About 15 years ago, I had a neighbor who was trying to sell his house who bragged that he “wouldn’t take a penny less than $500,000” for it. It was on the market for a long time and he eventually sold it to his daughter (probably for a lot less than $500,000). People get inflated ideas about what their property is worth and stubbornly stick with them.
It is interesting that many people can get very irrational on the value of their real estate.
Their egos get involved—and there is no reasoning with someone captured by pride (sometimes with a touch of greed).
In some cases they may have put a lot of personal labor in maintaining the house and property—so devaluing the house is a humiliating experience since it devalues their labor.
It is not pleasant to find out that the market determines the value of their labor—and they may not like what the market has to say.
“People get inflated ideas about what their property is worth and stubbornly stick with them.”
People also get inflated ideas about what THEY are worth. We had a friend who was a VP in a fairly large company. Lost his job in a restructuring. He was out of work for over TWO years trying to land his next VP gig. He refused to take anything less.