My home has been on the market for a while and I am not getting offers. What should I do?

If your home has been on the market and the offers aren't coming in, something is wrong, and it's usually one of three things: price, presentation, or exposure. All three are fixable. The key is diagnosing which one is actually the problem rather than guessing.

Price is wrong in more than half of stalled FSBO listings. I know that's hard to hear, but it's the most common cause and the most impactful fix. The market is brutally efficient. If buyers are seeing your home and not making offers, they're comparing your price to what else they can get and deciding it's not competitive. Days on market also works against you. The longer a home sits, the more buyers assume something is wrong with it, which makes the problem compound over time.

Look at what has actually closed in your area in the last 60 to 90 days, not what's listed, but what sold. If your price is more than 3 to 5 percent above comparable closed sales, that gap is likely showing up in your offer activity.

Presentation issues are the second most common problem. Photos are everything in the first 48 hours a listing is live. If your listing photos are dark, cluttered, or taken on a phone, buyers are scrolling past you before they ever see your price. Walk through your home the way a buyer would, starting at the front door, through each room, to the backyard. Is it clean, uncluttered, and well-lit? Are the photos showing it at its best? These things sound basic, but they're where FSBO listings most often fall short compared to professionally marketed homes.

Exposure matters more than most sellers realize. If you're not on the MLS, you're reaching a fraction of the buyer pool. Most buyers find homes through Zillow, Redfin, and Realtor.com, and those platforms pull from the MLS. A flat fee MLS listing costs $400 to $500 and gets your home in front of the same buyers that agent-listed homes reach. If you're not already on the MLS, that's the first thing to fix.

After you've addressed all of the above, ask yourself whether you're getting showings but no offers, or whether you're not getting showings at all. These are different problems. No showings usually points to price or exposure. Showings but no offers usually points to price or a specific objection buyers have about the condition or terms that you're not hearing about.

Consider asking a few buyers' agents who showed the home for honest feedback. Most will give you a candid take if you approach them professionally. Hearing the same concern twice in one week usually means the market is telling you something you need to act on.

On price reductions: one meaningful reduction is better than a series of small drops. Small drops signal desperation without actually moving the needle. If you're going to reduce, make it a number that changes where your home sits in buyer searches, not just a cosmetic adjustment.