The trouble with asking prices

The asking-price problem

SELLNIK started after years of buying and selling homes as brokers and builders. We kept running into the same problem, and it was rarely anyone’s fault. It is easy to set an asking price which is just off the mark, and yet even off a little can carry big consequences. No two homes are exactly the same and no two buyers value the features of a home to the same level.

Buyers who might want a home are scattered and market sentiment never stops moving. Even a carefully researched price can miss in either direction. A miss, even if slight, hurts sellers and buyers alike, blocking transactions which should otherwise have happened.

We found inspiration in online competitive bidding. As buyers, we could decide what an item was worth to us and see what it took to win. As sellers, we could bring interested bidders together rather than negotiate one offer at a time. SELLNIK brings that approach to everyday home sales. Every bid event runs 11 days, giving buyers time to learn about a home and prepare before the window closes.

When homes sell too fast

Start with the homes that sell very fast. In our three launch markets about 10% go under contract in less than a week. These sales are often at or slightly above the asking price. Most agents would call that a success, and it can be.

But a home that goes under contract within a couple of days of listing has not been seen by every buyer who might have wanted it. When sellers accept offers very quickly, or buyers’ offers are clustered at or slightly above the asking price, it is often a sign that not every interested buyer has bid before the bidding stopped or knew how much was needed to win the home. No one can say whether a higher offer was out there. The traditional process never tests it, because the first acceptable offer ends the search.

Economics has a sharp result here. Bulow & Klemperer showed that, under standard assumptions, a simple competitive sale with one more serious bidder beats the best possible negotiation with one fewer.¹ The size of the crowd matters more than the skill of the negotiator. A sale that closes before the crowd has formed gives up that edge.

The bigger problem

Fast sales deserve more scrutiny than they usually get, but they are not the biggest problem. The big problem is homes listed above what buyers will pay. Between 84% and 90% of homes that sold in our launch markets in September 2026 went for less than their initial asking price, 7% to 10% less on average, and half needed price cuts to get there. Just as telling, more than 60% of listings have been on the market for more than 60 days.

The cost of waiting

Sellers are human after all. Studying Boston’s condo market in the 1990s, Genesove & Mayer found that owners facing a loss on what they had paid set noticeably higher asking prices, certainly true for many sellers today who bought near the 2022 peak. Some in that study eventually got a higher price as a result of waiting, but they took much longer to sell and were less likely to sell at all.² This pushed incremental benefit well into the future for sellers. Waiting for offers to catch up with a seller’s expectations often ignores what the waiting itself costs.

Time on the market carries its own cost, because buyers read it. When Massachusetts stopped sellers from resetting their days on market by delist/relisting, affected homes sold for about $16,000 less than similar homes over the border in Rhode Island, and slow sellers were hit hardest. The researchers found buyers were judging a home’s quality by how long it had sat.³

And the most active buyers in any market notice when a home is taken off and relisted to reset its days on market. A trail of price cuts tells the same story. Homes whose prices were cut sold for less relative to the new price than homes which did not cut but which accepted offers below their original asking price. The bigger, or more frequent the cut, the higher the relative gap.⁴ That does not prove cutting price directly causes further negative stigma discounts or that too many cuts create a point of no return where offers dry up completely, but it describes a cycle every agent knows.

Worse, cuts are not always enough. A review of 780 Collier County listings that expired or were withdrawn unsold in 2026 found nearly two-thirds had cut their price, and they had sat a median of 174 days.

A different approach

Competing bids address the problem directly, from the bottom up. Instead of setting a number and waiting to see who responds, a bid event gathers interested buyers into one window and lets them show what the home is worth. In Australia, where many mainstream homes are sold this way, economists found that prices set by bidding tracked current demand, while negotiated prices lagged because sellers’ expectations adjust slowly, impeding sales which could have happened.⁵

Research on eBay found when sellers chose bidding for unique items, where a price is hardest to know in advance, the items sold by bidding were more likely to sell, though occasionally for less than a fixed price would have fetched.⁶ Even when a fixed price fetches more in the end, sellers often underestimate the costs associated with waiting when weighing their options.

