If you’re in the market to either buy or sell a home, expect a visit from the ghosts of real estate past and real estate future. The ghost of real estate past is pretty friendly, sort of Casper like. He’s polite and straightforward and generally says what he means. But the ghost of real estate future has a little bit of demon in him, cleverly pricing and negotiation properties.

Putting a price on real estate has become a strategic game steeped in psychology. Sellers almost always overestimate the worth of their home and fail to understand that an asking price is just that and should be viewed as a negotiating tool. Buyers don’t care what you paid and how much you spent to improve the home. Furthermore, high end buyers frequently are looking to make their own renovations and will totally discount what changes you made and what it cost.

In an effort to set their home apart, sellers and their agents try a variety of pricing strategies. Some price under market and try to create a frenzy and bidding war. Some even price way above the market attempting to promote the property as something more exclusive than it actually is. However the real estate Website Zillow reports that large spreads between asking price and sales price are actually not very common. In May they reported that sale prices were only 3 percent lower than asking price in the metro areas they analyzed. Following the advice of the ghost of real estate past and keeping listing prices closer to actual value in the long run is probably the best strategy.

Never-the-less pricing is a delicate balance that hardly ever pleases everyone in the process and involves a definite psychology. Researchers have found that exact asking prices convey less negotiability rather than round numbers, which convey more flexibility. Also pricing just below a $100,000 mark like listing at $799,000 rather than $800,000 appeals to buyers who view the property as being “in the $700,000s rather than the $800,000s.”

Zillow also recently completed a study analyzing the value differential between waterfront and non-waterfront homes. They found that the premium paid for waterfront properties has increased steadily from 1996 except for a downturn after the financial crisis. They also concluded that the price gap between homes on the water and those off the water has increased. Nationally in 2014 the median waterfront home was $370,000 which represents a 116 percent premium over non-waterfront. Zillow reported that 20 years ago, the different between waterfront and non-waterfront was 64 percent. The study also concluded that Florida’s waterfront was found to be the least expensive in the United States.

As to the ghost of real estate future, it appears that cash buyers are still popular representing 33 percent of transactions in June, a figure that reach its peak of 43 percent in late 2011. As I reported previously, Florida’s cash transactions hover around 38 percent, which is the same for Manatee County. All cash buyers sometimes think they are in a better negotiation position since there is no mortgage contingency, however, a buyer who has been pre-qualified with a secure letter from a lender can have just as much influence on a seller.

So watch out for those real estate ghosts, learn from the past, be ready for the future and have a haunted Halloween.