Member Field Notes

Why Fair Prices Aren't Selling: Three Case Studies From Our Greater Boston Listings

By Christopher Chadzynski, Owner of Northeast Realty + Co.

Sellers think they're in a seller's market. Buyers think they're in a buyer's market. Right now, both are partly right, and that standoff is why so many Greater Boston listings sit at what looks like a fair price and get no offers.

What we've seen across our listings this year: a well-researched market price is no longer enough to produce an offer. Buyers need a reason to act. The listings that have moved fastest for us were the ones where we created that reason, usually with a sharp price adjustment that brought several buyers in at once and let competition carry the price back up.

Here's what that looks like across three property types.

Single-family: Groton and Northborough

Single-families have been our most active category, but even here, buyers waited.

We listed a four-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot colonial in Groton on August 25 at $899,900, a couple of weeks before Labor Day. That price came out of a full market analysis and was competitive with the recent sales. The listing still went quiet. Showings were light and no offers came in.

We then dropped to the seller's bottom line of $850,000, which was arguably well below the majority of the comps. The response was immediate. Within days the listing was flagged online as trending faster than comparable homes, showings picked up, and offers followed. On September 29, 35 days after we listed, we went under agreement. By then we had three offers on the table:

• $815,000
• $850,000
• $919,000

We called for best and final. The $850,000 buyer came up to $920,000 and won. That's above the original $899,900 list price, from the same house, in the same market, five weeks later. The only thing that changed was that buyers finally had a reason to compete.

The same pattern held at the higher end. In Northborough, a four-bedroom, 4,400-square-foot colonial built in 2016 came to market on August 19 at $1,349,900. Looking back, that price was already pushing the market. The offer activity we were seeing came in between $1.2 million and $1.25 million. We cut to $1,325,000 in mid-September and to $1,299,900 at the end of September. We accepted an offer on October 12, 54 days after we listed, and went under agreement in mid-October.

Price wasn't the only lever. At this caliber of home, high-end staging made a tremendous difference. Buyers spending more than $1 million expect a finished, move-in-ready look, and staging showed them what the space could be. Without it, I don't believe we would have reached $1.25 million, which is where we're set to close next week.

Condos: three owners who waited too long

Condos are where we see the opposite outcome most often: a listing priced at "market" that slowly chases buyers down.

Westborough. A top-floor, two-bedroom-plus-den condo in a downtown elevator building first came to market in late April at $589,900. Three price cuts over the summer brought it to $569,900. It sat 156 days, drew one offer from a buyer who couldn't sell their own home first, and expired at the end of September. It came back in mid-October at $555,000 and is now $549,900. That is $10,100 below the $560,000 the owner paid in May 2025, when the same unit was listed at $540,000, went under agreement in eight days and sold over asking. Same unit, same building, 18 months apart.

Medway and Dorchester. Neither of these owners came to us to sell. Both reached out to our property management team, ready to rent their condos after long, frustrating runs with their previous listing agents. The Medway three-bedroom townhouse, built in 2023, listed in June at $789,000 and took four price cuts down to $695,900 before coming off the market this week after 151 days. The Dorchester three-bedroom townhouse, built in 2019, listed in September at $630,000 and has been cut twice, to $599,900. Those cuts erased the gains. The Medway owners paid $685,000 when they bought new in June 2023, so the last asking price was only $10,900 above what they paid, before any selling costs. The Dorchester owners paid $610,000 in May 2021, and the current $599,900 is $10,100 below it. Both will relaunch with us next weekend at their previous list prices, with new photos, new marketing and a short window of showings designed to bring buyers in together rather than one at a time.

There's a broader pattern here. All three of these owners bought in 2021 or later, and across the market we're seeing condo owners who purchased in 2021 or later have a difficult time getting offers above what they paid. They bought near the top, with low rates propping up prices, and today's buyers at 7% rates simply can't pay the same number for the same unit.

The lesson from all three: small, repeated reductions don't stimulate anyone. Each one tells buyers to wait for the next.

Multifamily: the cost of waiting a year

Multifamilies have felt the rate environment most, because investors run the numbers before they ever see the property.

Worcester. This one shows the whole cycle. We listed a two-family in Worcester in May at $675,000. Two price cuts took it to $625,000, and after 60 days with no deal we pulled it. We relisted in July at $599,900, cut twice more to $589,900, and went under agreement in August, but that buyer walked. One more cut to $579,900 in September still didn't produce a new offer.

On September 30 we brought it back at $499,900, well below the comps. Within seven days we had five offers, and they bid each other up to $550,000. We closed on November 10 at $550,000. That number is where the market actually was. Every price above it, from $675,000 down to $579,900, was asking buyers to come to us, and none of them would. The aggressive drop is what got them to compete their way back up to market value.

Hyde Park. The other side of the story is a fully rented six-unit in Hyde Park. We marketed it off-market to our investor network first, then listed it publicly in mid-September at $2,100,000 and adjusted to $1,975,000 in early October to get under the $2 million search cutoff. Since then it has been stagnant, with only a handful of showings.

The comps say this is a timing problem, not a building problem. Over the past year, five- and six-unit buildings in Roslindale and Hyde Park sold between $2,000,000 and $2,100,000, averaging about $2,055,000, roughly $300,000 more than similar buildings in Dorchester and Mattapan. A renovated five-unit in Hyde Park sold for $2,065,000 in October 2025. Our market analysis put the building at $1.9 to $2.1 million, or $338 to $373 per square foot, and at the top of that range its 5,616 square feet works out to about $2.1 million. The six-unit buildings that started high this year tell the same story as every other property type: one in Roslindale started at $2,495,000 and sold for $2,100,000, and two in Dorchester that started near $2.2 million are still sitting in the mid-$1.7 millions after repeated cuts. What changed is the cost of money. At about 7.3%, an investor putting 25% down on a $2 million building pays roughly $11,000 a year more in mortgage payments than a year ago, and that comes straight out of the cash flow they're underwriting.

Our honest read: if both of these had come to market a year ago, we believe the Worcester two-family would have drawn offers above $600,000, and there's a good argument from the comps that the Hyde Park building would have traded closer to $2.1 million. Rates and investor caution have done more to these prices than anything about the properties themselves.

What this means for owners

• A market price is a starting point, not a strategy. If showings and offers aren't coming, the market is telling you something within the first two to three weeks.
• One decisive move beats several small ones. A meaningful adjustment brings multiple buyers in at once, and competition is what restores price.
• Know your floor before you list. The sellers who did best set a real bottom line up front and were willing to price there to create urgency.
• Selling isn't the only option. For owners who can't reach their number today, renting for a year or two and returning to a stronger market can make more sense than chasing price down.

If you own a home, condo or multifamily in Greater Boston and want an honest read on where it stands, for a sale or a lease, we're happy to run the numbers.

Selling: nerealtyco.com | Property management: nerealtycopm.com