By Mohsin Lakhani · Benson Crew Real Estate, REAL Broker Ontario Ltd., Brokerage
Overpricing a condo doesn't just mean a slower sale — it usually means a lower final price. A unit that sits too long picks up a stigma, and by the time the price gets corrected, offers tend to land lower than if it had been priced right from day one.
Sellers rarely overprice on purpose. It usually starts with something reasonable: a neighbour's unit sold for a certain number a while back, an agent quotes a high number to win the listing, or a seller just wants room to negotiate down from something. Whatever the reason, the math on what it actually costs rarely gets spelled out.
The instinct is that overpricing costs you time, not money — you'll just wait a bit longer for the right buyer. That's not usually how it plays out. Buyers and their agents track days on market, and a stale listing signals something's wrong, even when nothing actually is. By the time a seller drops the price to where it should have started, buyers have already mentally filed the unit as "the one nobody wanted," and offers come in lower than if it had been priced right from the start.
Every extra month on the market is a month of maintenance fees, mortgage payments if you're carrying one, property tax, and insurance — none of which stop just because your unit hasn't sold. On a typical condo, that can easily run into the thousands per month. Three extra months of sitting isn't just three months of waiting; it's real money leaving your pocket while you wait for a buyer who might have shown up in week one at the right price.
Here's the pattern that shows up most often. A unit lists high, gets a slow trickle of showings, sits for three or four weeks, then gets a price cut. The cut brings a small bump in activity, but not the flood of interest a fresh, correctly priced listing gets. Weeks pass, another cut follows, and now the listing has two or three price reductions attached to its history, visible to every agent and buyer looking at it. Each cut reads as one more piece of evidence that something's off, even when the only thing that was ever wrong was the starting number.
A unit priced to the current market, based on what's actually closed in your specific building recently, gets its best shot in the first two weeks, when the most buyers and agents are paying attention. That's when multiple showings turn into competing offers — and competing offers are the only real leverage a seller has left in a market like this one. Overpricing doesn't protect that leverage. It burns it.
If you're weighing where to list, I'd rather show you the actual recent comparables in your building than a number designed to make you feel good for a week before the market corrects it for you.
Both. A unit that sits picks up a stigma with buyers and their agents, so by the time the price is corrected, offers often come in lower than if it had been priced right from day one — on top of the extra months of carrying costs.
A listing starts high, sits for a few weeks, gets a price cut that brings a small bump but not a flood of interest, then sits again and gets cut again. Each reduction becomes visible listing history that signals something's off, even when the only issue was the starting price.
Accurate pricing based on recent closed comparables in your specific building, from day one. The first two weeks of a listing get the most buyer and agent attention — that's when multiple showings can turn into competing offers.