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Volume XXVI, Number XLVI | October 29, 2026
The Six Months You Don't Get Back
Listing your home doesn't mean it will sell. Most sellers never even ask the question. They pick a moving date, start packing in their heads, and assume the sale will follow.
But think about what happens if it doesn't. You might pay for an inspection and repairs before the sign goes up. Then come the cleaning, staging the house every morning before work, the phone calls, and the afternoons you leave the office to fix something at the house.
Say dinner is on the table at 6 and an agent calls to ask for a 6:30 showing. Now the meal waits while you clean the kitchen, air out the cooking smell and get the family out the door. Then, often six months later, your listing agreement ends and the sign comes down. You still own the house, and you're back where you started: the cleaning, the showings and the waiting all over again, as if the last six months never happened.
I wanted to know how often that happens here. So I counted every existing home listed for sale in Leon and Wakulla counties that came off the market in the last three years, 11,893 listings, and sorted them by how they ended.
About 1 in 5 failed. That's 2,361 owners who went through all of it and still owned the house.
That's the last three years. In 2010, more than half of listings failed. In 2021, just 1 in 10.
Bad news is good business. We never bought in.
Every morning, financial news follows the same script. Headlines panic, coverage catastrophises, and somewhere inside the noise is the story that actually matters — the one that tells you where the opportunity sits, not just where the fear is pointing.
Most sources have stopped looking. The alarm is easier to sell.
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What Separated the Two Groups?
The sellers who succeeded didn't just get lucky. Every seller chooses how to enter the market, starting with the first asking price, and that choice largely decides which side of the chart they land on. Even many of the sellers who eventually sold learned that the hard way: showings slowed, price reductions began, and they found the right price months after they should have.
Getting that first price right takes market intelligence: knowing exactly what buyers are paying the week your home first goes on the market. That's a skill your agent has to bring to the table, which is why the agent advising you on that choice matters as much as the choice itself.
When the market shifts, the price that worked last year no longer works. That's why it pays to keep an eye on the market even when you're not planning to move. If a move comes up unexpectedly, you'll already know where prices stand, and you'll avoid the agent who tells you what you want to hear instead of what will actually sell your home.
Thinking about selling? Before you pick a price, find out what buyers are paying for homes like yours right now.
Know someone moving or thinking about it?
Forward this issue, or send them this link to sign up: www.manausa.com/newsletter
Until later,
Joe Manausa MBA
Joe Manausa Team at Xcellence Realty
P.S. Oh, by the way, if you'll be buying your next home too: mortgage rates are back to normal, but the payment isn't. See what that means for your next home →
Note: The chart counts every existing-home listing in Leon and Wakulla counties that ended Oct 21, 2023 to Oct 20, 2026, with bank sales, short sales and auctions excluded. A home that came back on the market within 90 days counts as one listing. Source: the Tallahassee Multiple Listing Service (MLS).