Susie, First thing to do is take a deep breathe & calm down the emotions. I know you really like this house & the price has dropped; but, it's not the only "dream" house out there. If it's not available when your house sells you'll find something else you like as much, or better. Four months is too long to go without a price reduction. Even in today's environment the market is very efficient. If a property is priced 'right' it will sell within 45-70 days. The big question today is, of course, what is 'right'? That number has no relationship to what you either want or feel you should receive. The buyer determines value. You can't use current listings as comparison. You need to know what has SOLD recently & is comparable to your property. Ask your agent to update his market analysis. Be prepared...it's likely to be 5-10% below four months ago. If nothing has sold then it's because listing prices are not in line with buyer's current perceived value & you'll need to get down low enough to motivate a buyer. If you want to sell quickly...price aggressively...in the range of 95-97% of whatever your new market comparables indicate. The market is all about PRICE today. IMO, a $1K reduction is unlikely to excite anybody into making an offer. Also, take a hard look at your pictures. Are they showing the house to best advantage? Any wallpaper? If so, remove it & take new pictures. Any strong paint colors? If so, repaint & take new pictures. You've done a lot of de-cluttering recently. Do your current pictures reflect the new cleaner look? Curb appeal? It's hard this time of year but soon you can add a pot of pansies by the front door. Don't forget to keep the windows clean. Does the front door need paint? Is your mailbox by the street? If so, is it old & battered? If so, replace it. IOW, do whatever you can to spruce up the curb appeal. Most buyers reject a property within the first 3 minutes. First impression is critical. But, ultimately, today is about price. Bluntly, it may very well be that you can't get the number you'd like. If it's so tight that you're only considering a $1K drop...it doesn't sound like you've got a lot of negotiation/wiggle room. Over my career, I've probably sold close to a couple thousand houses. I've seen lots of buyer types. Enough to know that there's really no telling exactly what will tweak somebody's button enough for them to make an offer. I can say though that the best bet is price. A buyer will overlook many perceived deficiencies for the right price. There are many ways to manipulate price. A buyer's agent bonus is one way but, as Jo has already noted, a good agent isn't that moved by a bonus. They really do try to match a property to their customer's needs/desires. You could offer to buy down a buyer's interest rate by a point. Rates are already low...but, you might catch somebody on the cusp who could afford your house with, say, a 4.5% mortgage but not at current rates. A straight price reduction offers value to the largest buyer pool. You can also offer a redecorating allowance. First time homebuyers are, sometimes, motivated by having their new appliances paid for by the seller. This technique will rarely, if ever, work with an experienced buyer. You can also offer to pay the first 3-6 month's mortgage payments (cost would be escrowed). Again, this is a first time homebuyer attraction, possibly...not the move-up buyer. I've sold some real dogs by just offering a new TV...this only works well, IMO, if you've got the TV in the house so a buyer can see it...and, it has to be something exciting not the cheapest Best Buy close-out. All of these things are just alternatives to lowering your listing price. Ultimately, IMO again, the best is to lower your price 5%...wait 3 weeks & if it hasn't sold...lower another 5% until you find that "right" price. That WILL work almost guaranteed even today. The market is valuing your property at some now unknown price point. To sell quickly you'll have to find that value. In today's market, any other way is just luck. And, I often say I'd rather be lucky than good any day! Seriously though, if you want that house sold...lower the price ! Best of luck! /tricia

You're probably right about the water heater being pre existing, because it's been documented to have problems. I think the warranty is meant to cover things that you discover are wrong with the home after you take possession and not things that are discovered in the inspection. If it was only the hot water heater that needed to be replaced I'd just suck it up and replace it myself. Since the seller isn't willing to give on even meeting you halfway on the garage I'd do an analysis and see if the home is still a good value even needing $4000 of work. The home may be at the top of your price range, but is the home priced $4000 under it's comps or is it also priced at the top of it's comps.

Also, if everyone has seen everything there is to see in the pictures, whats the point of coming to look at the house. The object is to entice people to come look, not have them rule it out because they have already seen it all. No. The object is to sell the house, not to get people to come look. Both as a buyer and a seller I appreciate it when people look at photos and realize the house doesn't meet their needs and then don't come. As a buyer I know what I need. Listings which obscure stuff by not showing all relevant info are ones that I usually pass over. I used to go and look and almost invariably found that rooms not pictured had something wrong with them or were hiding that the seller was being cute with the listing. The listing that said it had 4 bedrooms and had a garage apartment which would mean 5 total bedrooms (most don't include garage apartments in the number of bedrooms in the house in the listings here) but when we got there were a total of 4 bedrooms. Or the house I actually looked at that said it had a dining room, a living room and a study. That is 3 rooms (2 of which we wanted to use as DH and my study). I got there and there were 2 rooms - they were double counting the dining room and the study. What I learned from that was if a room isn't in the pictures where you can count each room in the listings then the room may not exist. Or the house that had all these listing photos (all the bedrooms) but had no picture of the living room. I never went and look at it.

It's funny, when I asked a similar question a few months ago, everyone here told me to reduce the price. IMHO, if showings have slowed a lot the last couple weeks, you've lost your "new listing freshness" and now it becomes a matter of being priced right. I'm in a slow market, but houses that are priced right or well, sell within a few weeks. You can lower your price without mentioning "reduced price" and looking desperate -- which you're not. Just lower it that $10K to get into the next lower price bracket, get back into all of the realtors' emails, print up new flyers, but don't draw attention to the new price. You'll know if the price reduction was "enough" if your showings jump back up again. If not, you have to decide how low you're willing to go and how long you're willing to wait. Because if you're not "priced to sell," you only bet is appealing to someone emotionally as their "dream house" that they have to have, despite the price, which is gonna take longer.