If your Squamish home isn't getting enough showings to eventually produce an offer, is the problem always the price? Unfortunately, once you've eliminated the other possibilities and given the property an appropriate amount of time in the market, I think the answer is yes.

There's an important qualification to that answer, because I don't mean that if you list your home on Thursday and nobody has booked a showing by Sunday, you should immediately reduce the price. Different types of properties sell at different speeds, and market conditions can change dramatically. In a slow market, it may take 40 or 50 days for properties in a particular category to get an offer. If we know that before we list, then a couple of quiet weeks shouldn't necessarily cause us to panic. But once a property has been properly prepared, properly presented, properly marketed and exposed to the market for the amount of time we would reasonably expect that type of property to take to sell, then eventually we have to listen to what the market is telling us.

And if nobody is coming to see the property, the market is telling us something about the price.

You Have to Know the Expected Selling Time Before You List

This is why I think the conversation needs to happen before the property ever goes on the market. We should already have looked at comparable properties, how long they've been taking to sell, how much inventory is available, how much buyer activity there is and what's happening within that specific property category. That gives us an expectation for how long we should reasonably allow the property to be exposed before we decide something needs to change.

If comparable properties are taking 45 days to sell and your home has been listed for 12 days, the fact that you don't have an offer yet doesn't necessarily tell us very much. If similar properties are typically selling in 15 or 20 days and we're now at day 40 without meaningful activity, that's very different. That's why I don't believe in a generic rule that says you reduce the price after seven days, 14 days or 30 days. You need to understand the pace of the specific market you're actually selling into.

The broader Greater Vancouver market has recently been a good example of why this matters. August sales were 20.7% below the 10-year seasonal average while total inventory was 26.2% above its 10-year seasonal average, according to Greater Vancouver REALTORS. GVR described the combination of slower sales and ample inventory as contributing to downward price pressure. Those are regional numbers rather than a substitute for analyzing an individual Squamish property, but they illustrate why sellers can't assume that the same marketing timeline will work in every market.

Start With the Things You Can Control

Before I tell somebody their price needs to change, I want to make sure we've done everything else properly. This comes back to the Four Ps we've talked about before: Price, Position, Preparation and Presentation.

We can't change the fundamental position of the property. We can't pick up the house and move it to another street. We can't change the orientation of the lot or completely eliminate disadvantages associated with where the property sits. But we should understand those things when we're determining market value.

Preparation is something we can influence. Has the property been cleaned properly? Have we decluttered it? Have we dealt with the obvious maintenance items? Does the landscaping look good? Does the inside look as good as it reasonably can without spending money that the seller isn't going to recover?

Then there's presentation. Have we photographed it properly? Does the marketing accurately show the strengths of the property? Have we made it easy for buyers to understand what they're looking at? Are we exposing it properly to the market?

If we haven't done those things, then I'm not going to automatically blame the price. We need to fix what can reasonably be fixed first. But if we've done all of that and we've allowed the property an appropriate amount of time, eventually price becomes the adjustment that has the greatest ability to change buyer behaviour.

Price Determines Whether Buyers Engage in the First Place

This is an important distinction. Preparation and presentation can have a significant effect on how somebody feels about your home when they see it. They can help turn a showing into an offer. But price has an enormous influence on whether the buyer decides to book that showing in the first place.

Most buyers are looking at properties online before they ever walk through the door. They're comparing your property with everything else their money can buy. If they consistently choose not to see yours, even though they're viewing other comparable properties, that's information.

They may love your photographs. They may think the home looks beautiful. They may have nothing particularly negative to say about it. But if the perceived value isn't strong enough relative to the alternatives, they don't need to come through the door to tell you that. They simply book a showing somewhere else.

That's why no showings and lots of showings with no offers can sometimes tell us slightly different things. If we're getting substantial showing activity but nobody is prepared to write, I want to look closely at what buyers are discovering once they arrive. If we're barely getting anyone through the door at all after an appropriate period of exposure, I become much more concerned about the value proposition we're presenting before they even arrive.

We Recently Saw What Price Can Do to an Entire Category

We had a really interesting example of this recently in Squamish. There was a particular category of one-bedroom properties where activity had become extremely slow. Sellers weren't adjusting their expectations, buyers weren't seeing enough value and, as a result, there was very little happening.

We brought a property to market at a price we believed represented good value. The unit itself was smaller than the other one-bedroom properties it was competing against, which was one of the reasons the price was lower. But once buyers saw a property in that category at a price that got their attention, the response was substantial.

