Stop Overpricing Your Home: Why Pricing Right From Day One Gets Homes Sold Faster

In this episode of the Be The Solution Podcast, host Maria Quattrone breaks down one of the most common mistakes sellers make when listing their home: overpricing the property.

Many homeowners believe that starting high and lowering the price later will maximize their return. In reality, that strategy often causes homes to sit on the market longer, lose leverage, and ultimately sell for less.

Maria explains how market absorption rates, buyer search behavior, and pricing psychology impact how quickly homes sell and how much sellers actually walk away with.

Whether you're a homeowner thinking about selling, a real estate investor, or an agent advising clients, this episode gives you a clear framework for understanding how pricing strategy affects the outcome of every listing.

Key Takeaways

• The Hidden Buyer Pool You Miss When You Overprice
• The First 21 Days Matter Most
• The “What’s Wrong With the House?” Effect
• Overpricing Destroys Seller Leverage
• Chasing the Market Costs Sellers Money

Many sellers start high and reduce their price gradually.

The result is often:

• Lost time
• Lost buyer interest
• Lower final sale prices

Pricing correctly from the beginning creates urgency and competition among buyers.

Best Quotes

Maria Quattrone:
“Every single time a house is overpriced, the seller makes less money than they would have if they priced it correctly from the start.” 

Guest Quote
(This episode is a solo teaching segment from Maria.)

Contact / Learn More

If you're thinking about selling and want to know how your home fits into today's market data, reach out to Maria Quattrone – LPT Realty.

Connect with Maria Quattrone:
Facebook: Maria Quattrone
LinkedIn: Maria Quattrone
YouTube: Maria Quattrone
Instagram: @maria_quattrone
TikTok: mariaquattronerealestate
Website: MQrealesate.com
Office number: 215- 607-3535

