The Lowball Trap:
Why a Big Discount Offer Can Cost You the Home You Want

For the first time in years, you have leverage. You are touring homes that have been on the market for six weeks. Listings have already had price cuts. You remember the stories from 2021, when buyers wrote letters just to get a seller to consider their offer, and now the tables have turned. So you decide to start low. Ten percent under. Maybe more. It feels like winning before anyone has even responded.

This post is about why that instinct, sensible as it feels, is one of the most expensive habits buyers develop in a balanced market. A market that favors buyers does not reward aggressive offers. It rewards precise ones. And the difference between the two is usually the difference between closing on the home you want and watching someone else get it.

The Shift Isn't a Blank Check

Let's think through this. The Phoenix metro has changed a lot since the peak. Inventory is up roughly 27% from a year ago, homes are taking close to two months to sell in many areas, prices have flattened, and a meaningful share of listings have taken at least one price cut. If you are a buyer, that is genuinely good news. It means room to negotiate, time to think, and no reason to chase the first thing you see.

But notice what the shift did not create. It did not create a market where every home is negotiable, and it did not create a market where sellers are desperate. The listings that have been cut are, in many cases, the ones that were priced too high to begin with. The homes that are priced realistically, the ones in good condition in the neighborhoods people want, are still getting offers. Some of them are still selling quickly.

There are two completely different markets hiding inside those numbers. One is full of stale listings that will happily accept a fair offer. The other is full of well-priced homes that will accept a reasonable offer and ignore everything else. Part of a buyer's job, and part of mine, is telling them apart before you write a number down.

The Lowball That Ends the Conversation

Here is what I see most often. A buyer finds a home that has been sitting for five or six weeks. It is priced 8% over where the market says it should be. The buyer decides to offer 10% under the list price, figuring the seller should be grateful for anything.

Let's separate emotion from fact. An offer that far below the list price, with no evidence behind it, does not read as a strong negotiating position. It reads as a test, and sellers do not love being tested. Some of them counter. A lot of them simply stop responding, or respond with a number so high it is really a dismissal. In a market with this much inventory, the seller's fallback is always the same: there will be another buyer, so why deal with an offer that feels like an insult?

The uncomfortable truth is that an evidence-free lowball is not leverage. It is a bet that the other side is desperate. Sometimes that bet pays. But you are not negotiating when you make it. You are hoping. And hope is not a negotiation strategy.

List Price Is Not the Truth

The root of the problem is the anchor. You see the list price, it feels high, and you measure your offer from it. But the list price was never the truth. It is a guess, sometimes a hopeful one, sometimes a lazy one, and the only numbers that matter are the ones from recent closed sales of comparable homes. I wrote about this at length in The Anchor Effect.

There are a few things I'd want you to consider before you build an offer around a list price. What have similar homes actually closed for in the last 90 days, not what they asked? How many days has this specific home been on the market, and has the price already moved? And if a home is priced fairly yet still sitting, what else is the market trying to tell you about condition, layout, or disclosures?

The better question is not, "How far under list can I get away with?" The better question is, "What is this home actually worth, based on evidence, and what does a fair offer look like?" When you anchor to evidence instead of to the list price, something interesting happens. On an overpriced listing, your "lowball" turns out to be exactly what the home is worth, and it gets taken seriously. On a well-priced home, you recognize that before you insult the seller, and you make an offer that actually has a chance.

The Offer That Actually Wins

Let's zoom out for a minute. In a balanced market, the best offers almost never win on price alone. They win on the whole package. Here is the framework I use with every buyer I work with, no matter the market:

Evidence first. Build your number from closed comparable sales within the last 90 days, not from the list price and not from what you hope to save. If you cannot defend your number to a seller's agent, it is not ready.

Terms matter as much as price. In this market, sellers care about your timeline, your financing strength, your earnest money, and how you plan to handle inspections. A slightly higher offer with messy terms often loses to a slightly lower offer a seller can actually close.

Know your walk-away number before you write the offer. This is the single most important step. Decide in advance, calmly, what you are willing to pay and what you will do if the seller says no. That number should come from your own budget and your own plan for the home, not from the seller's counter.

Ask what happens if you are wrong. If you lead with a lowball on a well-priced home, the risk is that it goes under contract to a reasonable, clean offer while you wait for a call that never comes. That is the question I ask more than any other, and it applies here with real force. Is saving a few percent worth losing the home that fit your family? Sometimes the answer is yes. Most of the time, it isn't.

And If You're the Seller

This works the same way on the other side of the table. I have watched sellers anchor to what their neighbor got in 2021, or to what they think they deserve, and sit on a listing for months while realistic comps move. The mirror-image mistake to the lowball is the overpriced listing, and the same discipline applies. The market has already told you what the home is worth, and the longer you insist otherwise, the weaker your negotiating position gets. When a reasonable offer arrives, remember that the marketing momentum is strongest in the first weeks on market. Dismissing the first good offer because you want the one from 2021 is how sellers end up selling for less, months later. The best time to listen to the market is at the beginning, not after the home has gone stale.

The market shifting is not a signal to get aggressive. It is an invitation to get clear: clear about what the home is worth, clear about what you need, and clear about what you will do next. If you are getting ready to write an offer or respond to one, I would love to walk through the numbers with you. No pressure and no obligation, just someone who has seen this from every side of the table and wants you to make a decision you will feel good about for years. Because at the end of the day, this business isn't about transactions. It's about earning trust.