The first two weeks decide the result. A newly listed home reaches every buyer with a saved search on the day it goes live, and that burst of attention does not come back. Price it correctly and the competition happens then. Price it above the comparables and the listing spends that window being skipped, and the eventual price reflects a home the market has already passed on.
Preparation is the cheapest money in the process. Decluttering, a deep clean, minor repairs and honest disclosure of what has been replaced cost little and change how a house photographs and shows. A pre-listing inspection at $400 to $600 can be worth more than it costs, because a failing furnace found by your inspector is a repair, while the same furnace found by the buyer's inspector during a condition period becomes a price renegotiation.
Then there is negotiation and the net. Seller closing costs generally run 4 to 6 percent of the sale price once commission, legal fees of $800 to $1,500 and adjustments are counted, and with Saskatoon at 1.63 months of supply there is genuine leverage for a well-presented home. Joel's hand-reviewed valuation is where it starts, because the improvements algorithms cannot see are the ones most often given away.