If it is that overinflated, I would think there wouldn't be that many showings.
And, I'd also think that a realtor wouldn't expend that much time marketing it...

How many actually keep there house ready to show? Not too many that I see.

Are you in Toronto, Canada by any chance? The housing market here is pathetic. Every single house is overpriced by tens of thousands and some houses sit for months and months. But the immigration here is so high that all these houses still get sold to new comers (they come here loaded). About 15 years ago you could get a decent size house for 300k. Now that same house is worth over 500k. Ive been looking to buy a house but the prices are just so bad. Puny little houses even on the outskirts of the city are over 550k. I live in a 1000 sq ft apartment and when I go to view these houses, they feel soo cramped and depressing. People here have made it into a business. They purposely overprice it and hope to sell, they are not in a rush to move out at all. A few weeks ago I found a house a bit far but was decent and priced at 550k. I would honestly price it at 500k max but looking at the market, it was good enough. The next day they took the listing down and updated it for 620k. Basically they got a good interest and decided to price it more.

Some people dont care, they have the time and try to make a quick buck. If someone is desperate enough to buy that house in the area, then he just made extra cash. Basically the case in Toronto.

Sad times in Toronto for buyers! Some day the pendulum will swing the other way and the party will be over for the sellers.

I'm in southeast US. It's a fairly balanced market in my area currently.

I watch those home buying shows and houses for the same price in Texas and even florida are huggee. I dream of moving there :)

The house we just bought was overpriced and it sat on the market for 2 years. They finally came down and we bought it ($40k under what they were originally asking - and we are only talking about a house in the mid $200k's so $40k is significant). It is a great all brick pre-war house and meticulously maintained. Also the largest house on the street. However it has had very little in the way of cosmetic upgrades over the years. The owners have lived there for 30+ years. I think the house has been paid off for a long time and they weren't in any hurry and were hopeful that the right people would come along. I don't know what made them finally break down and sell to us at a reasonable price. Maybe they got tired of it. We were very surprised at how easily they negotiated with us. I was sure we were going to be in for a fight but they conceded about many things.

We just got the keys today and they left us a very nice letter. They said they were so happy that the house was going to a young family with children and they also included the history of the home's previous owners.

I would guess that people overprice when they aren't in a hurry and want to maximize their profit.

They overprice it because they can. They are in no rush to sell. If another person is as motivated to buy that particular piece of property, they may be willing to pay the price.

We looked at a condo unit on a lake site with an outstanding view. The unit's overpriced by about $50,000- $100,000 in our opinion. The building had settling and structural issues which have supposedly been fixed so the original owners are trying to recoup their costs but future buyers are still leery. Since there are no other condo units in the area, the Realtor said there's no ability to do similar comps so lenders will not lend and therefore it has to be a cash deal. The sellers figure anyone with cash will be able to pony up a little more.

To further complicate matters, at the only recent sale a few years ago of one of the condo units, the realtor said the seller took a camper in on trade so the price at the courthouse is skewed and no one seems to know what a good price will be.

And so the unit sits overpriced and not selling.

Right? I have seen plenty of homes in my old neighborhood and two in my new neighborhood that have been for sale for over a year. Kind of takes the allure out of "freshly painted". lol

They overprice it because they can. They are in no rush to sell. If another person is as motivated to buy that particular piece of property, they may be willing to pay the price.

We looked at a condo unit on a lake site with an outstanding view. The unit's overpriced by about $50,000- $100,000 in our opinion. The building had settling and structural issues which have supposedly been fixed so the original owners are trying to recoup their costs but future buyers are still leery. Since there are no other condo units in the area, the Realtor said there's no ability to do similar comps so lenders will not lend and therefore it has to be a cash deal. The sellers figure anyone with cash will be able to pony up a little more.

To further complicate matters, at the only recent sale a few years ago of one of the condo units, the realtor said the seller took a camper in on trade so the price at the courthouse is skewed and no one seems to know what a good price will be.

And so the unit sits overpriced and not selling.

