The Eleven-Million-Dollar Discount: Price Cuts on Area Homes
This week I went through every home currently for sale in our area. Of the 617 active listings, 358 — well over half — have dropped their asking price at least once. The median drop is $20,000. And when you add up every reduction on every listing, sellers around here have taken $11.7 million off their original asking prices. That’s not a sale the market is running. That’s more than three hundred families finding out, one price change at a time, where their home actually stands.
What strikes me most is how evenly it’s spread. Pilot Point ISD: 69% of listings have cut. Sanger ISD: 62%. Callisburg ISD: 56%. Gainesville ISD: 55%. Even the steadiest districts, Whitesboro ISD and Tioga ISD, are sitting at 48%. Fifty-three homes have dropped $50,000 or more, and nearly one cut listing in four is now down at least 10% from where it started. This isn’t a handful of sellers who missed — overpricing is the defining feature of this fall’s market.
And here’s the part a price cut can’t fix. The listings that have dropped their price have been on the market a median of 102 days. The listings that haven’t needed to? 40 days. Now, some of that is just arithmetic — a home has to sit a while before anybody cuts anything. But thirty-four years of watching listings has taught me what’s underneath it: a listing gets its biggest wave of attention in the first three weeks, when every buyer who’s been waiting for new inventory comes to look. Price past the market and that wave passes the house by — and no price cut later brings those first-look buyers back.
So what do you do with this? If you’re thinking about selling this winter, the most valuable conversation you can have happens before the sign goes in the yard — the honest one about the number. Not the number that wins the listing appointment, and not the one from the spring of 2022. The one today’s buyers will actually pay, which is a thing I can show you from the sales on your street, not guess at. The sellers moving in 40 days aren’t lucky; they just priced their house to sell, when pricing right still had its full power. And if you’re buying — those 358 reduced listings are a map of motivated sellers, and I’m happy to read it with you. Either way, before you put a number on anything this winter, let’s talk. I’m here to help.
Chance Kirby - Irick Real Estate
940.300.6900
Want to know what this means for your home? Call or text Chance Kirby at (940) 300-6900 for a free price opinion based on recent sales near you.
