1. They are done negotiating on price and want it to be very clear that they are not going to negotiate further on price based on whatever you might discover during your home inspection.
    
   
2. The house is old, and the seller doesn't want to deal with repairs requests that are mainly related to the fact that the house is old.
    
   
3. The house is unfamiliar to the seller, perhaps because it has been a rental property, and thus the seller hasn't been making small needed maintenance upgrades over time that only an owner occupant would now about --- and thus the seller doesn't want you to nitpick over those details through the inspection process.

• Your neighbor's home is a Colonial with 2400 SF split between the first floor (1200 SF) and the second floor (1200 SF) and is built on a crawlspace.
   
• Your home is a ranch style home with 1200 SF on the main level and 1200 SF finished in the basement.

These two homes will not be seen as having an equivalent value -- not by potential purchasers and not by an appraiser.

Above grade square footage has a higher value attached to it -- both specifically by appraisers, and generally by purchasers.  Even if all of the other factors (condition, age, location, bedrooms, bathrooms) are the same between two houses, if one has a significant portion of the square footage in the basement then it will be seen as less valuable than the home that has all of its square footage above grade.

1. The other home was, indeed, just "a few streets over" but that also put it on the edge of the neighborhood, on a busy road, with a front yard that parents wouldn't let their children plan in for fear of them running into the road where cars often travel past at 45 miles an hour. 
    
   
2. The other home was, indeed, larger -- but the entire house needed to be updated, as it had wallpaper, a dated kitchen, dated flooring, etc.
     
   
3. The other home had a basement one-car garage instead of a main level two-car garage. 
   

Furthermore, aside from all of these differences in the two houses --- the other ($350K) house is not available any longer --- and there aren't three other houses just like it that the buyer can decide to buy. 

In this case, by focusing on this one not-actually-that-similar sale, the buyer has put themselves in a situation where they might miss out on purchasing a great home because of how they are viewing the market based on one comparable sale.

THE SELLER'S STATED PERSPECTIVE

I am confident that I can sell my house for $350K.  After all, my friend owned a very similar house and he just sold it in a week, with multiple offers, for $360K!

THE LARGER CONTEXT

Just a few items...

1. Your friend's house was in a highly desirable neighborhood within walking distance to downtown Harrisonburg -- while your home is on a busy road and has train tracks directly behind it.
    
   
2. Three homes nearly identical to your home, on your street, even facing the same direction as your home, built within two years of your home, updated at the same time as your home, sold in the past three months for $320K, $325K and $330K.
    
3. You have lived a busy life over the past few years, with work, family, and other commitments and you haven't had a chance to tackle the many small maintenance and upkeep items that a home often requires.  Your friend is a retired general contractor and has spent all of his free time over the past two years fixing, replacing, and improving countless aspects of his home's interior, exterior and grounds. 
   

Again, by focusing on this one not-actually-that-similar sale, the seller has put themselves in a situation where they might miss out on selling their home because of how they are viewing the market based on one comparable sale.

So -- as a buyer or as a seller -- don't focus on just one comparable sale when deciding on a reasonable price to pay or to ask -- look for the larger context!

1. The 345 home sales seen thus far in 2018 have marked a 3.92% improvement over the first four months of last year.
    
2. Despite short-term gains in the pace of home sales, the 1,274 home sales seen in the past 12 months is actually 3.78% lower than the number of sales seen in the 12 months immediately before that time.
    
3. Median sales prices are ON THE RISE -- with a 6.84% year-over-year increase in the median sales price in this area.  The median sales price was $190K a year ago and has now risen to $203K!
    
4. Homes are selling faster -- much faster -- in a median of 31 days on the market which is 35% faster than the 48 day median as of a year ago.

1. Home sales have slowed by 4.21% over the past year -- much like the overall market including the County.
    
2. The median sales price has seen a LARGER increase in the City (+9.13%) as compared to the 6.84% increase overall.
    
3. Homes absolutely flew off the market in April 2018 with a median days on market of six days (!?!?!) though that's not actually that much faster than last April's median of eight days!
    
4. Looking at a longer timeframe, the median days on market in the City over the past year has been 17 days -- an impressive 43% faster than the 30 day median one year ago.

January 2018 was a tad slow -- but then February, March and April easily outpaced the same months last year.  Wow!  So -- where will we go in May?  Could we really see a 50% increase (from April to May) as we saw last April (100) to May (149) or will the increase be a bit more tame?

Lest we get toooo overjoyed about the fantastical pace of home sales in the first four months of this year -- I will point out that the last four months of last year also looked QUITE promising, before sales slowed down during the rest of the year to actually show a net decline in the number of home sales in 2017 as compared to 2016.  So -- get excited -- slowly? Cautiously?