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Want to Save Big on a Home Purchase? Look for This Phrase in the Listing
By Adam Hardy MONEY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
For-sale listings with this magic phrase come with an average discount of 8.5%, according to a new Realtor.com analysis.
Just three little words in the description of a home listing can signal a steep discount worth tens of thousands of dollars.
For-sale listings with the phrase “priced to sell” come with an average discount of 8.5%, according to an analysis from Realtor.com released Wednesday. That translates to a reduction of about $38,000 from the median price of a home.
“We’ve found that certain ‘value’-based words used in listing descriptions are correlated with lower listing prices — and can be used to help homebuyers find true bargain properties,” wrote Ralph McLaughlin, the site’s senior economist, in the report.
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View RatesThe phrase “priced to sell” is real estate jargon to indicate the house is (or should be) a good deal. In some cases, it could be code for “this place is a fixer-upper and needs some TLC.”
Overall, the analysis found that this kind of value-based wording — which also includes “bargain,” “under valued” and similar key phrases — translated into statistically meaningful discounts on home prices in 38 out of the largest 100 metro areas.
Given that mortgage rates are well above 6%, knocking such a large chunk off the home price could provide welcome reprieve for some buyers.
Where ‘priced to sell’ homes have the biggest discounts
Regional factors are certainly at play. The discounts on priced-to-sell houses identified by Realtor.com ranged from 3.2% to 23.1%.
The largest discounts associated with the priced-to-sell phrasing were usually in cities across the South and Midwest (though some Southern areas — notably in Florida — actually had some of the smallest discounts).
Discount % | Median listing price | Discount on median price | |
|---|---|---|---|
Little Rock, Arkansas | 23% | $249,900 | $57,494 |
St. Louis, Missouri | 18.7% | $264,900 | $49,476 |
Charleston, South Carolina | 15.9% | $499,999 | $79,558 |
Memphis, Tennessee | 14.5% | $299,000 | $43,262 |
Lake County, Illinois | 12.6% | $399,900 | $50,464 |
Nassau County, New York | 12.5% | $759,000 | $94,662 |
Cambridge, Massachusetts | 11.5% | $779,000 | $89,851 |
Tulsa, Oklahoma | 11.4% | $287,500 | $32,801 |
El Paso, Texas | 11.2% | $279,000 | $31,295 |
Witchita, Kansas | 10.9% | $262,000 | $28,655 |
On the flip side, the Orlando area had the smallest discount of the metros included in the analysis. Still, looking for “priced to sell” in a listing there could save you 3.2%, or about $13,500 off the typical home.
One caveat that McLaughin mentioned is that if you’re searching for a house in an area that is inundated with “priced to sell” listings, then you might not be getting much of a discount. The best discounts are in areas where the phrase doesn’t appear in every other listing simply as a marketing gimmick. In that case, it pretty much becomes meaningless.
“To put it more simply, if a lot of listings were priced to sell,” he wrote, “then buyers might not expect a discount or might not be able to tease out whether those listings are actually priced to sell.”
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Adam Hardy is Money's lead data journalist. He writes news and feature stories aimed at helping everyday people manage their finances. He joined Money full-time in 2021 but has covered personal finance and economic topics since 2018. Previously, he worked for Forbes Advisor, The Penny Hoarder and Creative Loafing. In addition to those outlets, Adam’s work has been featured in a variety of local, national and international publications, including the Asia Times, Business Insider, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Yahoo! Finance, Nasdaq and several others. Adam graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Florida, where he studied magazine journalism and sociology. As a first-generation college graduate from a low-income, single-parent household, Adam understands firsthand the financial barriers that plague low-income Americans. His reporting aims to illuminate these issues. Since joining Money, Adam has already written over 300 articles, including a cover story on financial surveillance, a profile of Director Rohit Chopra of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and an investigation into flexible spending accounts, which found that workers forfeit billions of dollars annually through the workplace plans. He has also led data analysis on some of Money’s marquee rankings, including Best Places to Live, Best Places to Travel and Best Hospitals. He regularly contributes data reporting for Best Colleges, Best Banks and other lists as well. Adam also holds a multimedia storytelling certificate from Poynter’s News University and a data journalism certificate from the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) at the University of Missouri. In 2017, he received an English teaching certification from the University of Cambridge, which he utilized during his time in Seoul, South Korea. There, he taught students of all ages, from 5 to 65, and worked with North Korean refugees who were resettling in the area. Now, Adam lives in Saint Petersburg, Florida, with his pup Bambi. He is a card-carrying shuffleboard club member.