The Hidden Cost of Overpricing: Why Chasing the Market Down Quietly Drains Your Bottom Line
- Scott Hevle
- 6 days ago
- 8 min read
Posted by Pine Time Properties — Duck Creek Village, Brian Head, Cedar City & St. George, Utah
Every seller wants to leave room to negotiate. It feels safe. It feels smart. "We can always come down later" is one of the most common phrases I hear at listing appointments across Kane, Iron, and Washington Counties — and it is also one of the most expensive sentences a homeowner can say.
The data on overpricing is brutal, and it has been consistent for decades: sellers who price above market on day one almost always net less money than sellers who price correctly from the start. They also wait longer, stress more, and bleed cash the entire time their listing sits. In the real estate business, we call it chasing the market down, and it's the single biggest avoidable mistake I see in our second home and mountain markets.
Let me walk you through what actually happens — and what the numbers say.
The First Two Weeks Are Everything
When a property hits the MLS, it gets a burst of attention that it will never get again. Saved searches fire off. Buyer agents who have been waiting for new inventory pull it up immediately. The most motivated, most qualified buyers — the ones who have been hunting for months and already lost out on other homes — are the first ones through the door.
These early buyers are not bargain hunters. They are educated, they know the comps, and historically they write the strongest offers. If your price tells them your home is not in their value range, they simply move on to the next listing. You never get a second chance at that initial wave of attention, and no price reduction three months later will bring those specific buyers back.
The Indiana Association of REALTORS® analyzed 75,000 sales over a 12-month period and found a clean, almost mathematical relationship between list price accuracy and time on market. A home listed within 1% of its ultimate selling price has a 50% chance of going under contract within 1 to 14 days. A home listed 3 to 5% above the ultimate selling price has a 50% chance of going under contract within 9 to 52 days, and homes priced 9 to 11% above the eventual sale price can take anywhere from 19 to 87 days.
Read that again. Pricing just 9 to 11% high — which feels like a modest cushion to most sellers — can stretch your time on market from two weeks to nearly three months.
The 6.7% Penalty
Here is the number every seller should have tattooed on their forearm before they sign a listing agreement: A 2024 National Association of REALTORS® report found that homes with multiple price reductions sold for 6.7% less on average than homes priced appropriately from day one.
On a $600,000 cabin in Duck Creek Village, that is a $40,200 hit. On a $1.2 million property in Brian Head, it is over $80,000 — gone, just because of the initial pricing strategy.
That same NAR data is part of a much larger pattern. A separate market analysis using an average sale price of $429,000 found that homes sold within the first 30 days were typically discounted by only 1% off the original list price, achieving 99% of the asking price. The further past that 30-day window a listing drifts, the wider the discount becomes.
And it is not just the final sale price that suffers. Once a listing has been sitting, buyer psychology shifts hard. Wayne Curtis, a Sotheby's agent quoted in a recent industry report, put it bluntly: once the days on market start to climb, the question becomes "what's wrong with it?" — and that is not something sellers want attached to their property. The same report noted that in November, more than half of homes for sale (54.5%) sat on the market for at least 60 days without finding a buyer, which means today's buyers have plenty of fresher, better-priced alternatives to choose from.
How "Chasing the Market Down" Actually Plays Out
The cycle is almost always the same, and once you have seen it a few times you can predict it down to the week:
A seller lists at a price the agent (or the seller) thinks "leaves room." For the first two or three weeks, showings are slow. Feedback is polite but vague. No offers come in. After about a month, the seller drops the price — usually a modest amount, just enough to feel like progress without "giving anything away." Maybe they get a few more showings. Still no offers. Another month passes. Another reduction. By now competing listings have come on at lower prices, the original buyer pool has moved on, and the home looks stale on every search portal.
Eventually a buyer shows up — but it is not a motivated buyer who loves the home. It is a bargain hunter who has been watching the listing decay for 90 days and knows the seller is exhausted. They write a lowball offer. The seller, worn down and burning cash every month, takes it.
That seller just chased the market down. They ended up below where they would have started if they had priced realistically from day one — and they paid for the privilege every single month along the way.
The Carrying Cost Math Sellers Almost Never Run
This is the part that gets ignored in almost every conversation about pricing strategy, and it is the part that hurts the most. Every month your home sits unsold, you are paying for the privilege. These are your carrying costs, and they are real money leaving your bank account whether the listing is generating activity or not.
