When Is The Best Time To Reduce Your House?

Hello!  A lot of people when they put their home on the market are probably the most confident they will be throughout the entire process.  At least until they close.  

Most people, including my wife and I, have high expectations for what we are going to sell our house for.  We look around.  We compare our house to everyone in the neighborhood, and we can’t help but feel like our home is better than all our competitors.  I think most people feel the same way, it’s our house.  We chose our house.  We were attracted to our house.  Naturally, we are always going to identify that our home is better than everyone else’s home on the block.

So the question is at what point can you admit that maybe you were wrong?  

It’s OK in real estate to make a mistake.  It’s not OK to not correct the mistake.  So if you are gonna be wrong, adjust quickly. Most people probably would not even consider reducing their house before 30 days.  They would want to just let the market play out. However, I think with the market today, especially with how quickly it's moving with the limited inventory, 30 days is just too long.  If your house isn’t selling the market has already rejected it.  You are stale.  You are old news.  You are at the bottom of the list in all the ways that people find you on the technology portals of real estate (such as Zillow).  Maybe even several pages later down that list.  Whenever you reduce your price, I think you can come back up, but more than likely you will just get lost in the shuffle.

My wife and I put our home on the market last Thursday. Today, Wednesday, we made the decision that enough time has gone by for us to reduce it - substantially.  I don’t anticipate pricing going up in the market we are in now.  It may even go down a little bit right now.  So to get competitive in this market as more homes are quickly coming onto it, you may have to get in front of these coming price cuts.  The old saying used to be, “one price reduction leads to nearly three”.

I believe it’s always better to be proactive.  If you are going to reduce your house, get ahead of everyone else.  Once you are on the market you become a new target.  People are paying attention to your house and they want to be more competitive which means they probably want to be a little bit less than you are.  Reduce fast, if you are wrong.  Don’t ignore what the market is telling you!