By: KeyCrew Media
When sellers insist on testing the market with an inflated asking price, they are not buying negotiating room. They are buying silence. According to Yitzchak Pierson, a real estate professional with eXp Realty, the first two weeks of a listing are the most consequential window in the entire sales process, and overpricing during that period creates a deficit that is nearly impossible to recover from.
The problem is not that buyers push back on high prices. In a market where buyers have abundant inventory to choose from, they skip the listing entirely and move on.
Why Overpricing No Longer Buys Negotiating Room
The logic behind listing high has always been that sellers need room to come down. Pierson says that logic has broken down in the current market. “The mindset of some sellers is, we’ll list high, and we’ll try to get some offers that’ll give us some wiggle room,” he says. “That’s something that we’re not really seeing: if buyers have so much inventory to choose from right now, they’re not necessarily making those offers.”
The result is a listing that sits. Once a property accumulates days on market without activity, buyers begin to assume something is wrong with it, even if the only problem was the asking price. By the time a seller agrees to a price reduction, the initial momentum a new listing generates has already dissipated. The property is no longer fresh, and the reduction itself communicates that the seller was out of touch with the market.
Pierson says this pattern is especially pronounced for properties without distinctive features that set them apart from comparable listings in the same neighborhood. “There’s nothing special about the home compared to the homes next to it or in the same neighborhood to make it stand out at a higher price point,” he says. For these homes, price is the primary differentiator, and getting it wrong from the start is particularly costly.
The 2022 Purchase Price Problem
Many current sellers bought at or near the 2022 market peak, according to Pierson. When running a comparable market analysis, he specifically looks at when a seller purchased the property and what they paid, because sellers who overpaid during the peak are often psychologically anchored to a number that no longer reflects current conditions.
“I’m seeing a lot of houses where prices were raised during 2022, so I’m taking those factors into account,” Pierson says. This anchoring effect makes it harder for sellers to accept accurate pricing guidance, even when the data clearly supports a lower number. Agents are frequently caught between what the market will bear and what a seller believes their home is worth based on what they paid.
Pricing as a Traffic Driver, Not a Starting Point
Pierson’s recommended approach reframes the purpose of the listing price entirely. Rather than treating it as an opening bid in a negotiation, he advises sellers to treat it as a mechanism for generating showing traffic. The counterintuitive implication is that pricing below comparable listings, not at them, can produce better net outcomes.
“What we should be doing is looking at the houses that are similar to that, and pricing ours at the lowest, if possible, like right underneath the lowest price point, so it drives traffic to our property,” Pierson says. “And then in that case, we have multiple viewers and potentially get multiple offers.”
He has seen this play out in desirable neighborhoods where well-prepared, competitively priced homes received multiple offers within 24 hours. The key condition is that the home must also be in strong showing condition. Pricing alone does not generate offers if the property does not hold up in person.
To support this pricing discipline, Pierson runs a seller’s net sheet that models both best-case and worst-case scenarios, accounting for title policy costs, commissions, and other closing fees. This gives sellers a concrete picture of what they will actually walk away with at different price points, grounding the conversation in financial reality rather than aspirational numbers.
How Active Listings Inform the Analysis
Pierson says many agents miss a critical step in comparable market analysis: examining not just what has sold, but what is currently sitting unsold. He uses active listings with extended days on market and price reductions as direct evidence when advising sellers against inflated asking prices.
“If homes have been sitting on the market actively for around the $430,000 price range, and they’ve been sitting for 120 days, or they’ve had multiple price reductions to get to that point, then I take that into account,” he says. A home that sold six months ago at a given price tells sellers what the market was. Homes sitting unsold today at a similar price tell them what the market is.
For sellers weighing whether to list high and adjust later, Pierson’s data suggest the strategy carries a specific cost: zero showings in the first two weeks, followed by a price reduction that arrives after the listing has already lost its novelty. Sellers who price at or just below the competitive floor on day one are the ones generating traffic, and in some cases, multiple offers within 24 hours.
About Yitzchak Pierson: Yitzchak Pierson is a licensed real estate broker in Texas, serving buyers and sellers across New Braunfels, Canyon Lake, San Marcos, and Seguin. He has been named Best Real Estate Agent in New Braunfels for two consecutive years and was ranked in the Top 100 agents by the San Antonio Business Journal.
Disclaimer: This article is based on information provided by the expert source cited above. It is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or real estate advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals before making any real estate or financial decisions.
