In Florida's Apopka Market, Overpriced Listings Are Driving Inventory Stagnation

Written by:

Eden Godinez

Date:

25 Jun 2026

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When homes sit unsold for months in a market with rising inventory, the instinct is to blame interest rates or buyer hesitation. Michelle Chase, Team Leader at The Michelle Chase Team with Home Wise Realty Group, points to a different culprit: agents who take listings at prices they know are too high.

Chase has spent 11 years as the top listing agent in Apopka, Florida, and she argues that the structural permissiveness of the real estate industry – where sellers can override agent recommendations, and agents can accept those terms – is creating artificial inventory problems that distort market data and harm sellers over time.

“You’ve got an industry where a seller can price a house 50,000 over what an agent recommends, and maybe the agent will take that listing,” Chase says. “That’s probably the downside of real estate.”

The Pricing Mechanism

Chase’s central argument is that market data, comps, price-per-square-foot averages, and automated valuations do not actually set prices. Agents do. When agents lack the discipline or local expertise to hold a pricing line, the consequences ripple through days-on-market statistics, price-reduction rates, and buyers’ perception of a neighborhood’s value trajectory.

“I believe that agents really control pricing,” Chase says.

This claim suggests that the softening visible in many Florida markets is not purely a function of macroeconomic conditions, interest rates, affordability constraints, and reduced demand, but is also partly a product of agent behavior. When agents accept listings at inflated prices to win business, those homes sit, accumulate stigma, and eventually sell for less than what a correctly priced listing would have achieved from the start.

Chase says she reviews every comparable sale in detail with her sellers, including photos and analysis of why each property sold or failed to sell. The goal is not just to arrive at a number but to build a shared understanding of what the market will actually support.

The Cost of Permissive Pricing

The gap between agent incentives and seller outcomes helps explain why overpriced listings persist even when market data argues against them. Most agents operate under a structure where even an overpriced listing generates marketing exposure, potential buyer leads, and an eventual commission if the seller reduces to market value. The agent’s short-term interest and the seller’s long-term interest are not always aligned. Chase argues this misalignment is one of the primary reasons homes sit.

Chase is explicit about where she draws the line. If a seller insists on a price she considers too high, she declines the listing. If a seller wants to list slightly above her recommendation, she will accept. Still, she will warn them up front that a price reduction will likely be necessary around the 30-day mark, and that waiting too long signals to buyers that the market has rejected the home.

“If it’s too high, honestly, I’m not going to take the listing,” Chase says.

She connects overpricing directly to current conditions in Apopka and beyond. High interest rates have already reduced buyer demand. When homes are priced above what the market will bear, the combined effect results in extended sitting time and growing inventory, which misleads both buyers and sellers about the true state of the market.

Appraisals as a Downstream Consequence

Chase’s pricing discipline has led her into another arena most agents avoid: challenging appraisals. When she prices a home aggressively, her stated goal is to establish new comps, not simply fall within existing ones. She sometimes encounters appraisers who come in below the contract price. In 2026 alone, she says she has filed two Reconsideration of Value requests and won both.

“I’ve had two this year that were brutal, and I got them both won,” Chase says.

This detail is instructive. It suggests that pricing discipline and pricing ambition are not opposites; Chase is not arguing for conservative pricing, but for accurate pricing grounded in deep local knowledge. The difference between an agent who can defend a price through an appraisal challenge and one who cannot is, in her view, a function of specialization. She declines buyer representation requests for properties outside her core market for exactly this reason.

“If a buyer calls me and they want me to help them buy a house an hour away, I’m declining, because I cannot do the best job for them. I don’t know the area,” Chase says.

Chase’s Pricing Model in Practice

Chase’s approach centers on what she describes as making comps rather than following them. Her goal with each listing is to establish a new price ceiling for the neighborhood, which she argues is the only way markets appreciate over time.

“How is the market going to get better if somebody doesn’t make houses worth more?” Chase says. “That is my challenge to myself.”

Her model, declining overpriced listings, studying comps with sellers in detail, fighting appraisals when warranted, and refusing to work outside her area of expertise, is not easily scalable across a large team or a national brokerage. But it represents one answer to a structural problem the industry has not resolved: how to align agent incentives with seller outcomes in a way that produces accurate pricing rather than optimistic guesses.

If Chase’s argument holds, the path to resolving inventory stagnation in softening markets may depend less on interest rate relief and more on whether agents are willing to turn down business that serves their own interests at the expense of their clients’. In a market where rising inventory is already pressuring prices downward, the agents who accept overpriced listings may be accelerating the very problem they hope to outlast.

About the Expert: Michelle Chase is a Team Leader at The Michelle Chase Team with Home Wise Realty Group, serving the Apopka market in Central Florida for over a decade. She has been the top listing agent in Apopka for 11 consecutive years on both the listing and selling sides.

This article is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or investment advice. The views and opinions expressed herein reflect those of the individuals quoted and do not represent an endorsement of any company, product, or service mentioned. Readers should conduct their own due diligence and consult qualified professionals before making any investment decisions.