There is a common belief that it takes longer to sell homes that are more expensive.

The statistics back it up too.

But the belief is a self-fulfilling prophecy that is executed by realtors and sellers every day. It’s hard enough to put an attractive price on a more-expensive custom home, and then sellers and listing agents can’t resist goosing their price by another 5% or so, just to make sure they don’t leave any money on the table.

It looks like Zillow is going to help bring an end to this sloppy practice.

We know that the zestimates are way wronger than they admit, especially with custom homes. Once a home hits the MLS, we also see them adjust the zestimate to within pennies of the list price – so they are unreliable at best, and fraudulent by most common standards.

But I’ve also noticed on this listing that the zestimate has been going down since we went for sale.

After a week on the market, the zestimate was down to $3,419,900 on Jan 22nd:

Then today the zestimate is even lower, and the spread between the views and the saves is getting larger because the highly-motivated buyers see it in the first few days and run up the count of saves:

Buyers have full access to all data now, and the longer a home is on the market, the less they will want to pay. If a recognized authority (in their mind) is also lowering their zestimate on the home publicly, it will fortify the buyers’ belief that they should offer less. Thanks Zillow!

I can’t change that belief – I’m just going to try and sell my listings early on!