There is an active listing that pops up almost every day as a "Price Change" update in one of the neighborhoods I like to keep an eye on. At first I thought maybe this was a glitch, as the price seemed to be the same each time (or so I thought). This morning it was there again so I decided to investigate further.

I ran an Archive Report on the home, which shows the entire MLS history of a property, and sure enough, the agent has been lowering the price by $1 almost daily for the past couple of weeks. This, in my opinion, is an ineffective and counterproductive pricing tactic.

The home started out grossly overpriced in the mid $200's in June 2007. It was never going to sell for that much. I remember the day it came on the market and I saw it. At 64 days on the market the price was dropped $19,900 (now that's a price drop, but it was still over priced). At 75 days on the market, the price was dropped another $100, then another $100 the next day. Then the price was dropped ten times over the next 15 day, $1 each time, until the listing expired.

The same day it expired, the listing was entered again as a new listing by the same agent, at a list price about $700 below the expired list price. Since then, the list price has been dropped $1 per day 8 out of the last 9 days. It's now been on the market for more than 100 days, and it's still over priced. At this rate, in about 30,000 days (82 years) the price will be right. But of course appreciation may shorten that time frame to about 4 years.

The reason the agent is doing this $1 price dropping every day, I presume, is to force the still overpriced listing to remain at the top of buyer search portals as a "Price Changed" listing, and to force the overpriced listing to show up on other agent's the daily Hotsheets as a "Price Changed" listing. This, theoretically I suppose, causes potential buyers and agents to regularly see the listing and eventually become interested. That's the only rationale I can think of.

Well it worked, sort of. I was so baffled by the recurring appearance of the listing in my watch list that I checked it out further because I thought something might be wrong with the MLS functionality. I was not interested in the listing, just the anomaly of it's persistence in the watch list and wondering how that could be.

So, what is the result of the agent's price dropping tactic? Speaking only for myself, my conclusion is:
a) The seller is poorly represented.
b) The seller doesn't know how to hire a good Realtor.

News flash to the goofy listing agent: Reminding buyers and agents of your overpriced listing almost daily doesn't change the fact that it's over priced. It's been on the market over 100 days now, and dropping the price $1 each day isn't going to get it sold quicker.
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