Drop price before open house? Need opinions!

jardince · September 2011

Our house has been on the market for the past 2 months. We've only had two showings and one open house (no one came)! I understand that it's a bad time for the market, but I didn't think it was this bad. I'm starting to wonder if it's the price of our house.

Our house is priced right with the other 3 bedroom, 1.5 baths in the area (some above, some below). Based on our current price, we could accept an offer $5,000 less and be happy with the offer. Our realtor normally only drops the price $3K-$5K, but she said it was our choice. A $3k drop wouldn't leave us much wiggle room with negotiations. We have an open house Sundayy and a showing scheduled later this week, so we need to decide tonight.

We're not in a big hurry to sell, but it worries me to have our house on the market for so long. We haven't found another house to buy and are even considering building, so if we sold, we'd be in an apartment for a bit.

Should we drop the price before the open house or just keep it as it and see what happens? Thoughts? Opinions?

Justinlove · September 2011

A 3K drop is probably not significant enough to change your market, but maybe it will depending on your price point. It is worth a try if nothing else, but I wouldn't expect it to open the flood gates of potential buyers.

lil_jen051708 · September 2011

jardince:
Our house is priced right with the other 3 bedroom, 1.5 baths in the area (some above, some below). Based on our current price, we could accept an offer $5,000 less and be happy with the offer. Our realtor normally only drops the price $3K-$5K, but she said it was our choice. A $3k drop wouldn't leave us much wiggle room with negotiations. We have an open house Sundayy and a showing scheduled later this week, so we need to decide tonight. If you have a showing scheduled for later this week, I'd leave the price alone until they come through since you said you don't have much wiggle room.
We're not in a big hurry to sell, but it worries me to have our house on the market for so long. We haven't found another house to buy and are even considering building, so if we sold, we'd be in an apartment for a bit. I wouldn't say 2 months on the market is a long time at all. I would be more worried about the 2-3 showings. I would ask your realtor if he/she is seeing this low showing number in other listings. One of my coworkers has been listed for 3 months and only had 1 showing so it might just be a slowing of the market. We were listed last fall for 6.5 months and averaged 1.5 showings/week.

Should we drop the price before the open house or just keep it as it and see what happens? Leave it and see what happens. You said you are priced reasonably compared to others on the market. Is anything selling as a comp? You should shoot to be at or below those sold properties. You said you don't have much negotiation room so you might not be able to go that low. You have to choose between losing (or bringing more money to close) and wanting to get out of the current house.

jennylove1084 · September 2011

We priced our house $5k under the comps in the neighborhood. We had maybe 5 showings, no open houses and sold it in 14 days. I was getting really nervous too with the lack of showings, but it all worked out.

Up to you if you want to drop the price based on your bottom line.

The offer we got was $900 under asking and they want us to pay 3% closing costs. We didn't even counter.

Drop price before open house? Need opinions!

Re: Drop price before open house? Need opinions!

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