The hardest part of pricing a home is not dividing a sale amount by its area. It is deciding whether the sale was genuinely comparable to your home. This guide builds the evidence pack behind an asking-price decision: what to retain, what to exclude, and how to disclose the missing information. For the later listing-price and response decision, use the separate seller pricing guide.
A comparable pack should be reproducible. Someone else should be able to see the source, filters, date and reason each sale was included. It is not a bank valuation or a prediction of the next offer.
Define the home you are comparing
Write a subject-property line before searching: building or cluster, unit type, bedroom count, layout, documented area and basis, floor band, view, condition, occupancy and sale status. Mark anything unverified rather than filling gaps from a brochure or listing.
These fields are not interchangeable. An apartment is not a villa comparable. A primary off-plan sale with a payment plan may not be a close substitute for a completed resale. Even within one tower, two layout lines or different possession terms can matter. There is no general rule that a ten-percent size gap is acceptable or that a high floor deserves a fixed premium.
Gather candidate transactions and keep the search trail
ADREC's Recent Sales view offers filters for geography, project, property type and primary or secondary market. Note the retrieval date, filter choices and period searched. Save the record identifiers and fields actually available to you, subject to any access and privacy restrictions. The interface's filters do not prove that every record includes floor, view, bedroom count or condition.
Start in the same building or cluster. If that yields no usable sales, widen deliberately to the most similar nearby product. Record each widening step so a reader can distinguish a direct comp from context. Do not simply collect a district average and call it your home.
Keep active listings in another sheet. They are useful evidence of what a buyer can choose today, but not evidence of achieved prices. This separation prevents a seller's aspirational ask from entering a sale-price calculation.
Qualify each sale before calculating a midpoint
A candidate record earns weight only after its match and unknowns are visible. This worksheet is a practical way to prevent an attractive outlier from carrying the whole conclusion.
| Check | Retain or investigate | Reason to downgrade to context |
|---|---|---|
| Product and transaction | Same property type and comparable sale stage | Villa for an apartment; launch offer for resale |
| Location and layout | Same building or a defensible substitute | Different phase, unit line or access |
| Area | Documented measure and denominator | Unclear gross, sellable or internal basis |
| Timing | Dated sale with relevant market context | Material project change since the sale |
| Unit attributes | Verified floor, view, condition and occupancy | Attribute inferred from an advertisement |
The RICS comparable-evidence standard emphasises judging the relevance and weight of available evidence. A same-unit repeat sale may be highly informative, but renovations, occupation and different deal terms can still affect its interpretation. Do not convert uncertainty into an invented percentage adjustment.
Report a range and explain its limits
List retained transactions by date and total sale amount. Add a per-area rate only if the area bases are compatible. Show the observed range and, if useful, a median with the sample count. Explain why any observation was excluded. A median from a mixed group is not necessarily the price of your unit.
When the sample is thin, the honest output is a tentative range with a short note on missing evidence. Widening from the same tower to a similar building may increase the count but reduce comparability. That tradeoff should be visible. Avoid a table of stale city or district rates whose date, filter scope and calculation cannot be reproduced.
A compact evidence note could say: "Five secondary apartment sales appeared in the project for the stated period. Three matched the subject's layout and documented area basis; two were retained only as context because their unit type or sale terms differed. The three retained prices span the stated range, but condition was not confirmed." These counts are fictional to illustrate the format, not a claim about a real building.
Present the pack without overselling it
Share the source, observation window, retained records, exclusions and unknowns before suggesting an asking price. If another party challenges the range, focus on the match quality and documents rather than saying that ADREC's citywide average settles the matter. A buyer's lender may commission its own valuation using additional evidence and different assumptions; your pack cannot guarantee the lender's conclusion.
The Knownable map can help orient the search, while the transaction-data guide explains means, medians, area definitions and composition effects. Neither substitutes for checking the unit-level records. The purpose of a comparable pack is to make a pricing conversation more transparent, not to manufacture certainty. This is not investment, legal or tax advice. For a consequential listing decision, obtain a current independent appraisal with access to the relevant property and documents.