A couple sits across from me and describes the last time they tried to buy a home in Phoenix: bidding wars, houses gone in a weekend, offers written over asking with the inspection waived to stay competitive. They are prepared to do it all again, because that is what winning looks like to them.
The only problem is the market they are describing ended a few years ago. And decisions made for a market that no longer exists are how good money gets left on the table.
This article is about that gap between the market you remember and the market you are actually in, and what it costs buyers and sellers in the Phoenix metro when they let an old memory make a new decision.
Why Your Memory Is a Bad Real Estate Advisor
Psychologists call it recency bias: the most vivid experience you have tends to stand in for what you expect next. For anyone who bought or sold between 2021 and 2022, that experience was extreme. Multiple offers. Escalation clauses. Appraisal gaps. People who hesitated, lost. That period taught a lesson, and the lesson felt true because it was true, then.
The trouble is, your brain does not put a date on a lesson. It just files the memory under "how things work" and reaches for it the moment the stakes feel high. So the buyer who started looking during the frenzy keeps bracing for a war that is not happening, and the seller who watched neighbors get 2022 prices keeps believing that number is still on the table. Neither of them is stupid. They are both acting rationally on information that is simply out of date.
I am not a market commentator, and this is not a forecast. Nobody can honestly tell you where prices or rates are headed. What I can do is help you stop letting a market from four years ago make the decisions in this one.
The Evidence Right Now, in Broad Strokes
Let's think through what the evidence in the Phoenix metro currently shows, in broad strokes, not as a prediction but as a description of the game you are playing.
Roughly six out of ten homes are closing below their asking price. A typical listing sits on the market for about two months. The average home draws a couple of offers, not twenty. Around a quarter of listings take at least one price reduction before they sell.
None of that tells you what to do. That is not the point of this article. The point is that these are the conditions the actual market is offering right now, and they reward a completely different set of behaviors than the ones most people are walking in with.
The Buyer Who Bids Like It's Still 2021
The buyers who get hurt by the old memory are the ones who overbid, waive the inspection, and skip the homework because they believe that is the only way to win. In a market where most homes close below asking and typically draw a couple of offers, that approach does not secure the home. It just throws away leverage you did not need to spend.
There are a few things I'd want you to consider before you write an over-asking offer on a home specifically because you are afraid someone else will. Here's what I'd be asking: what evidence, in this home's condition, its price, and the number of people actually competing for it, justifies paying more than the seller is asking? If the answer is "because last time I had to," that is a memory talking, not a market.
The better question is: what does this home need to sell for to be a fair price for both of us, and what are my real options if it sells to someone else? A couple of offers is a very different threat level than a weekend feeding frenzy, and your strategy should look different accordingly.
The Seller Who Prices Like It's Still 2022
Sellers carry their own version of the same memory. It usually sounds like this: "Our neighbor got X in 2022, so that is what our home is worth." Or the more painful version: "I'm not taking a penny less than I would have gotten three years ago."
Let's separate emotion from fact. Your neighbor's 2022 sale was evidence about the market in 2022. It tells you almost nothing about what a buyer will pay in this one, and the market communicates through offers, not through what you feel your home deserves. When roughly a quarter of listings take a price reduction, the sellers absorbing that reduction are usually the ones who priced from memory first. The listing that went out at last year's number, sat for two months, then dropped, usually nets less than a home priced right on day one.
Here's what I'd be asking as a seller: if I list at this number, what is the evidence that a buyer will agree with it? And what's the risk if we're wrong? Because the risk of starting too high in this market is not just a slower sale. It is the visible days on market, the price reductions, and the quiet sense buyers get that something must be wrong with the home. The market does not penalize a fair price. It penalizes a number with no evidence behind it.
How to Tell Memory From Evidence
"What is the date on this belief?" If the number in your head comes from a particular year, write the year next to it. Then ask what the evidence says this month. A belief with a date is easy to update. An undated belief feels like gravity.
"Is this the market talking, or is this me protecting my ego?" Overbidding to win and overpricing to feel good about your equity are the same emotional move wearing different clothes. Both feel like strength in the moment. Both are expensive in hindsight.
"What would I tell a friend in my exact situation?" The friend version of you is calmer, less attached, and does not carry the same memories. When the two versions disagree, the friend version is usually right.
A Simple Practice That Keeps You Honest
Before we look at a single home or write a single offer, I ask clients to write down three things: what they believe the market is doing, what they want the outcome to be, and what they are unwilling to do. Then we check each belief against current evidence. That fifteen-minute exercise catches more bad decisions than any market analysis I could give you, because it surfaces the assumptions quietly running the show.
Let's zoom out for a minute. A market that shifts is not a personal insult to anyone. It is not a sign that you were wrong to wait, or that you missed your window, or that a home you loved got away for good. It is simply the environment you are deciding in, and the whole game changes when you stop fighting the market you remember and start reading the one you are in.
The market you remember was real, and it is over. The best thing you can do with a lesson from an old market is use it to spot the difference between memory and evidence in this one.
If you are getting ready to buy or sell in the Phoenix metro and you are not sure whether the numbers in your head are yours or the market's, I would be glad to sit down and look at the evidence with you. That is the conversation I actually enjoy: not telling you what to do, but helping you see clearly enough to know.
Respectfully,
Andrew Glenn
Designated Broker, My Home Group