A price that jumps up and then gets cut within weeks almost always means a seller who isn't truly ready to sell, or one misreading the market. It's the signature of anchoring: an owner still mentally living in a hotter, multiple-offer environment, reaching for a number the current market won't support. We've listed homes into this exact trap. Price a home right to a strong comp and it draws offers. Raise it chasing a bigger number and the activity dries up. Then it gets relisted below where it started, sometimes below the price that had drawn multiple offers in the first place. The market punishes the reach, and every one of those moves is the seller learning in real time what the home was actually worth. For you as a buyer, that pattern is useful information. The original asking price is evidence of what the seller was once willing to accept, before they talked themselves higher. A reasonable play is to offer at or below that original number. The zigzag tells you the seller is negotiable and probably a little chastened, which is leverage. Just anchor your offer to the comps rather than to whichever number the seller flashed highest. Where comparable homes are actually selling is the only price that matters. Let the seller's own price history show you the ceiling, and don't get pulled up to a peak the market already rejected.