When Is It Time to Reduce the Price of Your Sacramento Home?

If you ask some listing agents when is it time to reduce the price of a listing, they will say never. Agents are famous for repeating a home should be priced right to start with. But sometimes it is not possible to price the home correctly. For a large variety of reasons. It could be seller expectations, condition, location, upgrades or lack thereof, or an unusual way a buyer reacts over a small undetected defect. Or, market shifts. Or a fluke comp happened and sold only due to luck of the draw.

I could keep going with what I’ve observed over the past 40-some years in real estate.

Obviously, if we’re selling a suburban tract home — any Mediterranean stucco style built within the last 20 years — it’s fairly easy to price. We can find exact model matches or close enough for government work, heh, heh. But not every home is easy.  And some homes take 6 months to sell regardless of the price.

Further, unlike many agents, I rarely refuse to market a potentially overpriced listing. I seriously try to maximize seller profit potential. Sometimes comparable sales will support a higher price as well yet we can’t always accurately judge buyer reactions. However, if an agent has done everything humanely possible to attract an offer and no offers are the result, then it is time to reduce the price.

Below is my estimated timeline for price reductions on average to sell homes in Sacramento. Again, though, it’s not cast in stone. It is all dependent on the area and how long it takes on average to sell the homes there. Especially since all real estate is hyper local.

Within 21 days, if there are no offers, it is time to reduce the price or at least begin a conversation about it.

Definitely again at the 30-day mark. time to reanalyze market competition, especially if the seller did not reduce the price at Day 21.

Every 30 days thereafter.

Another strategy is to decide whether you should reduce the price or reset the days on market, coupled with a price reduction. If we reset the days on market, even though cummulative appears, a price reduction is not always evident. Sometimes you want buyers to notice the price reduction and sometimes you want buyers to instead get excited over a brand new listing. Or both.