Sale-to-list ratio
The BrokerFold Team — Product + Engineering
Last reviewed
The sale-to-list ratio is a sold home’s final price divided by its asking price, expressed as a percentage. At 100%, the home fetched exactly what it asked; above, it sold over asking; below, the seller accepted less. Averaged across a market, it is the standard shorthand for negotiating conditions — who blinked, and by how much.
How to read it
Direction and distance both matter. Ratios drifting up toward and past 100% signal tightening competition; ratios sagging into the low 90s signal buyers negotiating with room. But the number is only as honest as the list prices underneath it. Aggressive underpricing — list low, hold offers, let competition bid up — pushes ratios far above 100% without prices actually rising, and price cuts followed by a sale near the reduced figure produce respectable-looking ratios on what were really disappointing campaigns. Read it beside days on market: a high ratio with fast sales is genuine heat; a high ratio with long sits usually means the asking prices were repositioned along the way. The figure also swings by segment and price band, so the version worth acting on is computed close to the property being priced, not averaged across a whole city.
Not the same as SNLR
The near-identical name causes constant mix-ups with SNLR, which counts transactions — how many homes sold versus how many were newly listed. The sale-to-list ratio is about prices on the homes that did sell. A market can post a weak SNLR and a strong sale-to-list ratio at once: few homes moving, but the ones that move going competitively.
On your website
Here’s the practical catch for agents: computing this ratio requires sold prices, and in Canada sold data doesn’t belong on the open web — it serves registered visitors through a VOW relationship, with the rules described in sold data and the Ontario walkthrough in showing sold prices on your website. A listings site built on real board data can show a signed-in visitor what homes asked, what they fetched, and how that gap has moved — which is exactly the context an offer strategy needs. Freshness matters here too: negotiating conditions can turn inside a single quarter, and a ratio computed over stale months mostly measures the past.
Frequently asked questions
Does selling over 100% of list always mean a bidding war?
No — sometimes it means a deliberately low list price. Underpricing to draw an offer night is a standard play in hot Canadian segments, and it manufactures over-asking results by design. A 110% ratio on a strategically listed home tells you about the strategy; the same ratio on a conventionally priced one tells you about the market.
Which list price does the ratio use — original or final?
Convention varies, and it matters. Most published figures compare the sold price to the asking price in effect at the time of sale. After a price cut or a relist, that flatters the outcome: a home listed at $1.2M, cut to $999K, and sold at $1.05M reads as 105% — over asking — while the seller's journey was anything but.
Keep reading
- SNLR SNLR compares homes sold to homes newly listed in the same period — the quickest read on whether a Canadian market favours buyers or sellers.
- Sold data Sold data is the record of what properties actually sold for. Where it lives in Canada, who may display it, and how a VOW puts it on your website.
- Days on market Days on market counts how long a listing has been for sale. What resets it, how Canadian boards track it, and how buyers actually read it.
- Show sold prices Ontario Ontario agents can show sold prices on their own website through a VOW: registered visitors, terms acceptance, gated display. The steps, start to finish.