Underprice to Spark a Bidding War, or Anchor High? The Truth About Listing-Price Games
How three pricing tactics actually play out in the 2026 buyer’s market — from both the buyer’s agent and the seller’s point of view
Does it actually help a seller when the listing agent deliberately underprices or overprices the home?
Pricing games are psychological manipulation, and in a 2026 market where buyers hold real negotiating power, the manipulation usually fails — and often backfires. Underpricing to spark a bidding war depends on a crowd of buyers competing at once; when buyers are patient, the room goes quiet. Anchoring high lets the home grow stale, and it tends to close for less than if it had been priced right. According to Zillow Research (2026), overpriced homes take about 121 days to sell versus 63 days for well-priced ones.
Source: According to Zillow Research (2026) and TRREB Market Watch (April 2026).
After years in this business, I spend a lot of time across the table from buyer’s agents — and there is one thing nearly all of them resent: the listing agent who games the price to distort the market. Underprice well below value to bait a feeding frenzy, or anchor the number artificially high so buyers feel like they won when they negotiate down. These tricks may have worked in the 2021 frenzy, but 2026 is a different animal. So let me lay out the three common pricing tactics from both sides — the buyer’s agent view and the seller’s — what each is really trying to do, how it backfires in today’s market, and which one you should actually choose if you’re selling.
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First, name the market we’re in
Any pricing strategy is meaningless without the market context. The 2026 GTA is nothing like the seller’s frenzy of a few years ago — buyers have leverage again.
According to TRREB (2026), the GTA average sale price in April was $1,051,969, down 4.9% year over year, with average days on market (DOM) stretching to 43 days versus just 33 in April 2025. New listings fell 9.3% year over year, so supply is tightening — yet sales volume still rose 7%. Buyers haven’t vanished; they’ve simply gotten pickier and more patient. The takeaway is simple: buyers have time and they have room to negotiate. Any tactic that relies on buyers losing their heads is built on soft ground.
Tactic 1: Underpricing to bait a bidding war
List well below value — say, a $1.1M home priced at $999K — to create the illusion of a deal, drive a flood of showings, set an offer deadline, and let buyers bid each other up to market or beyond.
The fatal dependency: it needs multiple buyers to lose their composure at the same moment. That worked in 2021. But in 2026 buyers are calm — according to TRREB (2026), homes now take an average of 43 days to sell, and gone-in-a-day is no longer the norm. If your bait price draws only one or two offers, you’re stuck: the buyers know it’s a bait number, and they may simply offer near $999K — boxing you in with the very price you set.
Why buyer’s agents hate underpricing
From the buyer’s-agent chair, underpricing forces a client to spend time, inspection money, and emotion on a home whose real floor is hidden — only to get bid out of budget. Many seasoned buyer’s agents simply steer clients away from obvious bait listings, or advise offering at true value and refusing to play the auction game.
The result: the most knowledgeable buyers — exactly the crowd you wanted — are the first to walk. What’s left tends to be less experienced buyers who are more likely to get cold feet, which makes the deal itself far less stable.
💡 Underpricing for a bidding war isn’t a pricing strategy — it’s a bet that enough buyers will compete at the same time. In a 2026 market where buyers are patient and hold negotiating power, the odds on that bet keep getting worse.
Tactic 2: Overpricing as an anchor
The opposite extreme: list high on purpose — a $1.1M home at $1.25M — betting on the anchoring effect, where a big opening number makes buyers feel they got a steal when they negotiate down. Some sellers also do it hoping someone might just bite.
But anchoring has one fatal precondition: a buyer has to walk in and make an offer for the anchor to hold. In reality, overpricing filters your home right out of the search results — a buyer with an $1.1M budget never even sees your $1.25M listing. Fewer showings, fewer offers, and the home sits longer and longer.
⚠️Beware the bait-price trap: If an agent suggests listing well below comparable sales to spark offers, ask the hard question — what happens if only one or two offers come in? Is there a sensible reserve to protect you? Without a backstop, all the downside of underpricing lands on you, the seller.