Transcript

Five Pricing Truths To Unpack

Missing The Hidden Buyer Pool

First 21 Days And Perception

Pricing Strategy And Absorption

Leverage Shifts To Buyers

Reading Market Feedback Clearly

Maria Quattrone 0:02

Stop overpricing, starting high and coming down later. In today's market, overpricing is not your friend. It is not your friend. I talk about this often with clients about how overpricing their house and what it actually does. And what it actually does is it helps other houses sell. So today I'm gonna break it down for you. I have five things that I'm gonna unpack and go over. Number one, the hidden buyer pool that you miss when you have a price. Number two, why the first days matter the most. In fact, it's the first 21 days matter the most. Number three, what's wrong with the house? A fact. People say, what's wrong with the house? Why isn't it sold? Number four, what it does to your leverage when selling your home. And number five, why chasing the market costs you time, money, and leverage. So this Facebook Live today is for anyone who has a house on the market, anyone who's thinking of selling, agents who want to price their properties, write and explain to sellers what the most important things are when actually selling your house. So first thing, the hidden buyer pool that you miss. So there's a whole group of buyers. Buyers search by search brackets. So let's just say 400 to 450, 450 to 500. When you price outside of the price that they're looking for, let's just say you price at uh 465,000, and the buyers are not or looking up to 450, and but your house really is a house that's 440. You up front have missed all your potential buyers because they're not coming up to 465. So, right out of the gate, you missed the people that actually could buy your home. And what happened? You made by raising having your price at 465 instead of 440, you made the other houses between the 400 and 450 sell first. I'm gonna repeat that again. You helped the other houses sell first. So you're not even reaching the people that actually can buy your house. So you have fewer eyeballs, you got fewer saves, fewer showings, and no offers. And the market decides, and they read that as undesirable. So when we are looking at pricing, we're gonna price in the bullseye, in the st the pricing that will allow to reach the most buyers. So why would somebody price at $510 when the market nobody searches the $510? Again, go to Zillow, go to Realtor.com, go to any third-party search engine. People search in price brackets. So it and really you gotta stop pricing on the nines. $449, $429.9. It doesn't make any sense. We're not Walmart. We're we're selling homes, selling houses, selling real estate. So that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. So you're gonna miss an entire buyer pool that is your real buyer by overpricing right out of the gate. Done, you miss them. The next thing that happens, what is wrong with the house? You know, there's nothing wrong with your house except for it not priced rate. So most of the time, there's nothing wrong with people's houses, it's priced based on location and condition of the home. So what happens after a certain amount of days on the market, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, buyers say, Why isn't this sold? Why did nobody want this house? And it's because most of the time it's not priced to reach the maximum number of people that are buyers that are currently in the market today. And buyers that are in the market usually are in the market less than 60 days. That's like the that's the window. Most buyers, if they're serious, they can find a home on the first or second time that they go out with their agent to see properties if it's done properly. So they're not wasting all these days and times and months looking for houses only if they don't have the right agent are they doing that. But generally, there's only so many houses for sale. And there's in a certain price point, they're all kind of gonna be the same-ish, you know, give or take some things, especially if you're looking in particular neighborhoods. You know, for the most part, uh, they're gonna be similar. So it really comes down to making sure that you don't allow this to happen with your house because you're listening to the professional up front and have a pricing strategy based on where the house is, how much competition is on the market, what's sold, how many houses are selling a month, which I talked about last week, market absorption rate. So if you haven't seen that video, go and uh watch that video. It's on YouTube, and you still can catch it on Facebook, it's still up. But market absorption is critical also when pricing your house. So, what does it do to the leverage? Oh my gosh, you lose leverage. The most important time for a seller is before we go to market, before we go on the market, because at that point, you as a seller, as an agent, we have the most control. Once we hit the market and we are in full launch mode, we lose control and the buyers have the control. I'm gonna repeat that again. Once we go to market, the seller loses control and the buyers now have control. So, what happens when a house is overpriced? Buyers will say, I'll just sit and wait for the price to come down, and the property will sit, and the property will sit. And instead of there, no showings is a response. It's a response that the market has rejected the current price. The market has rejected the current price. That is a response. That is feedback. Nobody came to the open house, not one person on a beautiful spring day. That's feedback. Most of the time, people think you just need more time. No, if you don't have showings and you don't have an activity, that means that that house is if there's no showings, that's a minimum 10% adjustment right out of the gate. If there's showings and no offers, over time, the the within the first three weeks, four weeks, there's activity, but nothing's happening. That's 5% because anybody would make an offer that's less than 5% and they didn't. So when they say things like, the rooms are too small, the yard is too big for this price, the rooms are too small for this price, the kitchen is too small for this price, the bathroom needs to be updated for this price. That's what they are saying, to understand what that feedback actually really means. That's when working with a professional who's done this thousands of times, is critical in today's environment. So you clearly can understand. See, what happens is when you overprice a seller every single time, nets less. I beg people, please. I want to start high. We can come down later. That is a terrible, terrible idea. It's a terrible idea, it's the worst idea. I warn against it. In fact, I still may take that listing and I say to the seller, listen, we have a couple weeks, and if we don't have nothing happening in a couple weeks, this is an automatic between 5 and 10% adjustment. And I talk about it up front and I put it in the listing paperwork in the contract. Because what's the point? We're not taking listings to pretend to see if we could sell them. It costs time and money and energy. We're taking listings to sell them and then to maximize the seller's profit. We maximize the seller's profit by pricing the property properly based on what the market will bear. And days on market is not a seller's friend. The longer days on market, the further away from asking price. The longer days on market, the further away from asking price. And then when you're you're looking at it, so we have the what's wrong with the house effect. That's out, nothing's wrong with the house, it's on price rate. Number four, what it does to leverage. We lose leverage. Every day the property is on the market, and this is residential homes, not commercial real estate. Every day that property is on the market is another day that goes by that the seller is losing money. Whether you're paying, and especially if you're not living there, you're paying insurance, you're paying water, you're paying the gas bill to keep gas on in you know, freezing weather in the freezing tundra that we had this year. So you lose the leverage, you lose the eyeballs. You could see how many people actually look at that listing, and if they're not saving that listing, that means there's something wrong with the price, not the house with the price. And I have this off it here. Well, I bought it for X, I put X into it, and I need to get X out of it, or I'm gonna lose money. That very well may be the case. You will lose money. But there's nothing that I or the market can do to make that up. You gotta chuck it up to learning lesson and lost money. It happens all the time. All the time in real estate. It's a learning lesson. You don't get the right information, you don't you spend too much time renovating it, you spend too much time with contractors who couldn't fulfill their promises. You know, these things happen, but pricing it to a price that you need to get isn't going to cause it to sell. And I tell people, I'm really good, but I'm not magic, and I don't have a crystal ball, so let's do the right thing and let's price it to create. See, when you price it to create demand, you have more buyers that come in. More buyers means the seller has leverage. And right now, if it's overpriced, there's no leverage. The seller has leverage when there's more buyers. Because you know what? You get to pick the best offer. The offer with the least contingencies, the offer with the most money down, the offer with the most qualified buyers. That is how you win by pricing it to bring in many buyers, not no buyers. It's the exact opposite of what people think. See, it's a supply and demand. That's why when we list our properties, we lunch with we we launch with open houses. We launch after a week on the market in pre-launch mode. We also, that's a test of the market. Are people calling? I have a listing right now where people are calling nonstop. So we know there's a lot of demand for this property. It's a property that needs renovation. It's great for an investor. So we have gosh, Tramus have got 40 calls on it. Because the seller wanted to price it at a price to cut a lot of offers. That's how you create leverage. You create leverage by having it open to a whole pool of buyers and not just a little bit. And what happens when you reduce your price every single time? And this is number five, chasing the market cost you money and chasing the market down. Chasing the market. Chasing the market means you have to cut the price. And then what I see people do, I say, well, five to ten percent. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. That's too much. Here's the thing: would anybody have made an offer five percent less than where you are right now? And the answer is yes. That's a respectable offer, five percent less than ask, but nobody did it, and you had 27 shillings. So what does that say? It says they've rejected the price, they rejected the house based on the current price. Too much work, too much of this, you are too big, they don't want to mow it, whatever. Lots of reasons, but you have to understand this, you have to really understand how pricing works, it's psychological as well. And if you so you're just basically they chasing the market down, and what happens is you get the people that are want to get it a real deal, and they're gonna come in even lower, and now you've lost the time, you lost the energy, you lost the momentum, the listing becomes stale, and people say, Well, charming with the house. All because from the very beginning you didn't price in the bullseye. Here's the bullseye. And I see these listings that come online, and I'm like, why would you price like that? I'm guessing that they didn't get the right advice. And so leverage is time and money and effort. And every time a house is overpriced, the seller makes less money than they would have every single time. Every single time. So if you want to price your house rate this year and you want more information of how I do this and go about it, drop price in the comments, and I'd be just happy to talk to you about that. If you're an agent, you want more information. I'm hosting, we're hosting a Zoom on Friday about how I took 192 listings in 2025, so you could drop into their listings, and I'll get you the link and you can sign up for that. So why pricing matters, it matters 100%, and who you work with matters 100%.