Steve Roake & Kimberly Genovese
Brokers · Keller Williams Preferred Realty
630-912-9129
Seller specialization — pricing strategy
The listing team that leads with the numbers
Analytical Illinois and Indiana listing brokers helping homeowners price and sell single-family homes, townhomes, and inherited properties in Plainfield, Naperville, Joliet, Orland Park, and Northwest Indiana.
Charm does not set a list price. Comparable sales do. Steve Roake and Kimberly Genovese price homes the way an appraiser reads a file — a tight comp set, adjusted line by line, tested against the homes your buyer is shopping right now.
Then the price gets executed on a schedule. Every listing runs through a 29-day, four-stage marketing sequence built to test price and identify buyers before your home accumulates visible days on market. Sellers come to the Freedom Group Global team when they want to see the math and the plan, not a pitch.
The short answer
What does a data-driven listing team actually do differently? Steve Roake and Kimberly Genovese price against the homes your buyer is shopping right now, not only against what sold last spring. The starting price is built from a controlled comparable set — within one mile, within 20% of your square footage, within one bedroom and bathroom, matched on age, garage, and basement — then positioned against active competition. That price is executed through a 29-day, four-stage sequence that markets your home to buyers and agents before it publishes to the MLS and the portals, so the price gets tested while your days-on-market counter stays near zero.
How this differs
Most agents list and wait
Trusted Chicago southwest suburban and Northwest Indiana listing brokers running a sequenced home sale process for sellers in Plainfield, Joliet, Orland Park, and Crown Point. Here is the side-by-side.
| Most listings | Steve & Kimberly | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing basis | Recent sold comps, then a suggested list price. | Sold comps and a detailed analysis of the active listings your buyer will compare you against, since those are the homes competing for the same offer. |
| Price framing | An "asking price" — a ceiling buyers negotiate down from. | A "starting price" — a floor buyers build up from. The wording changes how an offer gets calculated. |
| First market exposure | Straight to MLS and the portals on day one. | One-to-one outreach to qualified buyers and active local agents first, so price gets tested before the public clock starts. |
| Days on market | Accumulates publicly from day one, visible on every portal. | Structured so a home reaching day 29 has roughly seven visible online days rather than a month of them. |
| Photography | Every room, every angle, as many photos as possible. | Fewer, stronger images. More photos give a buyer more chances to rule your home out before they ever walk it. |
| If it does not sell | A price reduction, then another, each one public. | A scheduled day-29 review with buyer feedback in hand, and previously interested buyers contacted directly before any change publishes. |
| Inspection response | Negotiated case by case once the requests arrive. | A Broken / Cosmetic / Worn framework set out early, which narrows repair requests to genuine defects. |
Signature tool
What the spread is worth on your home
Sellers who took the recommended starting price averaged 103.7% of list. The MRED 12-month average is 98.4%, and the NIRA average is 95.8%. Pick your market and a price to see that gap in dollars.
$
Illustration only, calculated from historical averages across small samples. It is not an appraisal, an offer, or a projection of your sale price.
At the MRED average, 98.4%$418,200
Listed above the recommendation, 101.6%$431,800
Listed at the recommended price, 103.7%$440,725
Spread vs. the MRED average$22,525
The comp method
How the comparable sales set is built
Experienced Chicago southwest suburban and Northwest Indiana REALTORS® selecting comparable sales for single-family homes and townhomes in Plainfield, Shorewood, Oswego, Naperville, Valparaiso, Highland, and Crown Point. These are the filters the Freedom Group Global team applies before any home is priced.
| Radius | One mile from the subject property, tightened further where a school boundary, subdivision line, or river changes buyer behavior. |
|---|---|
| Square footage | Within 20% above or below the subject, above grade, measured consistently across every comp. |
| Bedrooms and baths | Within one bedroom and one bathroom, with functional layout differences noted rather than averaged away. |
| Age and construction | Similar year built and build type, so a 1978 tri-level is not priced against 2019 new construction two streets over. |
| Garage and basement | Matched on garage capacity and basement type, including whether the lower level is finished, look-out, or walk-out. |
| Active competition | The three most similar homes currently for sale — the listings a buyer will hold yours up against before writing an offer. |
| Market context | Months of inventory, median days on market, and the current list-to-sale ratio in your specific price band. |
The pricing pyramid
Where a starting price lands, and what it costs
Homes entering the market at 98–101% of the average price of the three most similar active listings have produced the highest final sale prices. Every band above and below gives something back.
