Think Adding 10% Gives You Room to Negotiate? Think Again

Many sellers believe you should list a property 10% higher because “buyers always negotiate down.” It sounds logical, but in reality it’s one of the fastest ways to lose buyers. Buyers today compare dozens of homes online, and if yours is clearly overpriced, they won’t even visit. A stale listing sitting for months raises suspicion, and repeated price drops only make it harder to sell. Ironically, those same homes often end up going for less than they would have if they had been priced correctly from the start.

So why does this myth persist? It’s psychology. Owners fear “losing” money by starting lower. Once a high price is set, it feels painful to reduce it, even when the market disagrees. And many still assume buyers will “play the game” of offering 10% below. But modern buyers don’t. They just move on.

The smarter play is to attract strong interest at the right price and let competition push the number up, rather than sitting too high with no movement and burning the property. Sellers often worry that if they price realistically, their agent won’t fight hard enough to negotiate beyond the asking price. But with the right agent and marketing, competition does the negotiating for you, often achieving a better outcome than any artificial cushion.

There’s also a wider market danger. If every home is listed 10% too high, the whole market becomes distorted. Neighbors look at unsold homes that have sat for a year and take those inflated asking prices as benchmarks. And in Spain, where sold-price data isn’t transparent to the public, this makes correct pricing one of the hardest challenges.

The solution is simple: price correctly from day one. That’s what creates urgency, trust, and competition — the forces that bring strong, real offers. If you’re truly willing to accept 10% less, then that’s the right asking price. Anything else is just chasing the market down.