For a typical owner, carrying costs include:
Mortgage principal and interest (if applicable)
Property taxes
Homeowners insurance (and vacant-home insurance if it's a second home, which is generally more expensive)
HOA dues — significant in Brian Head, Swains Creek, Elk Ridge, Meadow View Heights, and most of our subdivisions
Utilities — power, propane, water, internet, septic pumping
Snow removal and road maintenance — a real cost in our mountain markets
Maintenance and routine repairs
Opportunity cost — the equity locked up in the home that could be earning a return somewhere else
Let me run the numbers for a realistic Duck Creek or Brian Head second-home scenario. Say you own a cabin with a $400,000 mortgage balance at 7%, modest property taxes, a typical HOA, vacant-home insurance, winter utilities, and road and snow services. A reasonable monthly carrying cost for that property is somewhere between $3,500 and $5,000 — and that is before you factor in opportunity cost on your equity.
Now imagine you list at $750,000 when the market really supports $695,000. You sit for four months chasing showings, drop the price twice, and finally accept $670,000 from a tired buyer who knows you are out of patience.
Here is what that decision actually cost you:
Lower final sale price vs. correctly priced day one: roughly $25,000 (the 6.7% NAR penalty, applied conservatively)
Four months of carrying costs at $4,000/month: $16,000
Total damage: about $41,000
And that is a conservative example. On higher-end mountain properties, on properties with larger mortgages, or in slower seasonal windows, the number gets uglier fast. Tampa Bay broker The Kerin Group laid this exact dynamic out in plain English: most sellers think waiting will get them a higher offer, but waiting often costs more than the price difference they're holding out for — and even if your home is paid off, you still have carrying costs.
A paid-off cabin is not free to own. Taxes, insurance, HOA, utilities, and upkeep do not stop just because the mortgage is gone.
Why Pricing Right Actually Nets You More
There is a counterintuitive truth that experienced agents understand and most sellers do not: a property priced at or slightly below market value almost always sells for more than a property priced above it.
Here is why. A correctly priced home generates competition. Multiple buyers see it as a fair deal. Showings stack up in the first week. Offers come in close together — sometimes on top of each other — and now you have leverage. Buyers competing against each other will routinely push a final price above list. A home priced too high has the opposite dynamic: one disinterested buyer at a time, no urgency, and every offer comes in below list because the buyer knows nobody else is at the table.
It is almost always easier and far less stressful to negotiate up from a realistic list price than it is to chase the market down with repeated reductions. One creates momentum. The other destroys it.
What This Means for Southern Utah Sellers
Our markets — Duck Creek Village, Brian Head, Panguitch Lake, Cedar City, Kanab, and the St. George corridor — have some unique pricing challenges that make overpricing especially dangerous:
Smaller buyer pools. Mountain and second-home markets have fewer active buyers at any given moment than primary-residence markets. When you skip the first wave by overpricing, the next wave may be weeks or months away.
Seasonal windows matter. Listing a Duck Creek cabin in May at the wrong price means you may burn through your entire prime selling season chasing reductions before fall arrives.
Carrying costs are higher than buyers and sellers realize. Snow removal, road maintenance, vacant-home insurance, propane, septic, and HOA fees on second homes in Kane and Iron Counties add up quickly. Every month of delay is expensive.
Comparable sales are thinner. With fewer recent sales in our markets, buyers and their agents scrutinize price-per-square-foot harder, and overpriced outliers stand out immediately.
The Pine Time Properties Approach
When we sit down with a seller, our job is not to tell you what you want to hear. Our job is to tell you what the market will actually pay, back it up with current data, and build a pricing strategy that gets you to closing with the most money in your pocket — not just the highest list price on the MLS.
That means we look at:
Active competing listings (what buyers are choosing between right now)
Pending sales (the most current indicator of actual buyer behavior)
Recent closed sales adjusted for condition, view, lot, and access
Days-on-market trends in your specific subdivision
Your real carrying costs, so you can see exactly what every month of delay is costing you
We would rather lose a listing to an agent who promises a higher price than win a listing we know will frustrate the seller and ultimately net them less money. The math does not lie, and neither do we.
The Bottom Line
Overpricing feels safe because it preserves the option of more money. In reality, it almost always delivers less — less attention, less leverage, fewer offers, more stress, and after carrying costs are factored in, fewer dollars at closing. The data from NAR, from state REALTOR® associations, and from broker after broker across the country all point in the same direction.
If you are thinking about selling a cabin, home, lot, or commercial property anywhere in Kane, Iron, or Washington County, let's have an honest conversation about price before you list. I will show you exactly what the market is doing in your specific area, what your true carrying costs look like, and what pricing strategy gives you the best shot at maximum net proceeds.
Because in this business, the goal is not to list high. The goal is to close high.
Scott Hevle Broker / Owner, Pine Time Properties 📞 (435) 277-0766 ✉️ scott@pinetimeproperties.com 🌐 pinetimeproperties.com
Serving Duck Creek Village, Brian Head, Panguitch Lake, Cedar City, Kanab, and the St. George corridor.
