51% of U.S. home sellers repeatedly dropped prices last year. What about on Long Island?

Home sellers across the country are making significant price reductions on their properties — a practice not seen as often in Long Island's sizzling hot sellers market, and can be avoided with the right strategy, local experts say.

The 2026 National Association of Realtors Home Buyers and Sellers Generational Trends report shows that 51% of sellers reduced their asking prices four times or more nationwide in the last year. Only 9% of sellers made no price reduction at all.

Nancy Jarvis is a licensed associate real estate broker with Daniel Gale Sotheby's International Realty, with offices in Carle Place and Westhampton Beach. She said the NAR findings could reflect communication issues between sellers and agents.

"The agents really have to price the houses correctly in the beginning, or they're really hurting the sellers," Jarvis said. "But the sellers aren't hearing what the agents are saying, or listening to an agent that's giving them an overinflated price, which is costing them money in the long run."

Jarvis used to work as a real estate appraiser, and said lots of factors go into pricing a home, including square footage, the home's style, market conditions and other sales in the area within the last nine months. She once worked with a seller who thought their house was worth more than it actually was, which led to a conversation about a price reduction.

"After three weeks we had to reduce it, and I had the option of reducing it a little at a time, or, I told my sellers we really should reduce it to where it should be, otherwise we're going to be lowering the price every couple of weeks," she said.

Sheri Winter Parker, licensed associate real estate broker with The Corcoran Group in Cutchogue, has had to make price adjustments on listings at the higher end of the market, but has found that these kinds of sellers are now more willing to shift their approach.

"I've noticed a trend now where sellers are realizing the market's changed a little bit, and they are more willing to price accordingly instead of high in the sky," Parker said.

At the beginning of the process, Parker makes an agreement with her clients that after their home has exceeded a certain amount of time on the market, they will reduce the price.

"What I say is, 'let's give it a try, and we can always reduce,' " she said. "It's much harder to go back up."

Additionally, the NAR report shows that 73% of sellers did not offer any incentives to their buyers — that includes things like assistance with closing costs and condo association fees, or credit toward renovations.

Jarvis and Parker said this is rare for sellers to do on Long Island, too, but Parker has seen it in a few cases.

"I had one seller suggest, on a new construction, to throw in staging furniture," she said. "And I did have one of my sellers suggest they might pay the mansion tax, that was on a little over a million-dollar property."

Pricing and incentives are all part of the strategy that sellers and agents can devise together to make a successful sale, so open communication is key.

"I think there are ways for the sellers to be creative while working with an agent, and come up with these different strategies and approaches," Parker said.

When it comes to the price, though, it's ultimately up to the seller.

"At the end of the day, it's whatever they want to do," Jarvis said. "So I just let them know the facts, and then they usually discuss it with one another and then they make a decision."