We have a realtor in town that seems to be attached to many of the overpriced listings. I assume she quotes the high price to naive sellers to get the listing. I notice that she often does a price reduction about a month later.

Some people may not know how to price, may have an emotional investment in their home that they translate into price and so may not be fully listening to their realtors. Too, they may be ambivalent about selling.

Sometimes the price is high because the sellers bought the property during the RE boom and they hope to get their investment back.

What Maddielee says above was true for the sellers of the house we bought last year. Encouraged by off-hand quotes from friends in RA, they had been attempting to sell at a crazy inflated price since 2006 and clearly hadn't taken the 2007 crash into account.

After much haggling we finally agreed on a price that was actually slightly higher than its appraised value (but worth it to us, so not complaining) -- yet they were very difficult sellers who appeared to resent us for "ripping them off." *eye roll*

Most sellers are not as wacky and unrealistic as these were, though, and I suspect the main reason for wanting to overprice is the natural human tendency to overvalue what we ourselves cherish.

Long time ago I put my house on the market at a crazy overinflated price. My divorce decree said I had to sell the house, split the proceeds with my ex, but could live in the house (with the ex continuing to pay half the mortgage) until the house sold.

The vacant house across the street is overpriced about $50-100K, depending on who you talk to.

They are asking the 2006 real price. They had it overpriced about $200K back then, staying above the curve.

I think she's also under the delusion that some ignorant buyer from Canada or Europe is going to see it, fall in love with it, and buy it cash anyway (because it will never appraise). She also doesn't realize how nervous everyone is about flood insurance.

The owner was an REA and put a gawd-awful addition because she thought being over 2500sf was going to be the ticket, (If I bought this house, the first thing I'd do would be to return it to being a lovely under-roof lanai vice an awkward extra space.

It really is a nice house, and it's only other "fault" is that they were really tall, so they built taller counters in the kitchen and master bath. I personally take issue with their kitchen design, but I don't think most people do.

I don't know why the current listing agent would take it, except there are so few listings in our neighborhood, it's nice to have some options. It's awful for buyers right now - nothing to choose from.

One of the houses I had mentioned in the previous reply has just raised their asking price $5K. It has been on the market for a year. The reason for the price hike? They added stainless steel appliances.

I looked at and briefly considered buying an over-priced house.

The house had been updated, mostly DIY by the owner, and I think he was just so proud of his improvements that he couldn't see how very individual they were and that not everyone would like them, or have his taste.

The rooms were all painted in bold colors. Okay, that's an easy fix. He hadn't been able to take down all the walls that he wanted to, because some of them were load-bearing, so he cut large archways and "windows" into them, and finished the opening with trim that did not match the original trim in the rest of the rooms. The kitchen had ugly granite and cheap stainless appliances, but the original 1940s painted wood cabinets, now painted to imitate cherry wood. He must have spent hours on each cabinet door.

But the real kicker, and thank goodness I looked at the house in February, was that two of the bedrooms had no heat. In northern New Hampshire.

He'd done some DIY work to change a small bedroom to a bathroom upstairs,and had to cut the heating duct to do so and never fixed it.

And he still thought his DIY work increased the value of the house by about $100,000. He was asking $300,000 for a house that really was worth about$100,000 with all the work that needed to be done on it and land that was worth about $100,000.

He needed to sell, as the rest of his family had already moved to where his wife had a new job, but no one was buying. I made an offer, contingent on inspection of course, and it came back with a message that "He would not think of negotiating with someone who made such an insulting offer."

I'm always amazed at the HGTV shows that are set in Toronto what are the housing prices. Crazy!

We've had a few neighbors who said if they could sell their house for what they wanted, they would sell. Well, they got it, which is tempting for us, but our house is much smaller. We are also in a good location for both of our jobs, and moving would likely make the commute substantially worse for one of us.

Houses in our neighborhood seem to be selling for more than at the top of the market before the crash. It was very rare for houses to go over $200K, but they regularly do now, even hitting the $250K mark. Supposedly in our region, there is a shortage of homes under $300K.