Every sold home has two asking prices: the one it started at, and the one it sold from. When they differ, which one you compare the sale price against changes the story completely — and most headline stats quietly use the flattering one.

One home, two asking prices

The original asking price is what the seller first asked when the home came to market — including any earlier listings of the same home that expired or were cancelled. The final asking price is whatever the active listing said when the buyer made their offer, after any reductions and relistings.

In a home that sold on its first listing with no changes, the two are identical. The interesting cases are everything else.

A worked example

A house lists at $1,300,000, sits, cuts to $1,240,000, is cancelled, and relists at $1,180,000 — then sells for $1,200,000. The sold sheet reads: asking $1,180,000, sold $1,200,000 — “102% of asking, sold over ask!”

Against the original ask, the same sale is $1,200,000 on $1,300,000 — 92% of what the seller first believed the home was worth. Both numbers are true. Only one of them tells a buyer or an appraiser something useful about how the market treated that price.

That is why serious market-time and price statistics anchor to the original ask of the full relisting chain — it is the one figure sellers cannot reset. Our Market Heat Index publishes both ratios side by side (rules in the methodology).

What the gap between them tells you

• Small or no gap, market-wide: sellers are pricing close to what buyers will pay; negotiations are about terms more than price.
• Wide gap, market-wide: a repricing market — initial expectations are running ahead of buyers, and cuts/relistings are doing the correcting. Sale prices can stay flat while this gap widens.
• Wide gap on one listing: a seller who has already conceded substantially — worth knowing before you write an offer against their “new” price.

“Sold over asking” — over which asking?

In neighbourhoods where agents list low with a scheduled offer date, selling “over asking” is the plan, not a windfall. In markets priced at value, even strong sales close under ask. And on relisted homes, “over asking” usually means over the reduced ask, as in the example above.

Before reading anything into an over-asking claim, ask: over the original price, or the final one? For where Ontario homes are genuinely clearing above their original ask right now, see the above-asking report.