Here’s a true story that should make every homeowner over 70 sit up straight.
A couple in Washington state owned a beautiful waterfront home. When they decided to sell, they let a family friend handle the listing. The friend recommended pricing it at $5.5 million.
A local real estate agent eventually got involved and sold it for $7.7 million.
That’s $2.2 million the family friend was about to give away.
I’ve been writing about money for more than 40 years, and stories like this still floor me. But thanks to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, we now know they aren’t unusual. They’re the norm.
The researchers looked at roughly 10 million home sales matched to seller ages. Their headline finding: Starting around age 70, sellers begin earning less when they sell. By age 80, you’re likely to walk away with 5% less than a 45-year-old would for the same house.
That’s not pocket change. On a $500,000 home, it’s $25,000 of your money handed to somebody else. On a million-dollar home, it’s $50,000.
And the researchers don’t blame the market. They blame the people you’d assume are on your side: real estate agents.
Here are the five biggest traps to watch for if you’re an aging homeowner getting ready to sell.
1. Trusting a friend of the family or out-of-area agent
That $7.7 million waterfront sale I mentioned? It came from a recent New York Times piece. Wealth adviser Dan Sudit of Crewe Advisors told the Times he had to talk his client’s parents out of using a friend who knew nothing about the local market.
That story isn’t unusual. People who haven’t sold a home in 30 or 40 years often have no idea what their property is worth in today’s market.
They lean on someone they trust personally — a nephew with a license, a neighbor’s kid who just got into real estate — instead of finding the best local pro.
Comp values change every year. The agent who sells five waterfront homes a year knows things the family friend never will. If you wouldn’t let your dentist do your knee surgery, don’t let a casual acquaintance sell your biggest asset. Walk through these questions with every candidate before you sign.
2. Letting your agent list the home off-MLS
A multiple listing service (MLS) is a database that broadcasts your home for sale to every agent and public site like Zillow and Realtor.com. A pocket listing skips that. The agent shops the property within their own network instead.
Pocket listings sound convenient. No open houses, no parade of strangers, no pressure to stage.
But they come at a steep price.
The Philly Fed paper found that off-MLS home sales bring lower returns — and the discount is much bigger for older sellers. For sellers over 75, the pocket-listing penalty is nearly four times larger than for middle-aged sellers.
Why? Less competition. When only the agent’s contacts see your listing, you’re not getting the highest bid. You’re getting the most convenient one. And pocket listings are far from the only questionable agent tactic worth knowing about.
3. Agreeing to dual agency
Dual agency is when a single agent represents both the buyer and the seller. The listing agent collects the entire commission instead of splitting it with a buyer’s agent.
Sounds efficient. Sounds friendly. Also sounds like trouble.
If your agent also represents the buyer, who’s negotiating for you? Nobody. Your “advocate” makes more money the faster the deal closes — and they make it from both sides of the table.
The Philly Fed researchers found that the likelihood of dual agency rises steadily with seller age. Sellers 76 and up are about 2.6 percentage points more likely to land in a dual-agency deal than middle-aged sellers.
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4. Selling to a cash investor
You’ve seen the billboards. “We buy houses! Any condition! Cash in 7 days!”
The pitch is irresistible if you’re 78 years old, your knees hurt, and the thought of strangers tromping through your house makes you tired. No repairs. No staging. No negotiation. Just sign and go.
The catch: Investors aren’t paying retail. They’re paying wholesale. They have to — they need to flip or rent the place at a profit.
The Philly Fed study found older homeowners are about 2.65 percentage points more likely than middle-aged ones to sell to investors.
And when an older seller combines a pocket listing with an investor buyer, the annual return drops by about 1% per year compared to a middle-aged seller who lists on the MLS and sells to a regular buyer.
A 1% lower return per year doesn’t sound like much. Compound it over a decade of ownership, and you’re talking real money.
5. Showing buyers a time capsule
This last one isn’t about your agent. It’s about you.
Real estate agent Beverly Grace of Grace Realty and Property Management in Seminole, Florida, told the New York Times what she sees with older clients: “You’ve got the avocado bathtub and yes, the fridge works fine, but it’s harvest gold.”
Everything functions. Nothing’s broken. So nothing gets updated.
But buyers in 2026 don’t want to renovate. With building costs and labor costs both up sharply over the last few years, many buyers walk away from any home that screams weekend project.
The Philly Fed paper found that about 25% of the age gap in home-sale returns is explained by exactly this: Older sellers don’t renovate, and they tolerate more deferred maintenance.
Sellers 76 and older are 2.5 times more likely than the average seller to be listing a home that needs substantial repair.
About 10 years ago, my elderly next-door neighbor died, and I ended up buying the place from his kids for $360,000. It needed a ton of work, having not been updated for decades. But I put in about $100,000, but then sold it for $620,000. (I should have kept it. It’s now worth about $1.2 million.)
Although I gutted that place, you don’t have to do a ton of work to increase the value before selling. Repainting, replacing a fridge that screams 1978, and fixing the obvious stuff before you list will pay you back many times over. Just be careful — some renovations drain your resale value instead of adding to it.
The bottom line
The Federal Reserve isn’t usually in the business of giving home-selling advice. But its researchers just delivered a public service announcement to anyone over 70: You can be taken advantage of in this market, and the system has incentives that work against you.
The fix isn’t complicated. Find an experienced local agent, not a friend. Insist on a full MLS listing. Refuse dual agency. Don’t accept the first cash offer that lands. And spend a few weekends modernizing the place before you list.
Do those five things, and the “age penalty” the Fed identified mostly disappears.
Don’t, and you’re just leaving money on the closing table for somebody else (like me) to scoop up.
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