Listing price is not sale price: the valuation distinction we needed to fix
By Plain Reckoner · 595 words · about 3 min · Updated
Empire Flippers’ 2026 report lists a 2025 average listing multiple of 28.69 months of profit and a sales multiple of 23.93. Its public listing API exposes listing-price fields. A listing marked sold does not, by itself, turn its listing price into a verified final transaction price.
- How it was measured
- We checked page 6 of Empire Flippers’ 2026 State of the Industry report, the current API documentation and the fields in our saved public-record snapshot on 2026-10-19. The reported averages are provider aggregates, not matched transaction pairs. This corrects our interpretation of listing-price fields; it does not independently verify closing amounts.
- Last checked
A business marked sold can still have a public listing-price field that does not establish the closing amount. We needed to correct that distinction in Plain Reckoner’s valuation descriptions.
Empire Flippers’ 2026 State of the Industry report, page 6 separates listing and sales metrics. For 2025 it reports an average listing price of $310,037 and average sale price of $270,802.75. Its average monthly listing multiple is 28.69; the monthly sales multiple is 23.93.
Those are provider-reported aggregates across its marketplace, not our independently checked transaction records. They nevertheless make the distinction explicit: the publication does not use listing and sale as interchangeable labels.
Download the four reported 2025 aggregates, with the source page and units preserved.
What the API fields actually establish
The public marketplace API documentation describes listing data and distinguishes listing-related and sale-related sort fields. Our saved snapshot contains listing_price, listing_multiple and listing_status for the records used in the calculations. It does not contain a verified closing-price field for those rows.
Filtering that snapshot to Sold answers which records have that status. It does not establish that the accompanying listing price equals what a buyer ultimately paid. A status filter and a price definition answer different questions.
The same care applies to dates. A listing year is not necessarily the year a transaction closed. An analysis grouped by first listing date must describe that grouping rather than labeling it a closed-deal time series.
Why the obvious discount calculation would still be wrong
Subtracting the reported average sale price from the average listing price gives $39,234.25. That arithmetic is correct. Calling it the typical seller’s discount would require more evidence.
The report’s aggregate listing and sale populations need not contain the same businesses or the same time windows. A difference between two averages is not automatically the average negotiation outcome for matched deals. It also does not tell us how the difference varies by business model, size, profitability or transaction terms.
For that reason we do not reduce every tool result by a percentage derived from these aggregates. Applying a guessed haircut would replace one unsupported interpretation with another.
How to interpret the downloadable listing data in Plain Reckoner
Our display and business-model tools retain the historical multiple calculations, but describe them as listing benchmarks for records marked sold, not confirmed prices buyers paid. Their ranges summarize those listing records; they are not predictive confidence intervals for your future exit.
The business-model dataset now identifies the listing-price field and records the correction. Existing historical figures have not been silently turned into a different measurement. Archived deposits may preserve older column names or descriptions; the current page explains the difference.
The earnings dataset is a separate question: page RPM is calculated from traffic and advertising revenue, rather than from the listing-price field. Correcting the valuation interpretation does not independently reverify that revenue, refresh its measurement date or establish network-specific performance.
How to check a valuation benchmark
Before using a multiple, record whether its price is asking, listing, accepted offer or completed closing consideration. Check whether it uses monthly or annual profit, SDE or EBITDA, and whether earn-outs, inventory or fees are included. A benchmark is only comparable when those definitions align.
Our display valuation tool and business-model tool offer bounded historical comparisons. They cannot inspect your private accounts or provide a verified sale appraisal. Keep those limits beside the result, especially when the figures may influence a financial decision.
Evidence grade: A. Provider aggregates and an auditable field-definition correction. There is no newly verified transaction-level sale-price dataset or guaranteed valuation here.
Tracked as LISTING-NOT-CLOSING-2026-10-19. If a number here looks wrong, tell us and we will check it against the source.