108–110%of active comps−4.5%
105–107%of active comps−3.9%
102–104%of active comps−2.1%
98–101%starting priceHighest final sale price0.0%
95–97%of active comps−1.2%
92–94%of active comps−1.8%
89–91%of active comps−2.2%
Bars show the average reduction in final sale price for each starting band, relative to the 98–101% band. Source: 72SOLD® pricing research drawn from multiple independent studies of MLS sales nationally. Figures are averages across a large sample and do not predict the result of any individual home.
Our own listings, same pattern
The cost of starting high, measured locally
Every seller gets a recommended starting price. Some take it. Some ask to start higher. Here is how those two groups actually finished.
Listed at the recommended starting price
103.7%
of list price · 13 days on market
22 sellers
22 sellers
Listed above the recommended starting price
101.6%
of list price · 28 days to contract
12 sellers
12 sellers
Starting above the recommendation cost those sellers 2.1 percentage points of final sale price and roughly 15 additional days on market. Steve and Kimberly will still list your home where you want it — you deserve to know what the pattern has been first. These are small samples from this team's own closed transactions, not a guarantee of any result.
Where does your home sit on the pyramid?Send the address and get the three most similar active listings, the adjusted comp set, and a supported starting price range.
Get my starting pricePriced high, and priced low, both leak money
Above the range, a home limits its own buyer pool and attracts people shopping for something nicer. The 102–104% band alone loses roughly a quarter of potential buyers, which thins competition at exactly the moment competition sets the price.
Below the range, the extra traffic does not convert into a higher number. The 95–97% band pulls about 1% more buyers, and many of them cannot afford to keep bidding once the price escalates. Lower still, a listing starts drawing wholesale flippers and buyers shopping a smaller budget entirely.
Starting price, not asking price
An asking price is a ceiling. Buyers evaluate a "good deal" by how far under it they can land. A starting price is a floor, which reframes the same number as a minimum to build from. Steve and Kimberly carry that language through every conversation with a buyer's agent, because it changes what the first offer looks like.
Why the clock matters
Days on market quietly destroys value
A home that sits collects a visible counter on every portal. Buyers read that counter as a verdict, and they start their offers lower because of it — whether or not anything is wrong with the house.
After one week listed−3%
After 30 days listed−7.6%
Visible online days at day 297
Value-decay figures reflect 72SOLD® research on average potential value lost as listings age publicly. The seven-day figure reflects the structure of the 29-day process, in which a home publishes to the MLS on day 23.
The 29-day, four-stage process
A sequence, not a sign in the yard
Each stage has one job, and each one runs on a set calendar. A home that sells in stage one never reaches the later stages at all.
Stage 1 · Days 1–18
One-to-one marketing
Your home goes to qualified buyers and the most active agents in your market by direct call, text, and email. Buyers who feel they are seeing a home first tend to write stronger offers than buyers who find it in a search feed.
Stage 2 · Days 19–22
Pre-MLS public marketing
A concentrated Friday-through-Monday push: social channels, at least 100 surrounding neighbors, and every agent servicing your area. Still off-MLS, still no public day counter.
Stage 3 · Days 23–26
Full MLS and portal launch
Submitted Monday evening to hit every buyer and agent Tuesday morning. Pricing moves from a range to a specific starting price, now informed by 22 days of real buyer reaction.
Stage 4 · Days 27–29
72-hour launch weekend
Saturday brings a heavily promoted open house, Sunday builds competition among interested buyers, and Monday is offer review and counteroffer strategy.