Where bidding falls short

We can be candid about the limitations. Bidding cannot create demand that just isn’t there. Further, buyers looking for a deal and sellers looking for a windfall should temper expectations. Research from Singapore and a model from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston both find competitive bidding does worse relative to asking price & negotiation when markets are soft or the sale is rushed.⁷⁸ Lone, or few, bidders who are unsure of a home’s value also bid cautiously.⁹

In a soft market, what buyers will pay today may be less than a seller hoped. In a strong market, a buyer may not win the home for the amount desired. Bid events themselves cannot change market forces.

What they change is when you find out: in 11 days, with every buyer at the table, rather than months later, after the cuts and the stigma. Nearly every home has a buyer who wants it. The question is at what price. And how long until the fair market value is found?

What technology changes

Competitive bidding once meant being in the same room at the same time. Online platforms bring interested buyers together from different places. Shared property information and open questions and answers help them prepare before bidding. Clear participation rules help everyone understand the process. Together, these tools make competitive bidding available for everyday home sales.

How SELLNIK is built

Every event is online, and we actively bring buyers to it. The window runs 11 days, so no one is rushed. Bidders must be approved before they can place a bid, and everyone sees the same property information and rules. Sellers keep the final say on whether to accept the highest bid. SELLNIK is designed to be neutral, weighing what buyers and sellers each need. Our aim is a process people value for its speed, ease, and fairness: a simpler way to bring interested buyers and sellers together.

It can work for any home at any price. We find it works best when buyers are circling but no one is biting: there is strong interest online but no offers, a fall in showings is noticed, or a price cut wants to be avoided. Sellers get the winning bid as a buyer-signed offer on a known date while keeping the final say. Buyers compete on equal terms and know they paid what it took to win.

Sources and data

1. Bulow, J. and Klemperer, P. “Auctions versus Negotiations.” American Economic Review 86(1) (1996), 180–194. RePEc listing Back to text ↑
2. Genesove, D. and Mayer, C. “Loss Aversion and Seller Behavior: Evidence from the Housing Market.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 116(4) (2001), 1233–1260. NBER working paper Back to text ↑
3. Tucker, C., Zhang, J. and Zhu, T. “Days on Market and Home Sales.” RAND Journal of Economics 44(2) (2013), 337–360. MIT open access Back to text ↑
4. Knight, J.R. “Listing Price, Time on Market, and Ultimate Selling Price: Causes and Effects of Listing Price Changes.” Real Estate Economics 30(2) (2002), 213–237. RePEc listing Back to text ↑
5. Genesove, D. and Hansen, J. “Auctions and Negotiations in Housing Price Dynamics.” Review of Economics and Statistics (July 2025), 1074–1085. doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01325 Back to text ↑
6. Einav, L., Farronato, C., Levin, J. and Sundaresan, N. “Auctions versus Posted Prices in Online Markets.” Journal of Political Economy 126(1) (2018), 178–215. Working paper (Stanford) Back to text ↑
7. Chow, Y.L., Hafalir, I.E. and Yavas, A. “Auction versus Negotiated Sale: Evidence from Real Estate Sales.” Real Estate Economics 43(2) (2015), 432–470. RePEc listing Back to text ↑
8. Mayer, C.J. “A Model of Real Estate Auctions versus Negotiated Sales.” Journal of Urban Economics 38 (1995), 1–22. Federal Reserve Bank of Boston working paper Back to text ↑
9. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Press release, Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2020 (October 12, 2020). nobelprize.org Back to text ↑

Data in the charts

• Redfin Data Center, monthly metro-level data for the Cape Coral, Naples and Miami, FL metro areas, all residential property types, September 2026 (updated October 7, 2026). “Sold at or above asking” is 100% minus Redfin’s share sold below final list price. Redfin Data Center
• Momentum Realty, analysis of 780 expired and withdrawn Collier County listings with 2026 end dates. Report