A price reduction is an admission, and sellers treat it as one. That reluctance is precisely what turns a small correction into a long, expensive one.
Reading the first three weeks
The market answers you faster than you think, if you know what you are listening to.
No online views and no showings. The price is outside the band buyers are searching in. This is the clearest signal available and it arrives within days.
Views but no showings. People are seeing it and not booking. Usually presentation, and usually the photographs.
Showings but no offers. The house is being seen and rejected in person. Almost always price against condition, occasionally something specific and fixable.
Offers well below asking. The market is telling you a number. It is worth hearing even when it is unwelcome.
The psychology of a reduction
Buyers do not experience a price change as new information about the house. They experience it as information about you: that you will move, and that you may move again. That is why timing and size matter more than the fact of the reduction.
Reducing by one per cent after six weeks does not re-enter anybody's search band and does not read as a real change. It burns another fortnight, adds to your days on market, and signals that more reductions are coming, which encourages every interested buyer to wait rather than act.
One decisive move usually beats three cautious ones and costs less in total.
How far to move
Far enough to land in a different search band. Buyers filter in round numbers, so a reduction from $1,049,000 to $1,025,000 reaches almost nobody new, while one to $999,000 opens the listing to everyone whose ceiling is a million. The second is a smaller sacrifice in real terms and a much larger change in audience.
When
- Two weeks with no showings at all. Do not wait for the month.
- Three to four weeks with showings and no offers.
- Before a seasonal cliff: mid-June, or the first week of December. Being freshly reduced going into a quiet stretch is better than being stale coming out of one.
- When comparable inventory arrives and prices below you. Move first rather than second.
Price changes appear in the property's MLS history, and agents can see them. A buyer's agent will know what you asked, when you moved, and by how much, and will use it. That is not a reason to avoid reducing. It is a reason to do it once, properly, rather than in a visible series of retreats. See Dropping the Price or Relisting.