. A decision somebody has to sign.
Each of these is a question your team already asks, and currently answers with a spreadsheet, a phone call and a fortnight.
What can we actually charge
A floor, a target and a stretch, per product line, from comps that exist.
Does this location justify a premium
And how much of one. The honest answer is usually a few per cent, not the twenty somebody hoped for.
What does holding rate cost us in occupancy
Spelled out, rather than discovered.
03 / The method, in the open
Here is exactly what it weighs. Argue with it.
Most tools will not show you this, because most tools do not have it. These are the weights the playbook really uses.
Competitive gravity
What the comps around you support
Amenity access
What is genuinely within reach
Lifestyle fit
Whether this segment pays for this product
04 / It is willing to say no
It does not hand you numbers. It gives you a verdict.
An assistant that only ever agrees with you is a mirror, not an analyst. This one holds a line, names the thing that kills the deal, and will tell you to walk away from a site you already like.
The thresholds it holds you to
-
Location can move the target price by at most 8%. It nudges, it does not invent.
-
Market positioning sits at the 45th to 55th percentile of the comp set. Premium sits at the 65th to 80th.
-
The floor is the lowest defensible rate, at the 25th to 40th percentile depending on positioning.
-
The band comes out roughly 10 to 15% wide, because a single number is false precision.
-
Fewer than ten comps and it flags the sample rather than quietly averaging it.
-
Rental comps go stale after 30 days; sector benchmarks after 90.
What it will not let you ignore
-
It never averages across product types. An apartment is not a house, and independent living is not assisted living. Blending them produces a number that describes nothing.
-
It cascades rather than blends: the best source wins, rather than every source being averaged into mush.
-
The output is a band, not a number. A single figure implies a confidence nobody has.
05 / Why not just ask an AI
A fluent answer and a defensible one are not the same thing.
Every model will answer a location question now, and most of the answers sound right. Ask twice and you get two of them. Ask where the number came from and the room goes quiet.
-
It never averages across product types. An apartment is not a house, and independent living is not assisted living. Blending them produces a number that describes nothing, which is exactly what a general model will cheerfully do.
-
Location moves the price by at most eight per cent. It nudges, it does not invent, and the cap is in the method rather than in someone's judgement.
-
The output is a band, not a number, because a single figure implies a confidence that nobody in the room actually has.
06 / What it runs on, and what you get
The data underneath
Licensed and authoritative, and named in the output, so the number keeps its source when it travels.
- NIC MAP
- Dwellsy IQ
- Esri Tapestry
- Esri Network Analyst
- Hubexo
What you walk out with
A price band, floor to target to stretch, per product line, with the comp distribution, an editable comp set, the contribution of each location factor, and the rate-versus-occupancy tradeoff spelled out.
The method it used and the vintage of every number travel with it, so it still holds up when somebody asks you why in six months.
How an answer travels07 / It pairs with
Nobody makes one decision in isolation. Most teams run this alongside two or three of these.
Run Pricing on something you already decided. See if it agrees with you.
The honest test of a method is whether it reaches the conclusion your best analyst already reached, and tells you plainly when it does not.
Twenty minutes, and you can argue with the weights.