re: Lowering then raising the price of your home

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I actually saw something more odd than that. There was a house listed at 200K, and it was dropped to 190K. Made an appointment for a few days later to go look at it. In the time between then and the appointment, it went up to 240K. I called the listing agent (I wasn't using my own agent) and asked WTF? She said well he's now willing to sell it bond for deed. I said, great, I don't need that, will he sell it at 190K traditional financing? She said no, he wants at least 210K.

Finally there is the house behind/next to me (I'm on a corner lot) which was FSBO and he was asking 245K. Very nice home but overpriced. Had it listed FSBO for months. He was an investor. Then, he decided to list it with a realtor, and set the list price at 260K (i.e. enough to pay the realtor commission). I laughed my butt off. He ended up selling it through the realtor for 238K.

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In today's day and age with technology to track price fluctuations I'm surprised that worked, but one of my dad's favorite stories to tell is about when he sold his first house.

He listed it for X, let's call it $200K, for 2 months and didn't get a single offer on it. His agent comes to him and tells him he needs to drop the price. So dad says raise it to $230K. The agent is like WTF?!?!

The house sells in a couple weeks at $230K. His theory was most buyers tell an agent how much they want to spend and get sent to X number of houses within that range. He couldn't find someone in the $200K range who liked his house so he figured he'd try the $230K range before dropping to the $170K range.

That much fluctuation these days, however, would probably raise some eyebrows.