{"id":16009,"date":"2010-08-23T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-23T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redfindevelop.wpengine.com\/blog\/research\/?p=16009"},"modified":"2025-07-01T05:52:21","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T12:52:21","slug":"you-only-get-one-chance-to-make-a-first-impression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/you-only-get-one-chance-to-make-a-first-impression\/","title":{"rendered":"You Only Get One Chance to Make a First Impression"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, we published research showing that more than half of all listings activated in 2009 failed to sell by August 2010<\/a>. We argued then that would-be home-sellers should hire the agent with the best track record, not the one promising the best price, because the most likely outcome was that the listing agent wouldn’t sell the property at all.
\nJudging from the reaction to that post, we aren’t likely to deter many sellers or their agents from experimenting with price, debuting at a high price on the rationale that you can always lower it later.
\nThere are two problems with this approach. First, that price reductions are a signal to buyers to ask for further price reductions<\/a>. Once there’s blood in the water, most sharks want another bite.
\nMore importantly, a listing gets the most attention on its debut. As the Wall Street Journal reports today<\/a>, the week that a listing goes on the market, we estimate that it gets nearly four times more visits on real estate websites than it does a month later, which is the earliest that most sellers will consider a price reduction.
\n\"Visits-to-Listing-by-Days-on-Market_rebranded\"<\/a>
\nNow that is one jackhammer of a graph, showing traffic declining drastically from a listing’s debut. The red line represents visits to the listing from the day of debut. The green line represents visits to the listing from the day of an update, whether that entails lowering the price or re-listing the property, with day zero set to the date of the update.
\nAnd the green line never gets anywhere near the peak of the red line. Even when a listing agent lowers the price or removes the listing from the market and re-lists it, the listing gets less than half the attention that it did on its debut.
\nInterestingly, we saw upticks in activity after 30 and 60 days, since some bargain hunters get alerts whenever a listing sits on the market for a month or two. About one in eight searches on Redfin filter by days on market, most to see only new listings, but some to see only old listings.
\nThere is of course another way to look at that graph. It not only represents what happens to your individual listing, but also what would happen \u00a0in aggregate to a real estate website if no more listings came on the market. Since new listings drive traffic growth, an absence of new listings drives a decline. And as the pace of new listings has declined this summer, that is exactly what has been happening to real estate websites across the U.S. The Wall Street Journal’s website wouldn’t get much traffic either if it stopped publishing new articles.
\nTo prepare this analysis, Redfin analyzed traffic to listings in Seattle, San Francisco,\u00a0Los Angeles, Irvine, Washington DC, Boston and Chicago. We considered all listings that:<\/p>\n