Day one arrives with the home already prepared — staged, cleaned, photographed, and inspected through the Certified Pre-Owned Program. Day 29 is a scheduled meeting either way. If your home has not sold, you get a reassessment built on 29 days of buyer reaction rather than guesswork — and previously interested buyers hear about any price change directly, before it publishes anywhere.
All pre-MLS marketing is performed with your written authorization and in accordance with the rules of the applicable MLS, including any required delayed-marketing or office-exclusive disclosures. Steve and Kimberly will walk you through exactly what those forms mean before anything begins.
Certified Pre-Owned Program
Four things to handle before day one
A car gets certified before it hits the lot. A home can too. These four steps happen on a schedule ahead of launch, so your listing arrives finished rather than getting fixed in public.
Schedule first · before anything else
Staging consultation
- More clicks on the online listing
- Rooms read at their intended purpose
- Buyers form an emotional read fast
Schedule before photography
Professional cleaning
- Signals a home that has been cared for
- Removes the small distractions buyers fixate on
Schedule before the full MLS date
Pre-listing home inspection
- You find the issues before a buyer's inspector does
- You choose how to address each one, on your terms
- Fewer surprises means less repair fatigue mid-contract
Ordered for you by your agent
Home warranty
- Peace of mind for the buyer, and for you during listing
- Removes a common reason a buyer hesitates
- Supports testing a higher starting price
If roughly $2,000 of preparation could return $24,500 to $45,500, how many times would you want to do it?
That is the question the program is built around, and it deserves an honest answer rather than a slogan. The dollar range above illustrates what the reported effects could add up to on a home in the mid-$300s. The four effects are not simply stacked on top of each other — a clean home and a staged home overlap, and the ceiling on any home is still what the comps support.
What Steve and Kimberly will do is price the preparation against your specific home before you spend anything. If staging your living room returns less than it costs on a house at your price point, they will tell you to skip it.
Percentage ranges reflect published research from the staging, home inspection, and home warranty industries describing typical outcomes across many homes. They are not a projection for any individual property, and they are not additive. Preparation costs vary by home size, condition, and vendor.
Find out which prep steps pay off on your homeTell Steve and Kimberly about the property and get the four steps priced against it — including the ones worth skipping.
Price my prep list
Twelve steps
What happens inside the stages
Each step exists to move one number: inquiries, showings, offer strength, or net proceeds at closing.
Attracting buyers
01 — Photography
Fewer, better photos
A curated set of a home's strongest images. Every additional photo is another chance for a buyer to rule you out from the couch.
02 — Copy
Curiosity-driven remarks
Listing copy written to prompt a call rather than to inventory the features a buyer can already see in the photos.
03 — Pricing
Competition-based pricing
Priced against the homes currently for sale that your buyer is actively comparing, alongside the closed comps.
Building excitement
04 — Positioning
Scarcity and social proof
Callers hear what makes your home genuinely uncommon, and they hear that other buyers are asking about it.
05 — Reach
Private Listing Network
Pre-marketed to motivated buyers before syndication to the MLS, Realtor.com, Homes.com, and Zillow.
06 — Choice
Yard sign held back
Sellers may choose to hold the sign during early access showings, reinforcing that a buyer is seeing the home before public launch.
Generating offers
07 — Access
Opportunity showings
Serious buyers are invited to see the home early and to make a premium offer ahead of public launch day.
08 — Conversion
Opportunity purchase
During those showings, buyers are given a clear path to head off the coming competition with a strong immediate offer.
09 — Framing
Starting price
The number is presented as a floor to build from rather than a target to negotiate down from.
After the offer
10 — Negotiation
Counteroffer intelligence
A structured approach to learning how much room sits above a buyer's opening number before you answer it.
11 — Inspection
The BCW formula
Broken, Cosmetic, or Worn. Sorting requests into those three buckets early keeps the inspection response focused on real defects.
12 — Appraisal
Meet the appraiser
Because these sale prices often sit above the market, Steve or Kimberly meets the appraiser at the home with the supporting comp file in hand.
The wider evidence
Beyond this team's own listings
Constellation Home Sales runs the 72SOLD® marketing and pricing program. A 2025 independent study reviewed five years of data across more than 400,000 MLS sales to measure how sellers using certified agents fared nationally.
