I suspect it's just an attention-getting device. When we bought our PA house two years ago, the agent who put together our offer suggested adding an odd number to the price. But when we sold in CA, and had 5 offers, no one did that.

Could have to do with some studies that has shown that using specific prices means that it is less likely people will try to negotiate a lower price. Though I thought those studies were for used goods, but maybe it works in real estate too.

I thought of this post today as we are considering making an offer on a property. We know how much they paid for it 6 years ago, and they are pricing it at 14.9% above that today. We are in a slow market.

So, we are considering offering exactly 5% over what they paid, which will be an odd figure.

Most houses I buy need updating or something more. I always have my contractor look at the house and then I give an estimate, and then I give an offer to the dollar, noting to my realtor that I can make these numbers work.

I have had some success shortening the process by doing that. If they do counteroffer I just tell my realtor that I will have to run the numbers again and see if I can get my contractor down. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

I have seen some oddly-priced listings trying to align with the superstitions of some cultures regarding lucky, and unlucky, numbers. Your examples seem more to be an attempt at attention-getting, as sushipup mentioned.

I wonder if you could suggest your way into the price you want by manipulating the offering number. I don't know that you could ever really find out if it works, but there is some research that says you can move people to to select certain numbers by implanting near numbers in a series.

For example, suppose I wanted to sell my house at $490,000, I could offer it for sale at 504,915. The idea being that most people would round that down to 504,900 and would favor 4 and 9 because there is a preference for calculated numbers.

I am dubious that it would work just seeing the number one time in a listing, but maybe.

Or, the buyers study comps from the past 6 months, then combine that with the fact that they became mini experts after looking at many comparable homes, and offer what the market suggests, with no bearing on the listing price.

IMO, one party or the other is going to make their money during the negotiations, not if the seller did or did not use a specific, down to the dollar figure.

There is an agent in my area that has been doing this for years. It's a weak psychological game. When I worked as an agent I ignored it and directed my clients to do so.

I'm superstitious and have lucky numbers and whatnot..so yes, it's very much like me to try to sneak in 4 and 9

Well my realtor stopped me when I tried to sneak in all of them..:) It was a round number. Against my deep illogical wishes.

I wouldn't do it to affect others' decisions, it's rather to feel better myself. Some sort of magical thinking.

I even managed to give birth to my kids on 4 th and on 9th..I didn't do nothing special to achieve it, it happened so, but of course it strengthened my illogical beliefs

i can also pass on a house because I strongly dislike name of the street. I won't go to see it for example

And I dislike last decade of each month. because it so happened that several deaths in the family and of people dear to me, fell on the last decade of a month.

I can be very reasonable in so many aspects, but also have these quirks which I understand are nothing to do with reality. Yet they'll drive me, to an extent. And it may very well be that I'm not unique in that.

Listing prices in heavily Chinese areas of the Greater Toronto Area use a lot of 8s, as this is a lucky number.

Conversely, the number 4 (which evidently sounds like death in Cantonese) is a number to be avoided. Indeed, many builders got variances to change home addresses from 4 to anything else. The number four as an address was banned in one suburb north of Toronto. (Naturally, I once bought a lot 44, clueless to the whole phenomenon.)

Too bad that the first house was really worth $2,950,000.

The listing realtor or owner was not very ambitions, at least they should set the listing price as $2888,888.88 to get maximum amount of good luck.

I have a relative working in the medical field, so no fear of "death". She took advantage of the "number 4" game, purchased two gorgeous condos on the 4th floor and paid way less than the price of two regular units.