Listening to friends?

18 Ivanhoe Lane has sold for $1.8 million. The owner, an experienced real estate agent herself, fixed up a flipper project and put it on the market for $1.950 on December 30. I don’t know the facts here, but I notice that she held a broker open house tour on January 13 and a few days later dropped the price to $1.750. A modest bidding war ensued, as you see.

One of the good things that can come out of a broker open house is that it affords an opportunity to solicit price opinions from fellow agents. Usually, a house is priced by a few agents from the same brokerage firm, but a (non-public) open house brings in friends, even competitors from other firms, and they will, if asked, give their insight.

Is that what happened here? Again, I don’t know, because a smart owner, especially an experienced agent/owner, will drop her price quickly if, in this market, offers aren’t coming in, and the decision might well have been entirely her own. But it never hurts to listen to objective voices.