How to spot an overpriced listing

Most advice on the market tells you how to find a bargain. Fewer people talk about the mirror-image skill: recognising when a listing is priced above what the market — and the data — actually supports. It matters just as much, because overpaying by even 10% on a property is a bigger loss than most people would ever accept on any other purchase they make.

Start with price-per-m², not the headline price

A 45m² flat at 4,000,000 CZK and a 90m² flat at 7,000,000 CZK are not directly comparable on sticker price — but they are on price per square metre. Compare a listing’s price/m² against the median for its city (or, better, its specific neighbourhood) before judging whether the number is high. A flat priced 20%+ above the local median needs a good reason — location, condition, view, a rare layout — or it’s probably just overpriced.

Compare asking price to an independent estimate

This is the single most useful check, and it’s the one manual comparisons usually skip because it requires more data than one listing can give you. Landomo runs a machine-learning price estimate on Czech apartments, trained across the full de-duplicated market rather than a handful of nearby listings, and shows the gap between a listing’s asking price and that estimate directly on the listing card and detail page. A listing priced meaningfully above the estimate carries the same signal in reverse as the “below estimate” badge that flags a good deal — it’s telling you the asking price looks rich relative to comparable properties, not just relative to the seller’s opinion of their own flat.

Prague sits at the low end — only around 7% of listings there price meaningfully below the ML estimate, versus roughly a third to a half in several mid-sized cities. That doesn’t mean Prague listings are all overpriced; it means the market there is thin on obvious below-estimate deals, so a buyer has to work harder to find one — and should be more suspicious of a Prague listing priced above estimate, since it’s competing in a market where sellers already have less room to overreach.

Days on market tells you what the price tag doesn’t

A listing that has been up for months in a market where similar properties sell in weeks is a strong tell — either it’s overpriced, or something else is putting buyers off. Because Landomo tracks listings over time rather than showing a single static scrape, you can see when a listing first appeared and whether it’s been re-listed at a lower price since — both are far more informative than the current asking price in isolation.

Watch for re-listing at a higher price

• Repeated re-listing near the same price after being taken down and relisted often means the seller is testing the market rather than responding to feedback — a sign the price hasn’t moved to match reality yet.
• A price increase mid-listing is unusual and worth asking about directly — it can mean a genuine improvement (renovation, new furnishing) or simply an attempt to anchor buyers higher after early interest.
• Multiple portals, different prices for what turns out to be the same property is a real (if less common) pattern — Landomo’s de-duplication surfaces this by merging the listing and keeping the most recent price, rather than you finding out by accident.

Sanity-check against rental yield

If a property is priced well above what its estimated rent would support — a very low gross yield relative to comparable units in the same city — that’s a second independent signal pointing the same direction as a rich price-per-m². It doesn’t automatically mean walk away (some markets are legitimately priced on appreciation expectations rather than yield, see our European price snapshot), but it’s a reason to ask more questions rather than fewer.

Put it together before you make an offer

• Compare price-per-m² to the local median, not just the sticker price.
• Check the listing against Landomo’s ML estimate — a gap above estimate is the same signal as a gap below, in reverse.
• Look at days on market and any re-listing history before assuming the current price is the seller’s final word.
• Cross-check gross yield if you’re buying to let — see our rent-vs-buy analysis for the city-by-city numbers.