The First Two Weeks Decide What Your House Sells For

A house gets one launch. Everything after it is a correction.

Why the first two weeks carry so much weight

When a property comes on the market, every buyer who has been looking in that price range and that area sees it at once. That group has been watching for weeks or months. They know the inventory. They know what things are worth. And they are the most motivated buyers who will ever look at your house, because they have been waiting.

If the price is right, you get them all at once and they compete.

If the price is high, they look, they pass, and they move on. They do not come back when you reduce. They have already priced your house and filed it.

After that group has cycled through, you are selling to whoever wanders in, which is a thinner and less motivated pool.

What overpricing costs

Not just time. The eventual price.

The pattern is consistent. List high, sit for three weeks, reduce, sit for three more, reduce again, and eventually sell below what the correct price would have produced at launch. The days on market number is now attached to the listing and every buyer sees it. The question becomes what is wrong with it, and the answer, correct or not, is a discount.

What I do instead

I price to the range where the property draws multiple parties in the first ten days. Sometimes that is at the number a seller wants. Sometimes it is below it, and when it is I say so before we list rather than after we have burned a month.

If your expectation and the market do not line up, you deserve to hear that on day one. That is a harder conversation than agreeing with you, and it is the one worth having.

The signal to watch

Showings without offers means the price is wrong. Buyers are coming, looking, and deciding the number does not work.

No showings at all means something else is wrong. Photos, the listing itself, or a fundamental issue with the property that needs addressing rather than repricing.

Those are different problems with different fixes, and reading them correctly in week one is most of the job.

Call me at (310) 861-3459 and I will tell you where I think yours lands.