Question about buying bikes

Are you talking about a mountain bike or road bike?

Prices are fixed. Your only real deviation from that is going to be if they have some old models they're closing out, but that's very unlikely with the current bike supply chain issues.

For mountain bikes, a "good" entry-level hardtail (Trek Marlin) will run between $700-1200 depending on specs.

As some have said, I'd imagine the supply chain has caused issues. Prior to that, it depends on the shop. I have bought several bikes when I was riding that were in the $3k range. So I did some serious shopping before pulling the trigger. I was open to a couple different models. Often at the end of the year in the fall, I'd find really good deals on the bikes they were trying to get rid of before next year's models arrived. When I say good deal, I mean like $1,000 off. They had to have my size and I had to luck up that they had something I was interested in, but if I shopped long enough, I'd come across something. I live in the Houston area as well, so there were many shops to stop in and ask.