You've done this before. You just don't remember it from this side of the table.
When you were buying, you filtered out the overpriced ones. You didn't call your agent and say "let's make a low offer and see what happens." You moved on. You found something that felt fair, wrote a reasonable offer, and felt good about it.
Now it's your house. And somewhere in the back of your mind, you're expecting your buyer to behave differently than you did.
They won't.
Here's What That Actually Looks Like in the Numbers
If you price high hoping buyers will negotiate down, the data suggests you'll end up with less than you wanted — and several months of keeping your home show-ready while you get there.
The chart below tracks Plano closed sales by days on market across two metrics: what sellers originally asked, and what they actually ended up asking by the time a buyer offer was accepted.
How to Read This Chart
The left panel shows sold price compared to the original list price — what the seller first asked when they hit the market. The right panel shows sold price compared to the final list price — what they were asking when they finally accepted a buyer offer.
The right panel looks relatively stable. Buyers are getting 2-3% off. Nothing alarming.
The left panel tells a different story. Homes that go under contract in the first week sell at 100% of original ask. By weeks two through four, sellers are already trimming. By month two, they're at 95%. Push into 90 days and beyond, and the average seller has given up nearly 10% from where they started.
That gap between the two panels isn't buyer negotiation. That's the seller negotiating — with themselves — through a series of price reductions, one uncomfortable conversation at a time.
Offer Friendly — The Texas Way
Texas has a saying: Drive Friendly. It turns out buyers have adopted a similar philosophy at the negotiating table.
In markets like New York or Los Angeles — or São Paulo, for that matter — offering 10-15% under ask is standard practice. It's expected. Nobody takes it personally. The negotiation is part of the process and both sides know it.
That's not really how it works here.
North Texas buyers tend to write offers that feel fair or they don't write at all. A lowball offer doesn't typically trigger a hard negotiation — it either gets ignored entirely or receives a counter so close to full ask that the message is clear: we're not doing this.
When I work with buyers relocating from other markets, I give them one piece of advice early: write an offer that will at least get countered. Because if you really love the house and you come in too low, you'll find yourself negotiating against yourself — having to come back up a second time, hat in hand, hoping the seller is still interested. That's the buyer version of the same problem sellers create when they price too high.
The market isn't unfriendly. It just doesn't have much patience for offers that aren't perceived as serious.
A Note for Sellers
Pricing high and waiting for buyers to negotiate sounds reasonable. In practice it usually looks like this: a price reduction in week three, another in week six, a third two months in — each one a public signal that the original number wasn't real. Meanwhile your home has been show-ready for months, your plans are on hold, and the buyers who would have moved fast at the right price have long since bought something else. Some listings never recover. They expire or get cancelled, and the seller starts over with a damaged history.
Here's something I tell sellers that usually surprises them: you can't underprice a house in this market. If a home is priced below what the market thinks it's worth, buyers will tell you — with multiple offers. Right now, roughly 1 in 10 Plano homes are selling above asking price. That's not luck. That's correct pricing meeting real demand.
What I'm not asking you to do is price it low. I'm asking you to price it honestly — and trust the market to find the ceiling.
Buyers aren't out to take advantage of you. Most of them want to write a fair offer, feel good about it, and move on with their lives. They're not your adversary — they're your customer. But they have options, and they know what fair feels like.
The market will tell you what your home is worth. It does that every day, through showings, offers, and silence. The only real question is whether you want to start there — or get there eventually, after a few months and a few price reductions, arriving at the same number with a lot more frustration along the way.
