A two-page seller report that separates the market from your marketing
Page one carries dated public figures for the seller's own area; page two carries what you did, as counts. What goes on each page, where to pull it, and what never crosses between them.
Corrected: this is version 3. See the corrections page.
A seller who asks why the home has not sold deserves two answers kept apart: what the market is doing, and what you have done. We would put the market on page one, the marketing on page two, and never let a line from one page explain the other.
Page one: the market, dated and local
Every figure on page one carries three labels: the series name, the geography and the period it covers. A figure without its period reads as current, and a seller will take it as a fact about this week.
A price index, read correctly
For price direction we would use the Federal Housing Finance Agency's all-transactions house price index at metro level, from its quarterly metro file. Check how FHFA defines the index before you describe it, and do not present a single reading as a price.
As a worked pull: in the quarterly metro file, FHFA's all-transactions index for Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas, stood at 506.31 for the second quarter of 2026. [claim:e1]
To make that useful, find the same metro's row for the same quarter a year earlier in the same file, and report the change between the two with both quarters named. Compare like quarters, and take both readings from the same copy of the file.
Read FHFA's own documentation for what the index covers, and put that coverage in one plain line under the figure.
Time on market and inventory
Beside the index, put two figures from your MLS for the seller's price band and area: median days on market and active listings, each for the last full month, with the month named. The MLS is your local source. A national summary describes a different market and does not belong on this page.
Who lives in the area
If the seller asks who is buying nearby, say what your own records can answer: the buyers who came through this listing, counted. Public demographic data describes an area, not the buyers of one home, so check a dataset's own documentation before you use it to answer that question, and label any figure with the years it covers.
Page two: the marketing, as counts
List what ran and when, with a count beside each item:
- photography delivered, with the date
- listing live, with the date
- each price change, with the date and both prices
- each open house, with the date and sign-ins
- each email or social post, with the date and channel
- views, saves and inquiries by week, each portal named separately
- showings and offers to date
Counts are facts. Explanations are opinions, and they belong in the conversation, not in the table. Leave a cell empty rather than fill it with an estimate you cannot source.
What never crosses between the pages
Do not write that a post, an email or an event produced an offer. A showing and an offer can arrive in the same week for reasons that have nothing to do with the post. Do not set a page-one index change beside a page-two count as if one explained the other. If the market moved, page one shows it with its period; if your activity changed, page two shows it with its dates.
Two pages, dated figures on the first, counts on the second, and no sentence that turns a correlation into a cause.
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