This was in the Washington Post as part of a Q&A with one of the local REALTOR associations.

We are listing our Cascades townhouse next month and were wondering about pricing. We have lived there nine years and paid under $200K in 1999. This information is available to anyone accessing the Loudoun County Appraisal District Web site. Should we expect buyers to know this information and, if they do, should we also expect to get "low-balled" more than someone who doesn't have as much equity? Will we have to adjust our price/expectations accordingly?

I don't believe you need to be concerned with the public records and how much you purchased your home for nine years ago. The biggest issue is how big your mortgage is, and no one knows that but you and your bank. Contact a Realtor and have them do a comparative market analysis and take their advice on pricing your home to match your home type and area.

This was part of a longer article and many of the answers weren't particularly good. But this one in particular seemed worth commenting on.

First of all, you should always assume that buyers will have all publicly available information in their possession. Even if the buyers haven't thought to search out this information for themselves any decent real estate agent will be pulling the tax records and showing that information to their client. Sellers who assume they can hide some information from potential buyers are always asking for trouble. In the age of the internet, everybody knows or, at least, can know, everything!

Secondly, the buyers should not base their offer on what a seller bought the house for. Regardless of what you paid for this house, in a falling market, you are likely to get a low ball offer. The buyers know, and certainly their agent knows, that a year from now there's a good chance that the value of that home is less than it is now. It might not be worth a lot less. It's certainly possible we're near a bottom. But with that kind of uncertainty all buyers will lowball an offer and all sellers should expect to have to deal with that.

The other point I'd make here is that REALTOR associations should not have non-REALTORs answering these questions!