What was particularly interesting was that the increased activity didn't only affect our property. Buyers who became interested in our listing also started looking at the comparable properties because now they wanted to understand how everything stacked up. Suddenly there was activity in a category that had previously been extremely quiet.

Then one of the competing properties, which had a larger footprint than ours, adjusted its price to become more competitive. That property ultimately received the offer.

I think that's an excellent example of how pricing works. Our listing didn't magically create a new population of buyers. The buyers were there. What changed was that somebody finally presented them with a value proposition strong enough to get them engaged, and once they were engaged, they started comparing their options.

A Slow Market Doesn't Mean There Are No Buyers

This is another mistake sellers can make. If the market is extremely slow, it's easy to say there simply aren't any buyers and therefore the lack of showings isn't related to price.

There may certainly be fewer buyers. That's real. Seasonality can matter. Certain property categories can become particularly slow. Interest in one-bedroom condos can behave very differently from interest in entry-level townhouses or detached homes. That's exactly why we need to understand the particular segment rather than just looking at Squamish as one giant market.

But fewer buyers makes the competition between sellers even more important. If there are ten properties competing for two serious buyers, those buyers have choices. They don't need to see all ten. They're going to identify the properties that appear to offer the strongest combination of price, position, condition and features, and they'll concentrate their attention there.

That's why saying “the market is slow” isn't necessarily an argument for holding the price indefinitely. Sometimes it's the opposite. If there are fewer buyers, your property needs to compete even more effectively for the buyers who actually exist.

There Is a Price at Which Buyer Behaviour Changes

Imagine we have a property that our analysis says is worth approximately $1 million. If we list it at $1.2 million in a slow market, we shouldn't be surprised if buyers aren't particularly interested. They can see the other properties available around $1 million, and they understand that ours isn't offering enough additional value to justify the difference.

Now imagine there are five or six genuinely comparable properties clustered around the $1 million range and we price ours at $950,000. Assuming the property is reasonably comparable, buyer behaviour is probably going to change considerably. People who ignored the category may suddenly pay attention. Buyers may book showings because they want to understand why the property is priced where it is. Other sellers may start reconsidering their own pricing.

I'm not suggesting that sellers should automatically price their homes below market value. The objective is not to give the property away. The point is that price has an extraordinary ability to stimulate activity. If nobody is interested at one price and a large number of people would be interested at another price, then we can't pretend price isn't part of the problem.

What About Renovating or Improving the Property Instead?

There are situations where improving the property can help. Painting may improve the first impression. Cleaning and decluttering can make rooms feel larger. Landscaping can improve curb appeal. Staging can help buyers understand how a difficult room works. Those things can absolutely improve the likelihood of a successful sale.

But I would distinguish between improving the probability of somebody liking the property and getting them interested enough to see it in the first place.

If your home is poorly presented online, then fixing the presentation can generate more showings. If the property clearly looks neglected, some preparation may help. But if we've already done those things properly and buyers still aren't booking appointments after the expected market exposure, spending another $20,000 renovating something isn't necessarily the solution.

At that point, we need to look at price.

Don't Reduce the Price Just Because You're Impatient

The other side of this is equally important. I don't want sellers reducing their price unnecessarily simply because they're nervous.

If we knew before listing that this type of property was taking 40 or 50 days to generate an offer, then getting to day 14 without an offer doesn't mean our strategy has failed. If the market is behaving exactly as we expected it to behave, we may simply need to give the property time.

This is why the analysis before listing matters so much. We should have an expectation, and then we should compare what's actually happening with what we expected to happen. If we're getting the level of activity that comparable properties normally receive, we can be patient. If we're substantially underperforming the market, we need to diagnose why.

The mistake is waiting indefinitely because we don't want to hear the answer.

Eventually, the Market Gives You an Answer

Once we've properly positioned the property, prepared it, presented it, marketed it and given it an appropriate amount of time, there aren't many variables left that we can manipulate.

At that point, if buyers still aren't engaging, price becomes the biggest lever.

That doesn't necessarily mean the property is a bad property. It doesn't mean the marketing failed. It doesn't mean buyers don't exist. And it doesn't mean the seller has done anything wrong.

It simply means that at the current price, buyers have alternatives they prefer.

Change the price enough and you change that comparison.

That's why I think the answer to the original question needs some nuance. If your Squamish home has only been listed for a short period in a very slow segment, no, a lack of showings doesn't automatically mean you need a price reduction. You need to understand what normal activity looks like for that property and that market.

But once you've passed the expected selling period, you've done everything else properly and buyers still aren't coming through the door, then yes, I think you have to accept what the market is telling you.

At the right price, even a slow market will usually produce attention. The challenge is determining what that right price actually is.