5.8%
Higher median sale price for sellers working with agents certified on the program, compared with other MLS sales in the study.
400,000+
MLS sales reviewed, across a five-year window, in the 2025 independent study.
12
Steps inside the four stages, each one aimed at a specific number: inquiries, showings, offer strength, or net proceeds.
The 5.8% figure is a national program result reported as a median, measured across a different population than the local figures shown at the top of this page. Local results reflect this team's own closed transactions in MRED and NIRA. Neither set of numbers is a prediction, and no sale price can be guaranteed.
Who this page is for
Sellers who want to see the reasoning
Selling an inherited or probate home
Patient Illinois and Indiana estate listing brokers helping executors and heirs value, prepare, and sell inherited houses in Orland Park, Tinley Park, and Lockport — with documentation the court and the family can both follow.
Relisting after an expired listing
Analytical Chicago-area listing team repricing and relaunching expired listings that other agents could not move, starting with an honest read of why the first attempt stalled.
Divorce and life transitions
Neutral, respectful REALTORS® handling divorce-related home sales for two parties who need one shared set of numbers and a clear, unhurried timeline.
Relocating out of state
Experienced relocation listing brokers coordinating the sale of suburban homes in Naperville, Plainfield, and Bolingbrook while the seller manages a move on a fixed corporate calendar.
Rightsizing to a low-maintenance home
Trusted Kendall and Will County REALTORS® helping owners of larger homes sell and move into townhomes, ranches, and low-maintenance properties in Shorewood, Minooka, and Channahon.
Investors and multi-property owners
Numbers-first Northwest Indiana brokers analyzing rental performance, cap rate, and disposition timing for owners selling investment properties in Crown Point, Schererville, and Valparaiso.
Coverage
Where Steve & Kimberly price and sell homes
Illinois — MRED · Will, Kendall, DuPage, Cook, Kane, Grundy counties
Plainfield · Naperville · Oswego · Shorewood · Joliet · Bolingbrook · Romeoville · New Lenox · Mokena · Tinley Park · Orland Park · Frankfort · Minooka · Channahon · Crest Hill · Lockport
Northwest Indiana — NIRA · Lake, Porter, La Porte, Jasper, Newton counties
Crown Point · Schererville · Merrillville · Valparaiso · Chesterton · Portage · Westville · Michigan City · St. John · Dyer · Munster · Highland · Hobart
The Freedom Group Global Promise
You deserve a five-star experience
The Promise is simple: everyone on this team treats your sale as though you are the only client on the roster. Challenges get anticipated and handled early, so surprises do not land on you at the worst possible moment.
It is not a promise that a transaction will go perfectly. Plenty happens in a home sale that sits outside anyone's control — an appraisal, a buyer's financing, a repair discovered on inspection day. What Steve and Kimberly promise is that those issues get raised with you directly and worked through together, never quietly managed around you.
L — Like: clear, frequent communication.
W — Work: visible effort at every step.
I — Inform: buyer interest, feedback, and market movement, as it happens.
In return, two requests
Refer someone who needs help. Between now and closing day, if you meet someone selling, buying, refinancing, or just wondering where to start, ask their permission and pass along their number.
Leave an honest review. After closing, or any time along the way, share how it went. Many sellers choose their agent from reviews, and honest feedback is how this team keeps improving.
Questions sellers ask
Pricing questions, answered
How does a listing agent decide the right list price for my home?
By building a comparable sales set and adjusting it. Steve and Kimberly pull recent closed sales within a mile of your home that match on size, bedrooms, bathrooms, age, garage, and basement, adjust each one for the differences that remain, then compare that range against the three most similar homes currently for sale. The result is a supported range rather than a single guess, and you see every comp that produced it.
What is the pricing pyramid, and where should my home sit on it?
The pricing pyramid maps final sale price against where a home first enters the market, measured as a percentage of the average price of the three most similar active listings. Homes starting at 98–101% of that average have produced the highest final sale prices. Both higher and lower bands give value back — higher bands by shrinking the buyer pool, lower bands by attracting buyers who cannot sustain a competitive bid.
