Full disclosure: The Tim is employed by Redfin.
On Monday I posted the results of a new quarterly survey of home sellers that we’re doing at Redfin. This part in particular stood out to me as I was analyzing the responses:
…when asked how they approach pricing their home 32% of sellers indicated that they would intentionally price their home above local comparable sales, either to build a buffer for negotiation, or because they are willing to wait until the market values their home as highly as they do:
And that only counts the sellers who know they’re overpricing. No doubt some non-trivial portion of the group that claims they are pricing their home at the middle of the range of comparable sales are delusional about which homes are actually comparable to theirs.
Given stigma that is typically associated with a long time on market and price drops, I have to wonder why nearly a third of sellers would intentionally overprice their homes. If you know that the market value of your home isn’t as high as where you would like or need it to be in order to sell, why even bother listing your home?
Perhaps there are some readers here who are selling or will sell soon that can shed some light onto this mentality.