The real cost of overpricing: it goes stale
According to Zillow Research (2026), well-priced homes sell in about 63 days, while overpriced homes drag out to 121 — a gap of nearly 58 days. Past 30 days with no offer, buyer psychology shifts: they start wondering what’s wrong with this house. The DOM number itself becomes a strike against you.
The cruelest part is the ending: overpriced homes often close for less than if they’d been priced right from day one. Every price cut is public, and watching a seller chip the number down tells buyers they’re caving — push harder. According to NAR (2026), the median buyer discount in 2026 has reached 7.9%, the largest since 2012. The anchor trick gets turned around and used against you.
Tactic 3: Priced-right
The third option is the least sexy and, in 2026, the most reliable: price at true market value, right at the top edge of where your target buyers are looking. Price off genuine comparable sales so the home lands dead-center in the search range of the right buyers the moment it hits the market.
Priced-right doesn’t manipulate psychology — it gets the right buyers to see the right price at the right time. It buys you faster attention, concentrated showings, and — if the home really is in demand — a multiple-offer situation that forms naturally instead of being manufactured. The difference: that competition is propped up by real demand, so the offers are firmer and the deal is far less likely to collapse.
⚠️Price cuts hurt more than pricing right: According to Zillow Research (2026), overpriced homes not only sit about 58 days longer on average, they also tend to close for less. Every public price reduction signals the seller is caving — you’re handing buyers your negotiating power.
💡 In my experience, the cleanest closings I’ve handled were almost all priced-right plus professional staging. According to RESA (2025), every $1 spent on staging returns about $23.34 on average, and staged homes spend roughly 73% less time on market than unstaged ones. Rather than gaming the price, put the money into making the home genuinely show well.
So which should a seller actually choose
Strip away the agent’s pitch and come back to the two things you care about as a seller: how much you net, and how fast it sells. In 2026, the answer across these three tactics is pretty clear.
If your home sits in a genuinely scarce, buyer-dense niche — a unique floor plan in a sought-after school zone, say — a modest underprice to invite real competition can be tried carefully, but only if your agent can show data proving the demand is real, not brush you off with price it low and it’ll take off. Anchoring high I basically don’t recommend in 2026 — the most likely ending is a stale listing that sells for less. For the vast majority of sellers, priced-right plus professional staging plus high-quality launch photos is the path that both protects your sale price and controls your days on market. Pricing isn’t a mind game. It’s putting the home’s true value plainly in front of the right buyer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does underpricing to spark a bidding war actually work?
It can work in a genuinely buyer-dense niche with real demand, but at its core it’s a bet that multiple buyers will compete at the same moment. According to TRREB (2026), GTA homes now take an average of 43 days to sell, so gone-in-a-day is no longer the norm. If a bait price draws only one or two offers, you get boxed in by the low number you set — and all the risk sits with the seller.
Isn’t listing high to leave negotiating room the safer play?
It’s the opposite. Overpricing makes your listing disappear from the search results of your actual target buyers — someone whose budget matches your true value never sees an inflated price. According to Zillow Research (2026), overpriced homes drag out to about 121 days versus 63 for priced-right ones, and they tend to close for less. The room to negotiate usually turns into real money lost.
Why do buyer’s agents resent listing agents who play pricing games?
Because the games shift cost and risk onto the buyer: underpricing forces buyers to spend inspection money and emotion on a home with a hidden floor, then bids them out of budget; overpricing wastes their time. Experienced buyer’s agents steer clients away from these listings, so the savviest buyers leave first — and the deals that remain are less stable.
If I skip the pricing tricks, how do I sell fast and for a strong price?
Priced-right (anchored to genuine comparable sales) plus professional staging plus high-quality launch photos is the most reliable combination in 2026. According to RESA (2025), every $1 spent on staging returns about $23.34 on average, and staged homes spend roughly 73% less time on market. Spending on making the home show well and pricing it accurately beats a mind game every time.
The Ontario Selling Blueprint →Ontario Home Buying Guide →GTA Market Data (Monthly) →
Arthur Zhao
Real Estate Broker · FRI · ABR · SRS · PSA · MCNE · E-PRO · GUILD Elite
VP & Branch Manager, Bay Street Group Inc.
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