How many sales are those percentages based on?
The 103.7% figure covers 22 sellers who listed at the recommended starting price, and the 101.6% figure covers 12 sellers who chose to list above it. Those are small samples, which is why they are labeled as such rather than presented as a rule. The market comparisons come from much larger pools: the current 12-month moving averages for MRED in Illinois and NIRA in Northwest Indiana. Steve and Kimberly will show you the underlying transactions if you want to see them.
What is the difference between a starting price and an asking price?
An asking price signals a ceiling, so buyers measure a good deal by how far below it they can get. A starting price signals a floor, so the same number becomes a base to build from. It is a wording choice with a real effect on how first offers get calculated, and it is used consistently through every buyer-agent conversation.
What happens if I want to list higher than you recommend?
Your home, your decision. Steve and Kimberly will list it where you want it. They will also show you what happened to the sellers who made that choice: 12 of them averaged 101.6% of list and took 28 days to reach contract, against 103.7% and 13 days for the 22 who started at the recommendation. That is roughly two points of price and two weeks of time. Knowing the trade-off in advance is the point.
What is the Certified Pre-Owned Program?
Four preparation steps completed on a schedule before your home launches: a staging consultation first, professional cleaning before photography, a pre-listing home inspection before the full MLS date, and a home warranty ordered by your agent. The idea is borrowed from certified pre-owned cars — the inspection and the fixes happen before the listing goes public, rather than in front of buyers during a contract.
Do I have to do all four steps?
No. Each one gets priced against your specific home before you commit a dollar. A vacant home may need staging more than a well-furnished one. A five-year-old house may not need a pre-listing inspection. Steve and Kimberly will tell you where the return does not justify the cost at your price point, which is a shorter list on some homes than on others.
Why would you market my home before it goes in the MLS?
To test the price and find buyers while your public days-on-market counter stays at zero. A home that sits visibly on the portals gets read as overpriced regardless of the reason, and offers come in lower because of it. The first 22 days run off-MLS, so by the time your home publishes, real buyer reaction has already informed the starting price. This is done with your written authorization and follows the rules of the applicable MLS, including any delayed-marketing disclosures.
Should I price high to leave room for negotiation?
Buyers negotiate against comparable sales, not against your asking price. An inflated starting price mostly filters out the buyers who would have paid the most, since they never see the home in their search range. Steve and Kimberly build negotiating room into strategy and terms instead — closing date, possession, credits, and inspection response.
What happens if my home does not sell in the first 29 days?
Day 29 is already on the calendar as a review meeting. You get showings, online views, saves, and buyer feedback measured against the comp set, which usually identifies whether the issue is price, presentation, photography, or competition that came on after you did. If a price change is the answer, previously interested buyers and their agents hear about it directly before it publishes anywhere.
What is the BCW formula?
Broken, Cosmetic, or Worn — a framework for sorting inspection requests. Broken items are genuine defects and belong in the conversation. Cosmetic and worn items are the condition a buyer accepted when they wrote the offer. Setting that expectation early tends to keep repair negotiations focused and keeps more of your proceeds at closing.
Do you list homes in both Illinois and Indiana?
Yes. Steve is licensed in both states, Kimberly is licensed in Indiana, and together they list homes across the Chicago southwest suburbs and Northwest Indiana — including cross-border situations where a property belongs in more than one MLS.
What does it cost to get a comparative market analysis?
Nothing, and there is no obligation to list. Steve and Kimberly prepare the analysis, walk you through the comps and the pyramid position, and leave you with the document whether you sell this month, next spring, or not at all.
Next step
Get the numbers before you get a pitch
Request a written comparative market analysis for your home in Illinois or Northwest Indiana. Steve and Kimberly send the comp set, the active competition, your position on the pricing pyramid, and the supported starting price range — then you decide what to do with it.
Transactions closed615+
Sales volume$113M+
Serving sellers since2003
At recommended price103.7%
© Copyright 2026. . All rights reserved.
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Phone Number: 630-912-9129
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