When to Cave: How Long Should You Wait Before Lowering Your Asking Price?

There it is: your home! Just sitting on the market. It’s been like that for some time now, and it’s starting to look a little … desperate. Last-guy-at-the-bar desperate. You consider reducing the price, but then you might be robbing yourself of thousands of dollars. But if you don’t, you could end up missing out on eager buyers with a slightly lower price point. Here’s what some experts have to say:

Keep tabs on—and listen to—house hunters

Are your open houses turning into a letdown? Are buyers visiting but walking away?

“If 20 to 30 buyers have passed through your home and not a single one has placed an offer, it’s time to seriously consider a price improvement,” says New York City real estate agent Brad Malow. Translation: a reduction.

As a seller, you should be asking buyers and their brokers for feedback after private viewings.

Pay close attention and see if there are any common positives or negatives in their responses, so if a current theme is “It’s a bit expensive,” then you’ll know it’s time to start a price drop.

How long has it been?

The thing that can cost you the most money is having your home stagnate on the market. So unlike dating, you shouldn’t wait for the perfect suitor to come along. Perfect is a high bar.

Houses set at the right price will start getting offers “within the first few weeks,” Malow says.

“Once you’ve been on the market for five weeks or so, you’re chasing the market,” says Mike King, an agent with the Partners Trust Realty in Brentwood, CA.

If you haven’t seen any action in a while, it might be time to take your house off the market, do some touch-ups, and relist.

King says he sold a house that had languished for six months on the market by removing the listing, having the sellers pull up the shag carpet—something their original seller’s agent didn’t make them do—and staging the place much better. It was relisted and sold within a couple of weeks at asking price.

‘It’s almost impossible to underprice’ a home

Here’s something you should consider when debating the great price chop: The market will probably decide it for you anyway.

“It’s almost impossible to underprice, because the market will bring it back up,” King says.

Think of it like eBay. You list an item for $1, but you know it’s worth somewhere in the $250 range. Eventually people start bidding, and some people might want that item so much they end up paying $275 for it. It’s actually a better move to slightly underprice your home than it is to overprice it, because you’ll have more offers to work with—and you can work the competition into a frenzy.

“It’s called leveraging power,” King says. “If I’m a [motivated] buyer and I know there’s only three offers, I’m going be less aggressive than if you had 10 offers.”

Written by Craig Donofrio who lives in New Orleans

Provided by:

Jay Burnham & Linda Morey, Premier Associate Team

Coldwell Banker Residential & Commercial Brokerage

Visit our website: NorthShoreRealEstate.com